Very glad to meet you.”
“She cannot speak,” Ulysses said. “Nor hear. She has no communication.”
“Compensation,” said the Hazer.
“You think so?” asked Ulysses.
“I am sure of it.”
He walked slowly forward and Lucy waited.
“It-she, the female form, you called it-she is not afraid.”
Ulysses chuckled. “Not even of me,” he said.
The Hazer reached out his hand to her and she stood quietly for a
moment, then one of her hands came up and took the Hazer’s fingers, more
like tentacles than fingers, in its grasp.
It seemed to Enoch, for a moment, that the cloak of golden haze reached
out to wrap the Earth girl in its glow. Enoch blinked his eyes and the
illusion, if it had been illusion, was swept away, and it only was the Hazer
who had the golden cloak.
And how was it, Enoch wondered, that there was no fear in her, either
of Ulysses or the Hazer? Was it because, in truth, as he had said, she could
see beyond the outward guise, could somehow sense the basic humanity (God
help me, I cannot think, even now, except in human terms!) that was in these
creatures? And if that were true, was it because she herself was not
entirely human? A human, certainly, in form and origin, but not formed and
molded into the human culture-being perhaps, what a human would be if he
were not hemmed about so closely by the rules of behavior and outlook that
through the years had hardened into law to comprise a common human attitude.
Lucy dropped the Hazer’s hand and went back to the sofa.
The Hazer said, “Enoch Wallace.”
“Yes.”
“She is of your race?”
“Yes, of course she is.”
“She is most unlike you. Almost as if there were two races.”
“There is not two races. There is only one.”
“Are there many others like her?”
“I would not know,” said Enoch.
“Coffee,” said Ulysses to the Hazer. “Would you like some coffee?”
“Coffee?”
“A most delicious brew. Earth’s one great accomplishment.”
“I am not acquainted with it,” said the Hazer. “I don’t believe I
will.”
He turned ponderously to Enoch.
“You know why I am here?” he asked.
“I believe so.”
“It is a matter I regret,” said the Hazer. “But I must …”
“If you’d rather,” Enoch said, “we can consider that the protest has
been made. I would so stipulate.”
“Why not?” Ulysses said. “There is no need, it seems to me, to have the
three of us go through a somewhat painful scene.”
The Hazer hesitated.
“If you feel you must,” said Enoch.
“No,” the Hazer said. “I am satisfied if an unspoken protest be
generously accepted.”
“Accepted,” Enoch said, “on just one condition. That I satisfy myself
that the charge is not unfounded. I must go out and see.”
“You do not believe me?”
“It is not a matter of belief. It is something that can be checked. I
cannot accept either for myself or for my planet until I have done that
much.”
“Enoch,” Ulysses said, “the Vegan has been gracious. Not only now, but
before this happened. His race presses the charge most reluctantly. They
suffered much to protect the Earth and you.”
“And the feeling is that I would be ungracious if I did not accept the
protest and the charge on the Vegan statement.”
“I am sorry, Enoch,” said Ulysses. “That is what I mean.”
Enoch shook his head. “For years I’ve tried to understand and to
conform to the ethics and ideas of all the people who have come through this
station. I’ve pushed my own human instincts and training to one side. I’ve
tried to understand other viewpoints and to evaluate other ways of thinking,
many of which did violence to my own. I am glad of all of it, for it has
given me a chance to go beyond the narrowness of Earth. I think I gained
something from it all. But none of this touched Earth; only myself was
involved. This business touches Earth and I must approach it from an
Earthman’s viewpoint. In this particular instance I am not simply the keeper
of a galactic station.”
Neither of them said a word. Enoch stood waiting and still there was
nothing said.
Finally he turned and headed for the door.
“I’ll be back,” he told them.
He spoke the phrase and the door started to slide open.
“If you’ll have me,” said the, Hazer quietly, “I’d like to go with
you.”
“Fine,” said Enoch. “Come ahead.”
It was dark outside and Enoch lit the lantern. The Hazer watched him
closely.
“Fossil fuel,” Enoch told him. “It burns at the tip of a saturated
wick.”
The Hazer said, in horror, “But surely you have better.”
“Much better now,” said Enoch. “I am just old-fashioned.”
He led the way outside, the lantern throwing a small pool of light. The
Hazer followed.
“It is a wild planet,” said the Hazer.
“Wild here. There are parts of it are tame.”
“My own planet is controlled,” the Hazer said. “Every foot of it is
planned.”
“I know. I have talked to many Vegans. They described the planet to
me.”
They headed for the barn.
“You want to go back?” asked Enoch.
“No,” said the Hazer. “I find it exhilarating. Those are wild plants
over there?”
“We call them trees,” said Enoch.
“The wind blows as it wishes?”
“That’s right,” said Enoch. “We do not know as yet how to control the
weather.”
The spade stood just inside the barn door and Enoch picked it up. He
headed for the orchard.
“You know, of course,” the Hazer said, “the body will be gone.”
“I’m prepared to find it gone.”
“Then why?” the Hazer asked.
“Because I must be sure. You can’t understand that, can you?”
“You said back there in the station,” the Hazer said, “that you tried
to understand the rest of us. Perhaps, for a change, at least one of us
should try understanding you.”
Enoch led the way down the path through the orchard. They came to the
rude fence enclosing the burial plot. The sagging gate stood open. Enoch
went through it and the Hazer followed.
“This is where you buried him?”
“This is my family plot. My mother and father are here and I put him
with them.”
He handed the lantern to the Vegan and, armed with the spade, walked up
to the grave. He thrust the spade into the ground.
“Would you hold the lantern a little closer, please?”
The Hazer moved up a step or two.
Enoch dropped to his knees and brushed away the leaves that had fallen
on the ground. Underneath them was the soft, fresh earth that had been newly
turned. There was a depression and a small hole at the bottom of the
depression. As he brushed at the earth, he could hear the clods of displaced
dirt falling through the hole and striking on something that was not the
soil.
The Hazer had moved the lantern again and he could not see. But he did
not need to see. He knew there was no use of digging; he knew what he would
find. He should have kept watch. He should not have put up the stone to
attract attention-but Galactic Central had said, “As if he were your own.”
And that was the way he’d done it.
He straightened, but remained upon his knees, felt the damp of the
earth soaking through the fabric of his trousers.
“No one told me,” said the Hazer, speaking softly.
“Told you what?”
“The memorial. And what is written on it. I was not aware that you knew
our language.”
“I learned it long ago. There were scrolls I wished to read. I’m afraid
it’s not too good.”
“Two misspelled words,” the Hazer told him, “and one little
awkwardness. But those are things which do not matter. What matters, and
matters very much, is that when you wrote, you thought as one of us.”
Enoch rose and reached out for the lantern.
“Let’s go back,” he said sharply, almost impatiently. “I know now who
did this. I have to hunt him out.”
21
The treetops far above moaned in the rising wind. Ahead, the great
clump of canoe birch showed whitely in the dim glow of the lantern’s light.
The birch clump, Enoch knew, grew on the lip of a small cliff that dropped
twenty feet or more and here one turned to the right to get around it and
continue down the hillside.
Enoch turned slightly and glanced over his shoulder. Lucy was following
close behind. She smiled at him and made a gesture to say she was all right.
He made a motion to indicate that they must turn to the right, that she must
follow closely. Although, he told himself, it probably wasn’t necessary; she
knew the hillside as well, perhaps even better, than he did himself.
He turned to the right and followed along the edge of the rocky cliff,