Tiber’s heart constricted. At last he managed to pull himself together, but he could not shake the pulsing prickles of cold-heat that had gathered on his body. “Christ,” he snarled, half to himself, half at the near-featureless female figure standing by his cart. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’ll ask you the last of my three questions.” But it would know the answer, as it had the initial two. “You can’t possibly answer this. No living creature could know. How did the world begin? You see, you did not exist before the world. Therefore it is impossible that you could know.”
“There are several theories,” the Great C said calmly. “The most satisfactory is the nebular hypothesis. According to this –”
“No hypothesis,” Tibor said.
“But –”
“I want facts,” Tibor said.
Time passed. Neither of them spoke. Then, at last, the blurred female figure palpitated into her imitation of life. “Take the lunar fragments obtained in 1969. They show an age of –”
“Inferences,” Tibor said.
“The universe is at least five billion –”
“No,” Tibor said. “You don’t know. You don’t remember. The part of you that contained the answer got destroyed in the Smash.” He laughed with what he hoped was a confident sound. . . but, as it came it wriggled with insecurity; his voice drained off into near silence. “You are senile,” he said, virtually inaudibly. “Like an old man damaged by radiation; you’re just a hollow chitinous shell.” He did not know what “chitinous” meant, but the term was a favorite of Father Handy; hence, he used it now.
At this crucial moment the Great C vacillated. It’s not sure, he said to himself, if it answered the question. Doubt edged its voice as it quavered, “Come subsurface with me and show me the damaged or missing memory tape.”
“How can I show you a missing tape?” Tibor said, and laughed loudly, a barking woof that spilled out searingly.
“I guess you’re right, there,” the Great C muttered; now the female figure hesitated, drew back from his car and cow. “I want to feed on you,” it said. “Come below so I can dissolve you, as I have the others, the ones who came this way before you.”
“No,” Tibor said. He sent his manual grapples into the inside pocket of his coat, brought forth the derringer, aimed it at the control unit, the brain, of the mobile extension confronting him. “Bang,” he said, and again laughed. “You’re dead.”
“No such thing,” the Great C said. Its voice seemed more hardy, now. “How would you like to be my caretaker? If we go below you’ll see –”
Tibor fired the single shot; the projectile bounced off the metal head unit of the mobile extension and disappeared. The figure closed its eyes, opened them, studied Tibor lengthily. It then glanced around doubtfully, as if unsure what it should do; it blinked and by degrees collapsed, lying at last among the weeds.
Tibor gathered his four extensions above it, took hold, and lifted — or rather tried to lift. The object, folded up now, like a chair, did not move. The hell with it; there’s no value in it anyhow, even if I could lift it, he decided. And the damn cow couldn’t possibly pull such a massive and inert load.
He flicked at the rump of the cow, delivering a signal to it; the cow lumbered forward, dragging his cart after it.
I got away, he said to himself. The horde of black children ebbed back, making a way open to him; they had watched the entire interaction between himself and the Great C. Why doesn’t it dissolve them? Tibor wondered. Strange.
The cow reached the road beyond the felled trees and continued slowly on its way. Flies buzzed at it but the cow ignored them, as if the cow, too, understood the dignity of triumph.
EIGHT
Higher and higher the cow climbed; she passed through a deep rift between two rocky ridges. Huge roots from old stumps spurted out on all sides. The cow followed a dried-up creekbed, winding and turning.
After a time, mists began to blow about Tibor. The cow paused at the top of the ridge, breathing deeply, looking back the way they had come.
A few drops of poisoned rain stirred the leaves around them. Again the wind moved through the great dead trees along the ridge. Tibor flicked at the cow rump ahead of him, and the cow once more shuddered into motion.
He was, all at once, on a rocky field, overgrown with plantain and dandelion, infested with the dry stalks of yesterday’s weeds. They came to a ruined fence, broken and rotting. Was he going the right way? Tibor got out one of his Richfield maps, studied it, held it before his eyes like an Oriental scroll. Yes; this was the right way; he would encounter the tribes of the south, and from there —
The cow dragged the cart through the fence, and arrived at last before a tumbledown well, half filled with stones and earth. Tiber’s heart beat quickly, fluttering with nervous excitement. What lay ahead? The remains of a building, sagging timbers and broken glass, a few ruined pieces of furniture strewn nearby. An old automobile tire caked and cracked. Some damp rags heaped over the rusty, bent bedroom springs. Along the edge of the field there was a grove of ancient trees. Lifeless trees, withered and inert, their thin, blackened stalks rising up leaflessly. Broken sticks stuck in the hard ground. Row after row of dead trees, some bent and leaning, torn loose from the rocky soil by the unending wind.
Tibor had the cow move across the field to the orchard of dead trees. The wind surged against him without respite, whipping the foul-smelling mists into his nostrils and face. His skin was damp and shiny with the mist. He coughed and urged the cow on; it stumbled on, over the rocks and clods of earth, trembling.
“Hold,” Tibor said, reining the cow to a stop.
For a long time he gazed at the withered old apple tree. He could not take his eyes from it. The sight of the ancient tree — the only living one in the orchard — fascinated and repelled him. The only one alive, he thought. The other trees had lost the struggle. . . but this tree still clung to precarious semilife.
The tree looked hard and barren. Only a few dark leaves hung from it — and some withered apples, dried and seasoned by the wind and mists. They had stayed there, on the branches, forgotten and abandoned. The ground around the trees seemed cracked and bleak. Stones and decayed heaps of older leaves in ragged clumps.
Extending his front right extensor, Tibor plucked a leaf from the tree and examined it.
What have I got here? he wondered.
The tree swayed ominously. Its gnarled branches rubbed together. Something in the sound made Tibor pull back.
Night was coming. The sky had darkened radically. A burst of frigid wind struck him, half turning him around in his seat. Tibor shuddered, bracing himself against it, pulling his log coat around him. Below, the floor of the valley was disappearing into shadow, into the vast nod of night.
In the darkening mists the tree seemed stern and menacing. A few leaves blew from it, drifting and swirling with the wind. A leaf blew past Tiber’s head; he tried to grasp it, but it escaped and disappeared. He felt all at once terribly tired, as well as frightened. I’m getting out of here, he said to himself, and nudged the cow into motion.
And then he saw the apple, and it all was different immediately.
Tibor activated the battery-powered radio mounted behind him in the car. “Father,” he said. “I can’t go on.” He waited, but the receiving portion of the two-way radio sent forth only the rushing noise of static. No voices. For a moment he tuned the receiver’s dial, hoping to pick up someone somewhere. Tibor the unlucky, he thought. A world, a whole world of sorrow — I have to carry it, that which can’t be carried. And within me my heart breaks.
You wanted it like this, he thought. You wanted to be happy, unendingly happy. . . or find unending grief. And this way you achieved endless grief. Lost here at sundown, at least thirty miles from home. Where are you going now? he wondered.
Pressing the button of his microphone, he grated, “Father Handy, I can’t stand it. There is nothing out here except what’s dead; it’s all dead. You read me?” He listened to the radio, tuning it on to Father Handy’s beam. Static. No voice.
In the gloom, the apple from the apple tree glistened moistly. It looked black, now, but it was of course only red. Probably rotten, he thought. Not worth eating. And yet it wants me to eat.