Clifford Simak: A Choice of Gods

"No. Thank you very much. We'll accept the corn and flour and all the rest of it, but we can't accept the help of robots."

"What, actually, have you got against them? Don't you trust them? They won't hang around. They won't bother you. They'll just clear the fields, then leave."

"We feel uneasy with them," Red Cloud said. "They don't fit in with us. They're a reminder of what happened to us when the white men came. When we broke, we broke completely. We kept only a few things. The simple metal tools, the plow, a better economic sense—we no longer feast one day and starve the next as the Indians did in many instances before the white men came. We went back to the old woods life, the old plains life. We went on our own; we have to keep it that way."

"I think I understand."

"I'm not entirely sure we trust them, either," Red Cloud said, "Not completely. Maybe the ones you have here, working in your fields for you and doing other things, may be all right. But I have my reservations about some of the wild ones. I told you, didn't I, that there is a gang of them up the river, at the site of some old city…"

"Yes, I remember that you did. Minneapolis and St. Paul. You saw them many, many years ago. They were building something."

"They still are building it," said Red Cloud. "We stopped on the way downstream and had a look—a far-off look. There are more of them than ever and they still are building. One great building, although it doesn't look like a building. The robots wouldn't be building a house, would they?"

"I don't think so. Not for themselves. They laugh at weather. They're made of some sort of almost indestructible alloy. It doesn't rust, it doesn't wear, it resists almost everything. Weather, temperature, rain… none of them mean a thing to them."

"We didn't hang around too long," said Red Cloud. "We stayed a good ways off. We used glasses, but still couldn't see too much. We were scared, I guess. Uncomfortable. We got out of there once we had a look, I don't suppose there is any real danger, but we took no chances."

Evening Star walked through the morning and talked with the friends she met. Be careful, rabbit, nibbling at your clover; a red fox has his den just across the hill. And why do you chatter, little bushy-tail, and stamp your feet at me: it is your friend who is walking past. You took all the hickory nuts from the three big trees at the hollow's mouth before I could get to them and have them stored away. You should be happy, for you're the most fortunate of squirrels. You have a deep den in a hollow oak where you'll be snug and happy when the winter comes and you have food hidden everywhere. Chickadee, you are out of place and time, swinging on the thistle stalk. You should not be here so soon. You come only when there are snowflakes in the air. Did you steal a march upon your fellows; you'll be lonesome here until the others come. Or are you like myself, cherishing the last few golden days before the chill moves down?

She walked through the sun of morning, with the colored pageant of the open woods burst into flame and gold about her. She saw the burnished metal of the goldenrod, the sky-blue of the asters. She walked upon the grass that once had been lush and green and now was turning tawny and was slippery beneath her moccasins. She knelt to brush her hand against the green and scarlet carpet of the lichen patches growing on an old, gray boulder and she sang within herself because she was a part of it—yes, even of the lichens, even of the boulder.

She came to the top of the ridge that she was climbing and below her lay the denser forest that cloaked the river hills. A hollow dipped down between the slopes rising on each side and she followed it. A spring flowed out of a limestone outcrop and she went on down the hollow, walking to the music of hidden, singing water flowing from the spring. Her memory winged back to that other day. It had been summer then, with the hills a froth of green and birds still singing in the trees. She clasped the doll she carried close against her breast and again she heard the words the tree had spoken to her. It all was wrong, of course, for no woman should make a compact with a thing so strong and lordly as a tree. A birch, perhaps, or a poplar, or one of the lesser, more feminine of trees—that, while it would be frowned upon still might be understandable. But the tree that had spoken to her had been an ancient white oak—a hunter's tree.

It stood just ahead of her, old and gnarled and strong, but despite all its girth and strength seeming to crouch against the ground, as if it were a thing embattled. Its leaves were brown and had begun to wither, but it had not lost them yet. It still clung to its warrior's cloak while some of the other trees nearby stood in nakedness.

She clambered down to reach it and, having reached it, found the rotted, flaking hollow that gouged into its massive trunk. Standing on tiptoe, she saw that the secret hollow place still held and guarded the doll she'd placed there all those years before—a little corncob doll dressed in scraps of woolen cloth. It had weathered and been darkened by the rain that had seeped into the hollow and soaked it time and time again, but it held its shape, it still clung against the tree.

Still standing on tiptoe, she placed the doll she carried into the hollow, settling it carefully beside the first doll. Then she stepped away.

"Old Grandfather," she said, her eyes looking at the ground as a matter of respect, "I went away, but I did not forget you. In the long nights and the bright noons I remembered you. Now I have come back again to tell you that I may go away again, although in a different way. But I'll never leave completely, because I love this world too much. And I shall always reach out to you, knowing you will know when I hold out my arms and I shall know that upon this land stands one I can believe and depend upon. I am truly grateful to you, Old Grandfather, for the strength you give me and for your understanding."

She stopped and waited for an answer and there was no answer. The tree did not talk to her as it had that first lime.

"I do not know where I'll be going," she told the tree, "or when I'll go or even if I'll go at all, but I came to tell you. To share with you a feeling I can share with no one else."

She waited once again for the tree to answer and there were no words, but it seemed to her that the great oak stirred, as if arousing from a sleep, and she had the sense of great arms lifted and held above her head and there was something—benediction? — that came out from the tree and settled over her.

She backed away slowly, step by step, her eyes still upon the ground, then she turned and fled, running wildly up the hill, filled with that sense of something that had come forth from the tree and touched her.

She tripped on a surface root that looped out of the forest floor, caught herself against a huge fallen tree trunk, and sat down on it. Looking back, she saw that the ancient oak was no longer in sight. There were too many intervening trees.

The woods were quiet. Nothing stirred in the underbrush and there were no birds. In the spring and summer this place was filled with birds, but now there was none. They either had gone south or were elsewhere, flocking up, ready for the move. Down in the river bottoms vast flocks of ducks quarreled and chortled in the sloughs and the reed patches were filled with great flocks of blackbirds that went storming up into the sky like hurtling sleet. But here the gentler birds were gone and the woods were quiet, a solemn quietness that held a touch of loneliness.

She had told the tree that she might be going elsewhere and she wondered if she had said what she really meant or if she knew as much as she should know about this going elsewhere. It sometimes seemed that she might be going to another place— and it might not be that at all. There was in her a feeling of unease, of expectation, the prickling sensation that something most momentous was about to happen, but she could not define it. It was an unfamiliar thing, a rather frightening thing to someone who had lived all her life in a world she knew so ultimately. The world was full of friends—not only human friends, but many other friends, the little scurriers of the woods and brush, the shy flowers hidden in their woodland nooks, the graceful trees that stood against the sky, the very wind and weather.