Clifford Simak: A Choice of Gods

"That may have been it," said Red Cloud. "Or far fewer may have come. We were a turbulent planet, seething with intelligence and at times a rather terrifying kind of intelligence. On a smaller scale, maybe something like that intelligence of yours in the center of the galaxy. Surely not the sort of place a wandering alien would have chosen to sit down to seek a time of rest. For he would have had no rest. In those days there was no rest for anyone."

"You are right, of course," said Jason. "We know it now. I don't suppose there was any way we could have known it then. We got ahead. We progressed…"

"You have talked, I think," said Red Cloud, "with some of the wandering aliens."

"Two or three of them. Once I traveled five hundred miles to talk with one of them, but it was gone by the time I got there. A robot brought the news. I'm not as good as Martha with this business of galactic telepathy, but I can talk with aliens. With some of them, that is. I seem to have the knack for it. Sometimes, though, there is no way of talking. They have no basis for recognizing sound waves as a means of communication and a human, on his part, may not even have the sense to recognize the signals or the mental waves they use for communication. With others of them, even if the means of communication is there, you can't do any talking. There's really nothing to talk about. No common grounds for talking."

"This matter of wandering aliens," said Red Cloud, "is partly why I came. I'd have come anyhow, of course, the first day that I could. But I wanted to tell you that we have an alien here. Up at the head of Cat Den Hollow. Little Wolf found him and came running and I went to have a look."

So this was it, thought Jason; he should have known. All this careful, polite talking on everything except the one thing that Red Cloud had really come to tell him, and finally it was out. It was the way they were; one should expect it of them. The old unhurried way, the tribal protocol, the dignity. To never be excited, to not come charging in, to be leisurely and deliberate and to make ground for decency.

"You tried to talk with him?" he asked.

"No," said Horace Red Cloud. "I can talk with flowers and flowing rivers and they can talk back to me, but an alien—I'd not know how to start."

"All right," said Jason, "I'll amble over and see what it has in mind, if it has anything in mind. That is, if I can talk with it. Was there any indication of how it might have come?"

"It's a teleporter, I would guess. There was no sign of any kind of ship."

"Usually they are," said Jason. "The same as us. A machine of any sort is a cumbersome contraption. Star-roving is nothing new, of course, although at first we thought it was. We thought we had made such a wonderful discovery when the first of us began to develop and employ parapsychic powers. But it was not so wonderful; it was simply something that we'd been too busy, as a technological race, to take the time to look at. And even if someone had thought about it and had tried to talk about it, he would have been ridiculed."

"None of us have star-roved," Red Cloud said. "I'm not sure any of us have any powers at all. We have been so occupied with the world we live in and the secrets that it holds that we may not have tapped the secret resources that we have, if there should be any. But now…"

"I think you have powers and are using them," Jason told him, "to the best of purposes. You know your environment and mesh more closely with it than men ever have before. This must take some sort of psychic instinct. It may not be as romantic as star-roving, but it takes, perhaps, an even greater understanding."

"I thank you for your kindness," Red Cloud said, "and there may be certain truth in what you say. I have a beautiful and very foolish granddaughter-many-times-removed who has only turned her nineteenth year. Perhaps you remember her—the Evening Star."

"Why, of course I do," Jason said, delighted. "When you were away from camp or busy and I came visiting, she would take me over. We went on nature hikes and she showed me birds and flowers and other woodland wonders, and she chattered all the time, most delightfully."

"She still chatters most delightfully, but I am somewhat concerned by her. I think, perhaps, she has some of the brand of psychic power that your clan may hold…"

"You mean star-roving?"

Red Cloud crinkled up his face. "I'm not sure. No, I don't think so. It may be something else. I sense a certain strangeness in her. I suppose I am disturbed by it, although I have no right to be. She has a thirst for knowledge such as I have never seen in any of my people. Not a thirst to know her world, although that is there as well, but a thirst to know outside her world. To know all that's ever happened, all that men have thought. She has read all the books that the band possesses and they are very few…"

Jason raised his arm and swept it in an arc to indicate the room. "There are books here," he said, "if she would come and read them. Down in the basement areas there are other rooms stacked to the ceilings with others of them. She is free to use any that she wishes, but I am reluctant to let any leave this house. Once lost, a book would be irreplaceable."

"I had come prepared to ask," said Red Cloud. "I was leading up to it. Thank you for offering,"

"It pleases me there is someone who might wish to read them. It is a privilege to share them with her, I assure you."

"I suppose," said Red Cloud, "we should have given thought to books, but it's a little late now to do anything about it. There might still be books, of course, although time, I would imagine, has destroyed most of them. Weather and the rodents would have gotten at them. And our people hesitate to go looking for them. We have a great dislike for the ancient places. They are so old and musty and are filled with many ghosts—ghosts of the past that even now we do not like to think about. We have a few books, of course, and treasure them as an ancient heritage. And we make it a point of honor with the past each child is taught to read. But for most of them it is an unpleasant duty only. Until the Evening Star, there have been few who cared to read."

"Would Evening Star," asked Jason, "be willing to come and live with us? For as long as she might like. It would brighten up the house to have a youngster in it and I would undertake to guide her in her reading."

"I shall tell her," Red Cloud said. "She will be delighted. You know, of course, she calls you Uncle Jason."

"No, I did not know," said Jason. "I am honored."

Silence fell upon the two men and they sat there for a moment in the hush of the library. Upon the wall the clock ticked off the seconds, loudly in the silence.

Red Cloud stirred. "Jason, you have kept track of time. Of the years, I mean. You even have a clock. We have no clocks and we've kept no count. Wedidn't bother to. We took each day as it came and lived it to the full. We live not with days, but seasons. And we have not counted seasons."

"Here and there," said Jason, "we may have missed a day or two, or added a day or two—I can't be sure of that. But we have kept count. It's been five thousand years. I'm as old, physically, as my grandfather was when he first wrote in the books. After that he lived for almost three thousand years. If I follow the same schedule, I'll live a full eight thousand years. It does not seem possible, of course. It seems a bit indecent for a man to live eight thousand years."

"Some day," said Red Cloud, "we may know what brought about all this—where the People went to and why we live so long."

"Perhaps," said Jason, "although I have no hope. I have been thinking, Horace…"

"Yes?"

"I could round up a gang of robots and send them down to clear those cornfields for you. They're just messing around, not doing much of anything. I know how you feel about robots, of course…"