And then: I am most concerned about the mediocrity (incompetence?
inability? weakness?) of the recent custodian of (and then that cryptic
symbol which could be translated, roughly, as the Talisman.) For (a word,
which from the context, seemed to mean a great length of time), ever since
the death of the last custodian, the Talisman has been but poorly served. It
has been, in all reality, (another long time term), since a true
(sensitive?) has been found to carry out its purpose. Many have been tested
and none has qualified, and for the lack of such a one the galaxy has lost
its close identification with the ruling principle of life. We here at the
(temple? sanctuary?) all are greatly concerned that without a proper linkage
between the people and (several words that were not decipherable) the galaxy
will go down in chaos (and another line that he could not puzzle out).
The next sentence introduced a new subject-the plans that were going
forward for some cultural festival which concerned a concept that, to Enoch,
was hazy at the best.
Enoch slowly folded up the letter and put it back into the box. He felt
a faint uneasiness in reading what he had, as if he’d pried into a
friendship that he had no right to know. We here at the temple, the letter
had said. Perhaps the writer had been one of the Hazer mystics, writing to
his old friend, the philosopher. And the other letters, quite possibly, were
from that same mystic-letters that the dead old Hazer had valued so highly
that he took them along with him when he went traveling.
A slight breeze seemed to be blowing across Enoch’s shoulders; not
actually a breeze, but a strange motion and a coldness to the air.
He glanced back into the gallery and there was nothing stirring,
nothing to be seen.
The wind had quit its blowing, if it had ever blown. Here one moment,
gone the next. Like a passing ghost, thought Enoch.
Did the Hazer have a ghost?
The people back on Vega XXI had known the moment he had died and all
the circumstances of his death. They had known again about the body
disappearing. And the letter had spoken calmly, much more calmly than would
have been in the capacity of most humans, about the writer’s near approach
to death.
Was it possible that the Hazers knew more of life and death than had
ever been spelled out? Or had it been spelled out, put down in black and
white, in some depository or depositories in the galaxy?
Was the answer there? he wondered.
Squatting there, he thought that perhaps it might be, that someone
already knew what life was for and what its destiny. There was a comfort in
the thought, a strange sort of personal comfort in being able to believe
that some intelligence might have solved the riple of that mysterious
equation of the universe. And how, perhaps, that mysterious equation might
tie in with the spiritual force that was idealistic brother to time and
space and all those other elemental factors that held the universe together.
He tried to imagine what one might feel if he were in contact with the
force, and could not. He wondered if even those who might have been in
contact with it could find the words to tell. It might, he thought, be
impossible. For how could one who had been in intimate contact all his life
with space and time tell what either of these meant to him or how they felt?
Ulysses, he thought, had not told him all the truth about the Talisman.
He had told him that it had disappeared and that the galaxy was without it,
but he had not told him that for many years its power and glory had been
dimmed by the failure of its custodian to provide linkage between the people
and the force. And all that time the corrosion occasioned by that failure
had eaten away at the bonds of the galactic cofraternity. Whatever might be
happening now had not happened in the last few years; it had been building
up for a longer time than most aliens would admit. Although, come to think
of it, most aliens probably did not know.
Enoch closed the box lid and put it back into the trunk. Some day, he
thought, when he was in the proper frame of mind, when the pressure of
events made him less emotional, when he could dull the guilt of prying, he
would achieve a scholarly and conscientious translation of those letters.
For in them, he felt certain, he might find further understanding of that
intriguing race. He might, he thought, then be better able to gauge their
humanity-not humanity in the common and accepted sense of being a member of
the human race of Earth, but in the sense that certain rules of conduct must
underlie all racial concepts even as the thing called humanity in its narrow
sense underlay the human concept.
He reached up to close the lid of the trunk and then he hesitated.
Some day, he had said. And there might not be a some day. It was a
state of mind to be always thinking some day, a state of mind made possible
by the conditions inside this station. For here there were endless days to
come, forever and forever there were days to come. A man’s concept of time
was twisted out of shape and reason and he could look ahead complacently
down a long, almost never ending, avenue of time. But that might be all over
now. Time might supenly snap back into its rightful focus. Should he leave
this station, the long procession of days to come would end.
He pushed back the lid again until it rested against the shelves.
Reaching in, he lifted out the box and set it on the floor beside him. He’d
take it upstairs, he told himself, and put it with the other stuff that he
must be prepared immediately to take along with him if he should leave the
station.
If? he asked himself. Was there a question any longer? Had he, somehow,
made that hard decision? Had it crept upon him unaware, so that he now was
committed to it?
And if he had actually arrived at that decision, then he must, also,
have arrived at the other one. If he left the station, then he could no
longer be in a position to appear before Galactic Central to plead that
Earth be cured of war.
You are the representative of the Earth, Ulysses had told him. You are
the only one who can represent the Earth. But could he, in reality,
represent the Earth? Was he any longer a true representative of the human
race? He was a nineteenth-century man and how could he, being that,
represent the twentieth? How much, he wondered, does the human character
change with each generation? And not only was he of the nineteenth century,
but he had, as well, lived for almost a hundred years under a separate and a
special circumstance.
He knelt there, regarding himself with awe, and a little pity, too,
wondering what he was, if he were even human, if, unknown to himself, he had
absorbed so much of the mingled alien viewpoint to which he had been
subjected that he had become some strange sort of hybrid, a queer kind of
galactic half-breed.
Slowly he pulled the lid down and pushed it tight. Then he shoved the
trunk back underneath the shelves.
He tucked the box of letters underneath his arm and rose, picking up
his rifle, and headed for the stairs.
31
He found some empty cartons stacked in the kitchen corner, boxes that
Winslowe had used to bring out from town the supplies that he had ordered,
and began to pack.
The journals, stacked neatly in order, filled one large box and a part
of another. He took a stack of old newspapers and carefully wrapped the
twelve diamond bottles off the mantel and packed them in another box,
thickly paped, to guard against their breakage. Out of the cabinet he got
the Vegan music box and wrapped it as carefully. He pulled out of another
cabinet the alien literature that he had and piled it in the fourth box. He
went through his desk, but there wasn’t too much there, only ops and ends
tucked here and there throughout the drawers. He found his chart and,
crumpling it, threw it in the wastebasket that stood beside his desk.
The already filled boxes he carried across the room and stacked beside
the door for easy reaching. Lewis would have a truck, but once he let him
know he needed it, it still might take a while for it to arrive. But if he
had the important stuff all packed, he told himself, he could get it out
himself and have it waiting for the truck.