Hoot honked with anger. “Know it you do, Buster. I be honest hatched!” .
BEEP!
But You Are More Than One.
“I be three,” said Hoot, with dignity. “I be now a second self. Much preferable to first self and unready yet for third.”
The sign flashed off and there was a sense of someone or something pondering. You could feel the pondering.
BEEP! and the panel said:
Proceed, Sir, With Our Apology.
Sara turned around and looked at me. “Well?” she asked.
I threw the shield down beside the rifle and unbuckled the sword belt and let it fall. Sara led the way and I let her lead it. It was, after all, her show; this was what she’d paid for. Hoot ambled along at her heels and brought up the rear.
We went down the trail in a deepening dusk as the towering walls of stone shut out the light. We moved at the bottom of a trench that was less than three feet wide. Then the trench and trail took a sudden turn and ahead was light.
We left the towering walls and the narrow trail and came into the Promised Land.
NINETEEN
It was a place out of the ancient Greece I had read about in school, the instructor trying to inspire in us some feeling for the history and the culture of the planet of mankind’s first beginning. And while I had not cared at all about that distant planet nor the factors concerned with the rise of Man, I had been struck by the classical beauty of the Grecian concept. It had struck me at the time as a heritage in which any race could take a certain pride and then I’d forgotten it and not thought of it for years. But now here, at last, it was, just as I had imagined it when I had read that textbook many years ago.
The trail continued through a rugged, rock-bound valley with a small and rapid mountain stream running through it, flashing in the sun where its waters tumbled down the sharp inclines of its boulder-strewn bed. The landscape itself was harsh and barren, mostly rocky surfaces, but here and there a patch of green with twisted, weather-beaten trees thrusting from the crevasses in the rocky slopes. The trail led down the valley, sometimes close beside the stream, sometimes twisting sharply to negotiate a spur of rocky headland that came close down against the stream. And perched here and there along the rugged, rock-bound slopes that hung above the valley were tiny villas built of gleaming marble-or at least it looked from where we stood like marble-all designed in the clean, clear-cut lines of Grecian architecture.
Even the sun seemed to be the sun of Greece, or the sun of Greece as I had imagined it to be. Gone was the blueness of the great plateau we had climbed to reach the mountains, gone the purple of the mountains; in their place was the pure hard sunlight, white sunlight, beating down upon an arid land that was all angular and harsh.
This was it-the place we’d hunted for, not knowing what we hunted for, thinking, perhaps, it might be a man or a thing or simply an idea. Hunting blind. Although it might be, after all, a man, for here in this valley we might find, if not the man himself, perhaps the grave or at least some indication of what had happened to that legended man of space.
For looking at this rugged valley, I had no doubt at all that the trail we had followed had had no other purpose than to lead us here-not us alone, of course, but any who might follow it.
None of us had spoken when we’d come out of the notch into the Grecian sunlight. There was actually nothing one might say. And now Sara started down the path and Hoot and I followed on behind her.
We came to a path that lunged upward toward the first of the villas perched on the rocky hillside that rose above the stream and beside the path was a post with a sign affixed to it, bearing a line of script that we could not read.
Sara stopped.
“A nameplate?” she asked, looking at me.
I nodded. It could be a nameplate, the name of some creature that lived in the villa perched there on the hillside.
But if it were a nameplate, there was no sign of the one who lived up there in the villa. There was, in fact, no sign of any life at all. Nothing stirred to mar the smooth placidity of the valley. No one peeked out at us. No creature of the air flew overhead. There was no shrilling sound of insects or the equivalent of insects. For all the signs we saw, for all we heard, we might be the only life there was.
“It makes sense,” said Sara, “that it should be a nameplate.”
“Let’s pretend it is,” I said. “Let’s proceed and look for one that says Lawrence Arlen Knight.”
“Even now,” she said, “can’t you be serious about it? You said we’d never find him. You said he was just a story. You said he would be dead . . .
“Don’t look at me,” I told her. “I could be wrong. I don’t think I am, but there is nothing that makes sense anymore.”
“This was your idea. . .”
“And you were against it from the start.”
“Not against it,” I said. “Just not a true believer.”
“We’ve come all this way,” she said, almost plaintively.
“Sara,” I said, “so help me, I don’t know. Let’s just go ahead and keep an eye on the signs.”
We went ahead, plunging down the inclines, toiling up the slopes. There were other villas and other signs, each of them in different alphabets, if some of them in fact could be called alphabets, and none that we could read.
The sun beat down, a liquid flood that shattered off the stones and sparkled off the water. Except for the bubble and the chuckle of the water, the silence held. There was nothing stirring.
And then another sign in solid block letters that we could read:
LAWRENCE ARLEN KNIGHT
It was all insane, of course. You did not cross a galaxy to find a man-and find him. You did not find a man who should have years ago been dead. You did not trace a legend to its end. But there it was, the sign that said Lawrence Arlen Knight.
And then, as I stood there, the thought crossed my mind-not the home of, but the grave of, not a villa, but a tomb.
“Sara,” I said, but already she was scrambling up the path, sobbing in excitement and relief, all the tension of the long search resolved at last.
And coming out on the porch of that white-shining structure was a man-an old man, but a man still hale, snow-white hair and beard, but with shoulders still unstooped, with his stride still steady. He was dressed in a white toga, and that was no surprise at all. With a setup such as this he could have worn nothing but a toga.
“Sara!” I cried, scrambling after her, with Hoot close upon my heels.
She didn’t hear. She paid me no attention.
And now the old man was speaking. “Visitors!” he said, holding out his hand. “My own people! I never thought I’d lay eyes on such again.”
The sound of that voice swept all my doubts away. Here was no illusion, no apparition, no magic. Here was a man, a human, the voice deep and somber, filled with human gladness at the sight of fellowmen.
Sara held out her hands and the old man grasped them and the two of them stood there, looking into one another’s eyes.
“It’s been long,” the old man said. “Too long. The trail is far, the way is hard and no one knew. You-how did you know?”
“Sir,” said Sara, still gasping from her climb, “you are- you must be Lawrence Arlen Knight.”
“Why, yes,” he said, “of course I am. Who did you expect?”
“Expect?” said Sara. “You, of course. But we could only hope.”
“And these good people with you?”
“Captain Michael Ross,” said Sara, “and Hoot, a good friend met along the way.”
Knight bowed to Hoot. “You servant, sir,” he said. Then he reached out a hand to me, grasping my hand in a warm, hard grip. In that moment, when there were other more important things to note, I could only see that his hand, despite the firmness of the grip, was an old and wrinkled hand, blotched with liver spots.
“Captain Ross,” he said, “you are welcome. There are places here for you, for all of you. And this young lady-I do not have your name.”
“Sara Foster,” Sara said.
“To think,” he said, “that no longer need I be alone. Wonderful as it all has been, I have missed the sound of human voices and the sight of human faces. There are many others here, creatures of great character and fine sensitivity, but one never quite outgrows the need of his own species.”