Way Station

35

In the moonlight the tumbled boulder pile gleamed whitely, like the skeleton of some prehistoric beast. For here, near the edge of the cliff that towered above the river, the heavy trees thinned out and, the rocky point stood open to the sky.

Enoch stood beside one of the massive boulders and gazed down at the huddled figure that lay among the rocks. Poor, tattered bungler, he thought, dead so far from home and, so far as he, himself, must be concerned, to so little purpose

Although perhaps neither poor nor tattered, for in that brain, now broken and spattered beyond recovery, must surely have lain a scheme of greatness — the kind of scheme that the brain of an earthly Alexander or Xerxes or Napoleon may have held, a dream of some great power, cynically conceived, to be attained and held at whatever cost, the dimensions of it so grandiose that it shoved aside and canceled out all moral considerations.

He tried momentarily to imagine what the scheme might be, but knew, even as he tested his imagination, how foolish it was to try, for there would be factors, he was sure, that he would not recognize and considerations that might lie beyond his understanding.

But however that might be, something had gone wrong, for in the plan itself Earth could have had no place other than as a hideout which could be used if trouble struck. This creature's lying here, then, was a part of desperation, a last — ditch gamble that had not worked out.

And, Enoch thought, it was ironic that the key of failure lay in the fact that the creature, in its fleeing, had carried the Talisman into the backyard of a sensitive, and on a planet, too, where no one would have thought to look for a sensitive. For, thinking back on it, there could be little doubt that Lucy had sensed the Talisman and had been drawn to it as truly as a magnet would attract a piece of steel. She had known nothing else, perhaps, than that the Talisman had been there and was something she must have, that it was something she had waited for in all her loneliness, without knowing what it was or without hope of finding it. Like a child who sees, quite suddenly, a shiny, glorious bauble on a Christmas tree and knows that it's the grandest thing on Earth and that it must be hers.

This creature lying here, thought Enoch, must have been able and resourceful. For it would have taken great ability and resourcefulness to have stolen the Talisman to start with, to keep it hidden for years, to have penetrated into the secrets and the files of Galactic Central. Would it have been possible, he wondered, if the Talisman had been in effective operation? With an energetic Talisman would the moral laxity and the driving greed been possible to motivate the deed?

But that was ended now. The Talisman had been restored and a new custodian had been found — a deaf — mute girl of Earth, the humblest of humans. And there would be peace on Earth and in time the Earth would join the confraternity of the galaxy.

There were no problems now, he thought. No decisions to be made. Lucy had taken the decisions from the hands of everyone.

The station would remain and he could unpack the boxes he had packed and put the journals back on the shelves again. He could go back to the station once again and settle down and carry on his work.

I am sorry, he told the huddled shape that lay among the boulders. I am sorry that mine was the hand that had to do it to you.

He turned away and walked out to where the cliff dropped straight down to the river flowing at its foot. He raised the rifle and held it for a moment motionless and then he threw it out and watched it fall, spinning end for end, the moonlight glinting off the barrel, saw the tiny splash it made as it struck the water. And far below, he heard the smug, contented gurgling of the water as it flowed past this cliff and went on, to the further ends of Earth.

There would be peace on Earth, he thought; there would be no war. With Lucy at the conference table, there could be no thought of war. Even if some ran howling from the fear inside themselves, a fear and guilt so great that it overrode the glory and the comfort of the Talisman, there still could be no war.

But it was a long trail yet, a long lonesome way, before the brightness of real peace would live in the hearts of man.

Until no man ran howling, wild with fear (any kind of fear), would there be actual peace. Until the last man threw away his weapon (any sort of weapon), the tribe of Man could not be at peace. And a rifle, Enoch told himself, was the least of the weapons of the Earth, the least of man's inhumanity to man, no more than a symbol of all the other and more deadly weapons.

He stood on the rim of the cliff and looked out across the river and the dark shadow of the wooded valley. His hands felt strangely empty with the rifle gone, but it seemed that somewhere, back there just a way, he had stepped into another field of time, as if an age or day had dropped away and he had come into a place that was shining and brand new and unsullied by any past mistakes.

The river rolled below him and the river did not care. Nothing mattered to the river. It would take the tusk of mastodon, the skull of sabertooth, the rib cage of a man, the dead and sunken tree, the thrown rock or rifle and would swallow each of them and cover them in mud or sand and roll gurgling over them, hiding them from sight.

A million years ago there had been no river here and in a million years to come there might be no river — but in a million years from now there would be, if not Man, at least a caring thing. And that was the secret of the universe, Enoch told himself — a thing that went on caring.

He turned slowly from the cliff edge and clambered through the boulders, to go walking up the hill. He heard the tiny scurrying of small life rustling through the fallen leaves and once there was the sleepy peeping of an awakened bird and through the entire woods lay the peace and comfort of that glowing light — not so intense, not so deep and bright and so wonderful as when it actually had been there, but a breath of it still left.

He came to the edge of the woods and climbed the field and ahead of him the station stood foursquare upon its ridgetop. And it seemed that it was no longer a station only, but his home as well. Many years ago it had been a home and nothing more and then it had become a way station to the galaxy. But now, although way station still, it was home again.