The sun was setting, throwing a fog-like dusk across the stream and trees, and there was a coolness in the air. It was time, I knew, to be getting back to camp. But I did not want to move. For I had the feeling that this was a place, once seen, that could not be seen again. If I left and then came back it would not be the same; no matter how many – times I might return to this particular spot the place and feeling would never be the same, something would be lost or something would be added, and there never would exist again, through all eternity, all the integrated factors that made it what it was in this magic moment.
A stone rattled behind me and I turned to see that it was Elmer, moving through the dusk. I said nothing to him and he did not speak to me, but came and squatted down beside me and there was nothing to be said, nothing that needed to be said. I sat there, remembering all the other times like this-when there had been no need of words between Elmer and myself. We sat as the twilight deepened and from far away came the sound of something hooting and a little later the faint sound of something that was baying. The water went on talking as the darkness deepened.
“I built a fire,” said Elmer, Finally. “We’ll need it for cooking, but even if we had no need of it, I still would have built fire. The Earth calls for a fire. The two of them go together. Man came up from savagery with fire. In all of man’s long history he never let the fire go out.”
“Is it,” I asked, “the way you remember it?”
He shook his head. “Not the way I remember it, but somehow it is the way that I knew it would be. There weren’t trees like these, or a stream like this. But you see one tree flaming in the autumn sun and you can imagine what it might be like with a forest of such trees. You see a stream run red and choked with filth and you know how it might be if the land were clean.”
The baying sound came again and walked with chilly feet along my spine.
“Dogs,” said Elmer, “trailing something. Either dogs or wolves.”
“You were here,” I said, “in the Final War. It was different then.”
“Different,” said Elmer. “Most everything was dead or dying. But there were places here and there where the old Earth still remained. Little pockets where the poison and the radiation had not settled in, places that had been struck no more than a glancing blow. Enough to let you know what it had been like at one time. The people were living mostly underground. I worked on the surface, on one of the war machines – perhaps the last such machine that was ever built. Barring the purpose of it, it was a wondrous mechanism and well it might have been, for it was not machine alone. It had the body of a machine, but the brain of it was something else-a melding of machine and man, a robotic brain linked with the brains of men. I don’t know who they were. Someone must have known, but I never did. I have often wondered. It was the only way, you see, that a war could still be fought. No human could go to fight that kind of war. So man’s servants and companions, the machines, carried on the war. I don’t know why they kept on fighting. I have often asked myself. They’d destroyed all there’d ever been to fight for and there was no use of keeping on.”
He quit talking and rose to his feet. “Let’s go back,” he said. “You must be hungry and so must the young lady. Fletch, I fear I am a bit confused as to why she is along.” “Something about a treasure.” “What kind of treasure?”
“I don’t really know. There was no time for her to explain it to me.”
From where we stood we could see the flare of the fire and we walked toward it.
Cynthia was on her knees before a bed of coals she had raked off to one side, holding a pot over the coals and stirring with a spoon.
“I hope it’s decent,” she said. “It’s some kind of stew.” “There is no need for you to be doing that,” said Elmer, somewhat miffed. “I am, when called upon, a quite efficient cook.”
“So am I,” said Cynthia.
“Tomorrow,” Elmer said, “I’ll get some meat for you. I saw a number of squirrels and a rabbit or two.”
“We have no hunting equipment,” I said. “We brought along no guns.” “We can make a bow,” said Cynthia.
“No need of guns or bows,” said Elmer. “Stones are good enough. I’ll pick up some pebbles . . .”
“No one can hunt with pebbles,” Cynthia said. “You can’t throw straight enough.”
“I can,” Elmer told her. “I am a machine. I do not rely on muscles or a human eye, which, marvellous as it may be . . .”
“Where’s Bronco?” I asked.
Elmer motioned with his thumb. “He’s in a trance,” he said.
I moved around the fire so I could get a better look at him. What Elmer had said was right. Bronco was standing to one side with all his sensor apparatus out, soaking up the place.
“The best compositor there ever was,” said Elmer, proudly. “He took to it like a shot. He’s a sensitive.”
Cynthia picked up a couple of bowls and dished up the stew. She handed one of them to me.
“Watch out; it’s hot,” she said.
I sat down beside her and cautiously began to eat. The stew was not too bad, but it was hot. I had to blow upon each spoonful of it to cool it off before I put it in my mouth.
The baying came again, and it was close now, just a hill or two away.
“Those are dogs,” said Elmer. “They are chasing something. Maybe there are people here.”
“Maybe just a wild pack,” I said.
Cynthia shook her head. “No. I asked around a bit when I was staying at the inn. There are people out here in the wilds-or what Cemetery calls the wilds. No one seems to know too much about them, or at least wouldn’t talk too much about them. As if they were beneath any human * notice. The normal Cemetery-Pilgrim reaction, what you would expect. You got a taste of that reaction, Fletcher, when you went in to see Maxwell Peter Bell. You never told me how it all turned out.”
“He tried to take me over. I turned him down, not too diplomatically. I know I should have been more polite, but he put my back up.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” she said. “Cemetery is not accustomed to refusal-even to polite
refusal.”
“Why did you bother with him at all?” asked Elmer.
“It’s expected,” I said. “The captain briefed me on it. A courtesy call. As if he were a king or prime minister or potentate or something. I couldn’t have ducked it very well.” “What I don’t understand,” Elmer said to Cynthia, “is how you fit into it. Not that you aren’t welcome.” Cynthia looked at me. “Didn’t Fletcher tell you?” “He said something about treasure . . .” “I suppose,” she said, “I’d better tell it all. Because you have a right to know. And I wouldn’t want you to think I was a simple adventuress. There is something rather shoddy about an adventuress. Do you want to listen?”
“We might as well,” said Elmer.
She was silent for a moment and you could sense her sort of settling down, getting a good grip on herself, as if she faced a difficult task and was determined that she would do it well.
“I am an Alden native,” she began. “My ancestors were among the first to settle there. The family history-perhaps a better way to say it is the family legend, for it’s not documented-runs back to their first arrival. But you won’t find the Lansing name listed among the First Families-the First Families, capitalized. The First Families are those that prospered. My family didn’t prosper. Bad management, pure laziness, lack of ambition bad luck-I don’t know what it was, but they stayed poor as church mice. There is a little place, way back in the outland country, that is called Lansing Corners, but that’s all there is, that is the only mark my family made on Alden or on Alden history. They were farmers, small tradesmen, labourers; they had no political aspirations; no genius blossomed in them. They were content to do a good day’s work and at the end of it to sit on the doorstep of their cottage and drink their beer, chatting with their neighbours, or alone, watching the fabulous Alden sunsets. They were simple people. Some of them, I guess a lot of them, went off-planet with the years, seeking fortunes that I imagine they never found. If they had, the Alden Lansings would have heard of it and the family legends make no mention of it. I imagine those who were left stayed on simply because they hated to leave; there wasn’t much there for them, but Alden is a lovely planet.”