Clifford Simak - A Choice of Gods

"There are few young people among us," said David Hunt. "There are not many of us, all of us together, and we move around so much…"

"It puzzles me," she said, "that there are only a few of you. If you are like the rest of us, you live for a long, long time and there is no sickness. From one small tribe, my people number many thousands. From a few people in this house there are thousands in the stars. There should be thousands of you. You should be strong and many…"

"We could be many," he said, "but we go away."

"I thought you told me…"

"Not to the stars, like these others. But across the water. There is a madness that sends many of us across the water. They build rafts and they set out across the water, toward the setting sun. It has been done for many years. I don't know why. I never have been told."

"Perhaps fleeing from the Walker."

"I don't think so," he said. "I don't think those who go know why they are going or even that they're going until the madness seizes them."

"Lemmings," said Evening Star.

"What are lemmings?"

"Small animals. Rodents. I read about them once."

"What have lemmings to do with us?"

"I am not sure," she said.

"I ran away," he said. "Myself and Old Jose. We both feared the bigness of the water. We did not want to go if the few remaining people went. If we ran away, we said, the madness might not touch us. Jose saw the Walker, twice, after we had run away, and we ran again, from the Walker, very far and fast."

"When Jose saw the Walker, did you…"

"No. I've never seen it."

"Do you think the other people went? Out across the water, after you and Jose left?"

"I do not know," he said. "Jose died. He was an old, old man. He remembered when the People disappeared. He was an old man even then. There came a day when his life ran out. I think that he was glad. It is not always good to live too long. When you live too long you too often are alone."

"But he had you with him."

"Yes, but there were too many years between us. We got along all right and we talked a lot, but he missed the people like himself. He would play the fiddle and I would listen and the coyotes would sit up on the hills and sing with the fiddle. Have you ever heard a coyote sing?"

"I've heard them bark and howl," she said. "I never heard one sing."

"They sang every night when Old Jose would play. He'd play only in the evening. There were a lot of coyotes and I think they came to listen and to sing along. There were times when there'd be a dozen of them, sitting on the hilltops, singing. Jose said he couldn't play as well as he should. His fingers were no longer limber and his arm was heavy with the bow. I felt the death that was in him, death sitting on the hilltop and listening with the wolves. When he died I dug a deep hole and buried him, with the fiddle beside him, for it was no use to me and I thought he'd like it that way. Then I worked for days, carrying rocks, as big as I could pack, to pile upon the grave against the wolves. All the time I did this I was not lonesome, for somehow it seemed that I was still with Jose. Working for him was like being with him. But once I finished, I was lonely."

"You could have gone back to find your people."

"I thought of it," he said, "but T had no idea where they were and I still was afraid of the madness that might send me out with them upon the water. I had a feeling that the madness would not strike me if I were alone. It is—what would you call it? — a group madness. And, besides, there was something inside of me that kept telling me to go toward the rising sun. I have wondered many times what it was that made me go. There seemed no reason that I should. It was as if I were hunting for something, although I did not know what it is I am supposed to hunt. I found your people out on the plains and I wanted to stay with them. They would have let me stay. But I couldn't. The call of the rising sun still was in me and I had to leave them. They told me of this great stone house and I wondered if that was what I had set out to find. There were many houses of stone that I found along the way, but I was afraid of them. My people never lived in houses. We were afraid of them. They made noises in the night and they were so empty and we thought that there were ghosts in them, maybe the ghosts of the people who had been taken when everyone disappeared."

"You're here now," said the girl. "I hope you stay awhile. You'll find nothing to the east. It is only empty forest. A few of my people live there, but even so, it all is empty forest. And this house is not like the houses that you saw. It is not empty; it is lived in. It has the feel of people."

"The robots would let me stay with them," he said. "They are kindly folks."

"But," she said, "they aren't human. You'll want to be with humans. Uncle Jason and Aunt Martha, I am sure, would be glad to have you. Or, if you'd rather, there always would be a place for you in my people's camp."

"Uncle Jason and Aunt Martha live in this house?"

"Yes, but they really aren't aunt and uncle to me. I call them that, but only to myself. They do not know I call them that. Uncle Jason and my grandfather-many-times-removed have been lifelong friends. They were young men at the Disappearance.»

"I may have to go on," he said. "The call of the rising sun may not have left me yet. But I'd be glad of a little time to rest. I came to ask you about your talking with the trees. You have not told me of it. Do you talk with all the trees, or just a certain tree?"

"You may not understand," she said. "We live close to the trees, the streams, the flowers, the animals and birds. We are one with them. Any one of us can talk with them."

"And you the best of all."

"I would not know. Among ourselves we do not discuss it. I can speak only for myself. I can go for a walk, into the woods or along a stream, and I am never lonely or alone, for I meet so many friends and I always talk with them."

"And they talk back to you."

"Sometimes they do," she said.

"You talk with the trees and the others go out to the stars."

"You still don't believe about the stars."

"I am beginning to," he said; "Although it is hard to believe it. I asked the robots about it and they explained it to me, although I do not think I understood entirely. They said that of all the people once in this house, only two remain. The rest are out among the stars. They said that at times they come back from the stars for a visit. Is that so?"

"Yes, it is. There is one of them now back from the stars. Uncle Jason's brother. He brought disturbing word. He and Uncle Jason went down to the camp this morning to talk with my many-times-grand-father about the word he brought."

She was running on too much, she thought. Perhaps Uncle Jason would not like her telling this to a perfect stranger, a man who had stumbled out of nowhere. Ithad just slipped out, as if he were a friend. And she did not really know him. She had met him only yesterday after he had spied on her and again this morning when he'd come up the road from the monastery. But it was, she thought, as if she'd known him for years. He was just a boy. What was it he had said about the many years that lay between himself and his old friend? Maybe that was it. There were no years to lie between the two of them.

"You think," he asked, "that your aunt and uncle would not mind my staying here? You could ask your aunt, perhaps."

"Not now," said Evening Star. "She is talking with the stars. She has been talking all the morning. But we can ask her later—or my uncle when he returns from camp."

He felt old and lonely. It was the first time in years that he had felt lonely and the first time ever that he'd had a sense of being old.

"I debated telling you," said Martha. "Perhaps I should not have told you, Jason, but you had to know. They were all polite and understanding…"