But now neither race was here. I, a member of another race, perhaps not so great but as weasel-motivated as any race in the galaxy, was here. I was here and I knew the story and the treasure, and the treasure was a very solid thing, much more valuable than that haunted myth which Knight had hunted. It was something that could be sold and in that context I could understand it better than I could understand a myth. Knight may have known-he must have known to write of it as he had-but by the time he knew he probably had become so committed, so immersed in the phantom that he hunted that he would have passed it by as worthless.
Poor fool, I thought, to pass up a chance like this. Although, I realized, he may have passed it up only after he had realized there was no way off the planet.
I was not convinced, I told myself. There had to be a way. There always was a way if you worked hard enough at it. No gang of stupid orchardists could keep me here.
First something to eat and a little rest and I’d get at those other worlds. Despite what Sara had said about the chance that all of them would be isolated worlds, it did not stand to reason that there’d not be one of them that had some space-capable intelligence. And that was all I asked. Just to get my hands, by any means, upon a ship, any kind of a ship.
I wondered what I should do with the gnome and decided that I’d leave him hanging there, dangling from his beam. Even if I took him down I’d not know what to do with him; I could not know what he might have wished for me to do with him. Hanging from the beam had been the way he’d wanted it and that’s the way he had it and I’d not interfere. Although I wondered why he did it. And recognized the fact that the way he’d done it emphasized that he was humanoid. Nothing other than a humanoid ever hanged itself.
I glanced over at Roscoe. He had quit his ciphering and now was sitting flat upon his bottom, with his feet stuck out before him staring into space. As if he had suddenly struck upon some astounding truth and had frozen into immobility to consider it.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Sara had been right. There was nowhere to go. The worlds offered no way out. I had been through them all, driving myself, sleeping only in snatches when I became so worn-out that I was afraid I’d become negligent and sloppy in my evaluation of them. I did not hurry the work. I spent more time, most likely, than was absolutely necessary, in having a good look at each of them in turn.
It had taken a while to figure out how to operate the wheel to bring each world into being, but once I had done that I settled down to work, paying attention to nothing else. Roscoe did not bother me and I, in turn, paid slight attention to him except to note that much of the time he was not around. I got the impression, somehow, that he was prowling through the city, but did not take the time to wonder what might be the purpose of his prowling.
One could not say, of course, that no one of the worlds held the kind of technology I sought. Only a small portion of each stood revealed and it would have been foolhardy for me to have entered one of them unless there had been ample evidence that it was the kind of place I hunted. For once one entered one of them, the chances of escaping from it would have been almost nil. Without Hoot and the creature of the wheel we never would have escaped from the sand dune world. But the fact was that I found no world that tempted me in the least to enter it, not a single one that showed any sign of even the most rudimentary intelligence. All of them were vicious worlds, mostly primal worlds-jungle hells or frozen wastes or still in the state of crust formation. There were others that had thick atmospheres, with swirling clouds of gases that made me choke just to look at them. There were a few that were clearly dead worlds-great level plains without vegetation, dimly lighted by a dim and blood-red, dying sun. There was one charred cinder of a planet, burned out in a nova flare-up of its sun.
Why, I wondered, had the doorways to the worlds been fashioned? Certainly if anyone had wanted to use the doorways to these other planets, he would have planned for them to open on the outskirts of a city, or at least a village. He would not have settled for a jungle or an icy waste or a burned-out cinder. Could they have been there for no other reason than to get rid of unwelcome visitors? But if that had been the case, one world or at most a half a dozen would have been sufficient; there would have been no need of hundreds. There was no reason for that many worlds or those kind of worlds. Although I realized that there must, in the minds of that other race, have been logical reasons for it all, and these logical reasons could not possibly occur to me because they did not lie within the parameters of human logic.
So I came to an end of them and was no better off than I had been before; worse off, perhaps, for when I had started on it there had been hope and now the hope was gone.
I went back to the fire, but the fire was out. I pressed my palm down on the ashes and there was no warmth. Roscoe was gone; I could not remember seeing him for days.
Had he deserted me, perhaps not actually deserting me, but simply wandering off and not bothering to come back? This might be, I admitted to myself, the end of it. There might be no more that a man could do.
I sat down beside the dead ashes of the fire and stared out into the twilight of the street.
There still might be other possibilities-somewhere in the city a man might find a way or clue; out on the planet, traveling east or west or south rather than toward the mountains looming to the north, there might be an answer waiting. But I didn’t have the will for it. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to try again. I was ready to give up.
Move over, gnome, I said.
But that was wrong, I knew. It was defeatist talk. It was dramatizing. When the time came to try again, when and if I caught a glimmer of a hope, I’d get up and go.
But now I simply sat and felt sorry for myself-and not only for myself, but for all the rest of us. Although why I should feel sorry for Smith or Tuck or Sara, I didn’t really know. They’d gotten what they wanted.
Down in the twilight of the street a shadow moved, a darkness in the gray, and a twinge of terror went fluttering through me, but I didn’t stir. If whatever might be down there wanted to come up and get me it would find me here, beside the campfire ashes. I still had the sword and I was awkward with it, but I’d still put up a fight.
My nerves must have been worn down to frayed ends for me to be thinking this. There was no reason to believe there was anything in the city that was out to get me. The city was deserted and abandoned; nothing moved in it but shadows.
But the shadow, as I watched, kept on moving. It left the street and came up the ramp toward me, moving jerkily, like an old man stumping down a narrow lane that offered uneven footing.
I saw that it was Roscoe and, poor thing that be was, I was glad to have him back. As he came nearer I rose to greet him.
He stopped just before he reached the door and speaking carefully, as if he might be fighting against falling into his rhyming routine, he said, slowly and deliberate, with a pause between each word, “You will come with me.”
“Roscoe,” I said, “thanks for coming back. What is going on?”
He stood in the twilight, staring stupidly at me, then he said, still slowly, carefully, with each word forced out of him: “If the mathematics work …” Then came to a halt. Mathematics had given him quite a bit of trouble.
“I had troubles,” he said. “I was confused. But I have worked it out and I am better now. Working it out helped to get me better.” He was talking with somewhat less difficulty, but it still wasn’t easy for him. The long speech had been an effort for him. You could feel him forcing himself to speak correctly.