Highway of Eternity (5 page)

“Then,” said David, “perhaps he left on some quick errand, thinking he'd soon be back. That may be why he left the residence traveler.”

Horace rumbled at Boone, “What you have not fully explained is how the two of you were able to get into the traveler. Not how you detected it; that I can understand. But how you got into it.”

“I told you what I could,” said Boone. “I stepped around a corner. I can't tell you more. I don't understand myself how I do it. All I know is that it can be accomplished only under stress.”

“That is no explanation,” said Horace. “Surely a man knows what he does.”

“Sorry,” said Boone. “I can't help you further.”

“And since we are getting down to fine points,” said Corcoran, somewhat out of sorts, “tell me what all that gibberish meant when I first contacted you.”

“On that point I can answer you,” said Timothy. “As you must perceive, we are very furtive folk. Perhaps at times too committed to a cloak and dagger ethic. We think our communications system cannot be tapped. But arrayed against us are forces that are powerful and most wondrously intelligent. We can't be sure how safe we are; we never can be sure. So when we talk among ourselves on the communication system, we employ a very ancient language, the speech of a small and obscure group of humans. By this method, we hope that, even if our communications could be penetrated, there is little possibility that the listener could decipher what we're saying.”

“This,” said Boone, “is the most insane setup I have ever come across.”

“You know not the half of it,” said Timothy. “You do not know the Infinites. If you knew the Infinites …”

A shriek sounded from the kitchen. Timothy and Emma leaped to their feet. Nora, still shrieking, appeared in the kitchen door. Her cap was awry upon her head and her hands were twisting the apron that was tied about her waist.

“Visitors!” she screamed. “There are visitors. And there is something wrong. The traveler landed in the flower bed and tipped over on its back.”

Chairs screeched and everyone was charging for the kitchen, heading for the outside door.

Corcoran looked at Boone. “Could it be that Athens chap?”

“I suppose it could,” said Boone. “We had better go and see.”

They halted on the kitchen stoop and stared at what was happening in the flower bed. A great gash had been plowed across the bed by a rectangular object, some twelve feet in length and half as wide, its nose buried at an angle in the soil. David, Horace, Enid, and Timothy were shoving and tugging at it. Emma stood to one side, loudly lamenting.

“We should give them a hand,” said Corcoran.

Boone and he loped across the lawn.

“What do you want to do with it?” Boone asked a panting Horace.

“Pull it free,” gasped Horace. “Get it right side up.”

With the extra manpower, the craft was wrenched free from the soil and turned over.

Horace and David attacked what seemed to be a panel set into the side of it. Slowly the panel yielded to their clawing fingers, then popped open. David threw himself into the opening, crawled for a ways, then began backing out.

“Give me some help,” he yelled. “I have hold of Gahan.”

Horace wedged in beside David, fumbling for a hold, then the two of them began backing out, hauling a limp human figure. They hauled it across the flower bed and laid it in the grass.

Gahan lay upon his back. He was bleeding at the mouth. One arm hung limp; his chest was sopped with blood. Horace knelt beside him, lifting and cradling him. The eyes came open and the bloody mouth moved, but only gurgling came out.

Enid rushed in and knelt beside him. “It's all right, Gahan. You are safe. You are at the Acre.”

“What happened?” Emma screeched.

Words and blood came from the mouth. “It's gone,” he said, then choked on the blood.

“What is gone, Gahan? What is gone?”

He struggled to speak and finally said, “Athens.” That was all.

Timothy said, “We had better get him to the house. He is badly hurt.”

“How could it have happened?” Emma shouted.

“He crashed, damn it,” said David. “He was hurt and lost control.”

The wounded man struggled, trying to speak. Horace raised him higher. Enid tried to wipe the blood off his mouth with a filmy handkerchief, only smearing it.

“Athens,” came the blood-choked whisper. “Athens base gone. Destroyed.”

He slumped more deeply into Horace's arms.

Boone pushed closer to Horace and laid his fingers on Gahan's throat, feeling for a pulse. He took his hand away.

“This man is dead,” he said.

Reverently, Horace withdrew his arms and let Gahan slump onto the grass. He rose slowly to his feet and the silence of the group was deadly. They looked at one another, not quite understanding.

Timothy said to Boone, “We shouldn't leave him out here. Will you help me carry him?”

“We'll have to bury him,” said Emma. “We'll have to dig a grave.”

“We have to talk,” said Horace. “First, before anything, we will have to talk.”

“Where do you want to put him?” Timothy asked Emma.

“A bedroom,” said Emma. “Upstairs. The back bedroom to the right. We can't put him in the drawing room. All that blood will spoil the furniture.”

“How about the gun room? That would be easier. We wouldn't have to haul him up the stairs. There's a leather couch in there. We can wipe off the leather.”

“All right, then. The gun room.”

Boone and Timothy picked up the body, Boone by the shoulders, Timothy by the feet. They made their way across the kitchen and through the dining room, with David shoving aside the pushed-back chairs to clear room for them. At the far end of the drawing room, they reached the gun room door.

“Over there,” said Timothy. “Over there against the wall.”

They laid the dead man on the couch and Timothy stood looking down at him.

“I don't know,” he said. “I don't know how to handle this. There has been no death in this house since first we came. It's a new experience and we are not ready for it. We're very close to immortal, you know. The time mechanism keeps it that way.”

“No, I hadn't known,” said Boone.

“Inside the time bubble we do not age. We age only when we are outside of it.”

Boone said nothing in reply.

“This is bad,” said Timothy. “This is one of the crisis points that you run across in history. We must decide what we should do. Decision and no mistakes. That's important—no mistakes. Come with me. The others will be talking.”

The others were not talking. Gathered in the dining room, they were shouting and screaming at one another.

“I knew it,” Emma screamed. “I knew it. I just knew it. We were getting along too well. We thought it would keep on that way forever. We should have been looking ahead, making plans …”

“Making plans for what?” yelled David, drowning her out. “How could we know what to plan for? How could we know what might happen?”

“Don't you yell at my wife!” roared Horace. “Don't you ever again use that tone of voice to your sister. She is right. We should have imagined all sorts of contingencies and worked out models for our reaction to them. We shouldn't be standing here, like we are right now, caught unawares and trying to figure out the best course to follow.”

“I think,” said Timothy, adding his voice to the squabble, “that what we had better do is just settle down and do some quiet thinking on it.”

“We haven't the time to do any quiet thinking on it,” yelled Horace. “Not the leisurely kind of thinking that you mean. I know you, Timothy. You just put things off. You won't face up to anything. You never would face up to anything. I remember the time …”

“I agree we should be doing something,” David shouted. “I think Timothy's approach is wrong. It's no time for sitting back and waiting for something to happen. Certainly there are measures we could take. But each of us can't just keep shouting what he or she may think and …”

“We've got to get away,” screamed Emma. “We have to get away from here.”

“There is no good,” yelled David, “in simply running. Run, yes, if we have to, but we must have a plan.”

“I will not run,” shouted Horace. “I'm not about to run. Running is for cowards and I will not have it said …”

“But we have to run,” screamed Emma. “We have to get away. We can't wait for whatever's coming. We have to find a safe place.”

“You won't find a safe place running,” Horace bellowed. “We have to use our heads.”

“I still think,” said Timothy, “that we are reacting too precipitously. A few days more or less will not make that much difference.”

“In a few days you could be dead,” yelled Horace.

“At least we have to give Gahan a decent burial,” protested Timothy.

“Gahan doesn't count,” yelled Horace. “Gahan's dead. Nothing more can happen to him. We are still alive, and what happens does matter to us and …”

Boone stepped on a chair and from the chair to the table, kicking china and glass aside.

“Shut up, all of you!” he thundered. “Shut up and sit down!”

All of them stopped yelling and turned to stare at him.

“You have no place in this,” said Emma, tartly, “You're not one of us.”

“You made me and Corcoran part of your group,” said Boone, “when you told us we could never leave this place. We both have the right to speak. We're in the same boat with you. So shut up, all of you, and sit down.”

Startled, they all found chairs and sat down.

Boone said to Corcoran, who still stood against a wall, “Jay, if anyone starts yelling, if anyone gets to his feet, will you shut him up?”

“Quite willingly,” said Corcoran.

“I understand,” said Boone, “that this is no more than a healthy family squabble and that most of you didn't mean half of what you said. But you were not about to get anywhere and I think you do have to make some plans. Whether you like it or not, I'll serve as referee.”

Horace stood up. Corcoran pushed himself away from the wall and started toward him. Horace sat down.

“You had something you wanted to say?” Boone asked Horace.

“What I was about to say is that you understand none of what is going on. You have not the background that is required of a referee.”

“In that case,” said Boone, “perhaps you'll fill me in.”

“Horace won't,” said Enid. “He'll tell it as he sees it. He will shade the meaning …”

Horace stood up. Corcoran pushed off the wall. Horace sat down again.

“All right, Miss Enid,” said Boone. “Perhaps you'll proceed with your unbiased version.” He said to Horace, “You'll have your chance later on. But the rules are one at a time and no shouting and no shoving.”

“We are a group of refugees,” said Enid. “We are …”

“Not refugees!” yelled Horace.

“You shut up,” said Boone. “Enid, please go on.”

“As I told you earlier,” said Enid, “we are from a million years into your future. In that million years the human race has changed.”

“Was encouraged to change,” said Horace, interrupting. “On its own, the race would not have changed.”

“You can't be sure of that,” said David. “For example, there is Henry.”

“I can be sure,” said Horace. “The Infinites …”

Boone raised a hand to stop him. Horace stopped.

“You used that word,” Boone said to Timothy. “I was about to ask you more about it and then the Athens traveler came. Tell me, what are these Infinites?”

“The Infinites are another intelligence,” Timothy told him. “They are from somewhere in the galactic center. They are not biological. Maybe they were at one time and changed to what they are.”

“As a matter of fact,” said David, “we know little about them.”

“I wouldn't say that,” objected Horace. “We know, at least approximately, what they are.”

“All right,” said Boone. “We have wandered from the point. Enid was about to tell us how the human race had changed in a million years.”

“They changed,” said Enid, “from corporeal beings, from biological beings, to incorporeal beings, immaterial, pure intelligences. They now are ranged in huge communities on crystal lattices. They are …”

Horace broke out, “The obscenity of it! The immorality …”

“Shut up!” Boone roared at him.

He turned to Enid. “But you are human beings. The people in the outpost near Athens were human beings. Biological and …”

“There were some who rebelled,” said Enid. “Some who fled to escape incorporeality.”

“The incorporeality was, to many of the human race, something akin to a new and exciting religion,” said Timothy. “There were, however, some who protested most violently against it. We number ourselves among those protestants. There are many other protestants hiding out in various time periods. We maintain small, widely separated groups. It is harder to find us that way. The protestants fled, and now the Infinites or their agents hunt us down. I think the belief that the incorporeality process was a religion was an entirely human idea. With the Infinites, I am convinced, it was not a religion, but a plan, a universal plan. The Infinites are convinced that one thing, and one thing only, can survive the death of the universe. That is intelligence. So the Infinites are busily at work creating a corpus of intelligence. Certainly not the human race alone, but including many other intelligences in the galaxy, perhaps in the universe. The Infinites in this galaxy may be no more than one primitive mission of many missions spread throughout the universe, working diligently with the benighted, heathen populations.”

“It is mad!” yelled Horace. “I tell you, it is madness!”