Clifford Simak - A Choice of Gods

He got up slowly from the fire and went down the path toward the river. Where the path ended at the water's edge canoes were drawn up on the gravel beach and a yellowed willow tree, its branches drooping, dipped the gold of its leaves into the flowing stream. Upon the water were other floating leaves, the red and brown of oak, the scarlet of the maple, the yellow of the elm—the tributes of other trees farther up the stream, their offerings to the river that had supplied the water that they needed through the hot, dry days of summer. The river talked to him, not to him alone, he knew, but to the trees, the hills, the sky, a friendly mumbling gossip that ran down across the land.

He stooped and cupped his hands together, plunged them in the river and then lifted them. His hands were full, but the water ran between his fingers and escaped, leaving a little puddle of it where the edges of his palms were pressed together. He opened the hands and let the water go, back into the river. That was the way it should be, he told himself. The water and the air and earth ran away when you tried to grasp them. They would not be caught and held. They were not something one could own, but something one could live with. It had been so long ago in the first beginning, and then there had been men who had tried to own them, to hold them, to influence and coerce them, and after that there had been a new beginning and was that new beginning to come to an end again?

I shall call all the tribes together, he had told Jason, sitting at the fire. It is near the time to make the winter meat, but this is more important than the winter meat. It had, perhaps, been silly for him to say a thing like that, for he should have known— and did know—that a throng a thousand times as large as all the tribes would not prevail against the whites if they wanted to come back. Strength was not enough, determination would be futile, love of homeland and devotion to it stood as nothing against men who could cross between the stars on ships. They took one path, he thought, and we took another, from the very first and ours was not the wrong path (indeed, it was the right one), but it made us weak against their rapacity, as everything was weak against their rapacity.

These had been good years since they had gone away. There had been time to find the old paths once again. Once again the wind blew free and the water ran untrammeled down the land. Once more the prairie grass grew thick and sweet and the forest was a forest once again and the sky was black in spring and fall with wildfowl.

Hedid not like the idea of visiting the robot installation, he recoiled against the robot, Hezekiah, riding in a canoe, sharing even temporarily this ancient way of life, but Jason was quite right—it was the only thing to do, it was the only chance they had.

He turned back up the path, toward the camp. They all were waiting and now he'd call them all together. The men would be picked to paddle canoes. Some of the young men would have to secure fresh meat and fish for the journey. The women must get together food and robes. There was much to do; they'd set out in the morning.

Evening Star was sitting on the patio when the young man with the binoculars and the bear-claw necklace showed up, coming up the path from the monastery.

He stopped in front of her. "You are here to read the books," he said. "That is the correct word, is it not? To read?"

He wore a white bandage on his cheek. "You have the word," she said. "Won't you please sit down. How are you feeling?"

"Very well," he said. "The robots took good care of me."

"Well, then, sit down," she said. "Or are you going somewhere?"

"I have nowhere to go," he said. "I may go no farther." He sat down in a chair beside her and laid the bow upon the flagstones. "I had wanted to ask you about the trees that make the music. You know about the trees. Yesterday you spoke with the ancient oak…"

"You told me," she said, somewhat angrily, "that you'd never mention that again. You spied upon me and you promised."

"I am sorry, but I must," he told her. "I have never met a person who could talk with trees. I have never heard before a tree that could make music."

"What have the two to do with one another?"

"There was something wrong with the trees last night. I thought perhaps you noticed. I think I did something to them."

"You must be joking. Who could do anything with the trees? And there was nothing wrong with them. They played beautifully."

"There was a sickness in them, or in some of them. They played not as well as they could play. And I did something with the bears as well. Especially that last bear. Maybe with all of them."

"You told me that you killed them. And took one claw from each to put into the necklace. A way of keeping count, you said. And, if you ask me, a way of bragging, too."

She thought he might get angry, but he only looked a little puzzled. "I had thought all the time," he said, "that it was the bow. That I killed them because I could shoot the bow so well and the arrows were so finely fashioned. What if it were not the bow at all, or the arrows or my shooting of them, but something else entirely?"

"What difference does it make? You killed them, didn't you?"

"Yes, of course I killed them, but…"

"My name is Evening Star," she said, "and you've never told me yours."

"I am David Hunt."

"And so, David Hunt, tell me about yourself."

"There is not much to tell."

"But there must be something. You have people and a home. You surely came from somewhere."

"A home. Yes, I suppose so. Although we moved around a lot. We were always fleeing and the people leaving…"

"Fleeing? What was there to flee from?"

"The Dark Walker. I see you do not know of it. You have not heard of it?" She shook her head.

"A shape," he said. "Like a man and yet not like a man. Two-legged. Maybe that is the only way it is like a man. Never seen in daytime. Always seen at night. Always on a ridgetop, black against the sky. It was first seen on the night everyone was taken— that is, everyone but us, and I suppose, to say it right, everyone but us and the people here and those out on the plains. I am the first of our people to know there are other people."

"You seem to think there is only one Dark Walker. Are you sure of that? Are you sure there really is a Dark Walker, or do you just imagine it? My people at one time imagined so many things that we now know were never true. Has it ever hurt any of your people?"

He frowned, trying to think. "No, not that I know of. It hurt no one; it is only seen. It is horrible to see. We watch for it all the time and when we see it, we flee to somewhere else."

"You never tried to track it down?"

"No," he said.

"I thought perhaps that was what you were doing now. Trying to track it down and kill it. A great bowman such as you, who can kill the bears.."

"You make fun of me," he said, but without a show of anger,

"Perhaps," she said. "You are so proud of the killing of the bears. No one of my people have killed so many bears."

"I doubt," he said, "that the Walker could be killed with arrows. Maybe it can not be killed at all."

"There may be no Walker," said the girl. "Have you ever thought of that? Surely, if there were, we would have seen or heard of it. My people range far west to the mountains and there'd have been some word of it. And so far as that goes, how is it that all these years there has been no word of your people? For centuries the people in this house hunted other people, running down all sorts of rumors."

"So did my people, I am told, in the early years. I have only heard of it, of course. Things that people talked about. I have, myself, only twenty summers."

"We are the same age," said Evening Star. "I am just nineteen."