Clifford Simak: Enchanted Pilgrimage

"And you will bring with you the basic documents of your technologies, the philosophies that go with it, what your great men have written…"

"You must be kidding," Jones said. "You don't know what you're talking about. I'll bring tons of it, and there still will be tons of it left behind. What do you want—technical handbooks, blueprints, theories, white papers, scientific journals? Oh, hell, I'll try to bring the best I can, and I'll stand around and chuckle while you try to make some sense of it."

"I am pleased," said the Caretaker, "that you think you will get some enjoyment out of it."

"There are three of us I know for certain will be staying," said Cornwall. "And I suppose Bucket, too. You say you can scan our minds. Can you scan his as well? He cannot talk with us, although he seems to understand. Would it be ethical to tell us what you know of him?"

"He is well disposed toward you," said the Caretaker, "if that is your question. He is grateful to you, and he is a friend. You can place all trust in him. But as to what he is, I have no idea, for he does not seem to know himself. Perhaps in time he will, but he still is very young. He carries some instinctive knowledge imparted by his parent, who was, it seems, a refugee from some far point in space. He is not the image of his parent, as you probably are aware. The race from which he springs, it seems, had the capability to alter the genetics of their offspring to any form they wished, and I gather, on a very primal level, with no details at all, that the Bucket's parent fashioned this offspring of his in such a way that it possessed survival values it might find handy as the child of a hunted being, the hunters more than likely extending their hunting from the father to the child. But I gather that as yet the Bucket has no realization of the capabilities that his father imprinted in him. The likelihood is that he'll find them one by one as the need occurs. We must wind up by concluding that he is still an unknown factor."

"Which," said Jones, "is a damn funny way of putting it."

"Perhaps, Mr. Jones. But I think you must agree that in an unknown factor may often lie the greatest hope."

"I hope," said Jones, "that this unknown factor doesn't rise up and slug us in the chops. After the rifle incident…"

"Hush, Mr. Jones," the Caretaker said. "There is one other who has not spoken yet. Master Gossiper, have you anything to say?"

"I am a mere messenger," said the Gossiper, "a runner of the errands, a patcher-up of small difficulties, one who sees that everything's in place and that nothing is forgotten."

"You don't intend to stay?"

"I have too much to do, too many leagues to cover. I must neaten things all up, and I might as well begin."

He reached into the pocket of his robe and hauled forth the Old Ones' ax.

"Since the Old Ones spurned this," he said, "it must be returned to the one who carried it and guarded it all the weary way. It may be poor payment for all the trouble that he went to, but it is at least a token."

He tossed the ax and Gib caught it, grinning.

"It'll be a thing to show when I tell the tale," he said. "I thank you kindly, Gossiper."

The Gossiper reached out a scrawny hand to Mary. "And now," he said, "if you please, the horn of the unicorn. You have no further need of it. Please to give it to me."

"Most willingly," said Mary, "but I don't understand."

"It must be taken back," said the Gossiper, "and securely inserted into the great oak once again so it will be there and ready when the next pilgrims come along. You must understand that the horns of unicorns are in very short supply and that we must make the best possible use of them."

Now they were gone, the good companions of the pilgrimage. Along with Jones' machine, they had been whisked into nothingness.

Cornwall turned heavily to follow the rest of the party across the nighttime meadow, back toward the fairy structure that glimmered in the moonlight. The little folks skipped blithely along, and in their midst the Caretaker seemed to float along. Off to one side, still by himself, as if he did not quite belong, Bucket jerked ahead with his unsteady gait.

So this was the end of it, Cornwall thought, the end of the long trail that had started at Wyalusing when he'd found the hidden manuscript—and a different ending from the one he had imagined, an ending that, at that time, he could not have imagined. He had set out to find the Old Ones, and now the Old Ones no longer mattered, for they had been something other than he had expected.

He remembered that night when they had reached first water after crossing the Blasted Plain and he had gone off by himself, sunk in guilt for having led the pilgrimage, and wondered what could be done when the end should come, knowing that it would be almost certain death to return by the route they had come. Now it all was finished, and there was no need of going back, for a lifetime's work, more than a lifetime's work, lay here in this little meadow ringed in by the peaks of the Misty Mountains.

Here, if the Caretaker were correct, lay the opportunity to merge three great cultures into one even greater culture, with the aid, perhaps, of strange scholars from strange worlds, equipped with unknown arts and philosophies. And there was, as well, he thought, an unknown factor in the person of the lurching Bucket, which might give to the project a dimension of which there was, as yet, no hint.

Beside him, Mary said, "Don't feel so bad, Mark. They are going home. That's where they want to be."

He shook his head. "There was nothing I could say to them. At the very end there was nothing I could say. I guess, as well, there was nothing they could say to us. All of us, I think, did a little dying back there. They did so much for me…"

"You did as much for them," said Mary. "You filled their lives for them. They'll spend many winter nights in the years to come talking of the trip—Sniveley at his mine, Hal and Coon in their hollow tree, Gib in his marsh."

"Thank you, Mary," Cornwall said. "You always know exactly what to say. You take away the hurt."

They walked in silence for a time, then Mary said, "Fiddlefingers told me there'd be new clothes for us, and this is something that we need. You are out at knees and elbows, and this old gown of mine is worth little except as a dusting rag. He said that if I wanted, I could have a gown of cloth of gold. Can you imagine me dressed up in cloth of gold? I'd be like a princess."

He put out a hand to stop her, turning her to face him. "Without cloth of gold," he said, "you are still a princess. I love you best in that very gown you wear, with some of the stink of the Chaos Beast still in it, worn and rent and ragged, spattered with bacon grease from the cooking fire. Promise me you'll never use it as a dusting cloth."

She came to him, put her arms around him, and he held her close.

"It'll be a good life, Mark," she whispered. "Cloth of gold or not, it'll be a good life for us."