Clifford Simak - A Heritage of Stars

Rollo had lit the evening fire in a swale that ran down a slope, selecting a place where they would have some protection from the wind that came howling and whooping from the great expanse of prairie that stretched for miles into the west. Looking west, away from the river, one could see the continuing uplift, the rising land that swooped and climbed in undulating folds, to finally terminate in the darkness of a jagged line imprinted against the still-sunlit western sky. Another day, Cushing figured, until they reached the plains country. So long, he thought, it had taken so long—the entire trip much longer than it should have been. Had he traveled alone, he'd be there by now, although, come to think of it, traveling alone, he might have no idea of the location of the place he sought. He pondered for a moment that strange combination of circumstances which had led to his finding of Rollo, in whose mind had stuck the name of Thunder Butte; and then the finding of the geological-survey maps, which had shown where Thunder Butte—or, at least, where one of many possible Thunder Buttes—might be found. Traveling alone, he realized, he might have found neither Rollo nor the maps.

The progress of the expedition had been slower since the addition of the old man and the girl, with Ezra digging holes in which to stand, to talk with or listen to (or whatever it was he did) a patch of cactus or a clump of tumbleweed, or flopping down into a sitting posture, to commune with an isolated bed of violets. Standing by, gritting his teeth, more times than he liked to think of, Cushing had suppressed an impulse to kick the old fool into motion or simply to walk away and leave him. Despite all this, however, he had to admit that he liked Ezra well enough. Despite his obstinate eccentricities, he was a wise, and possibly clever, old man who generally had his wits about him except for his overriding obsession. He sat at nights beside the campfire and talked of olden times when he had been a great hunter and, at times, a warrior, sitting in council with other, older tribal members when a council should be

needed, with the realization creeping on him only gradually that he had an uncommon way with plant life. Once this had become apparent to other members of the tribe, his status gradually changed, until finally he became, in the eyes of the tribe, a man wise and gifted beyond the ordinary run of men. Apparently, although he talked little of it, the idea of going forth to wander and commune with plants and flowers also had come upon him slowly, a conviction growing with the years until he reached a point where he could see quite clearly he was ordained for a mission and must set forth upon it, not with the pomp and grandeur that his fellow tribesmen gladly would have furnished, but humbly and alone except for that strange granddaughter.

"She is a part of me," he'd say. "I cannot tell you how, but unspoken between us is an understanding that cannot be described."

And while he talked, of her or of other things, she sat at the campfire with the rest of them, relaxed, at peace, her hands folded in her lap, at times her head bent almost as if in prayer, at other times lifted and held high, giving the impression that she was staring, not out into the darkness only but into another world, another place or time. On the march, she moved lightly of foot—there were times when she seemed to float rather than to walk—serene and graceful, and more than graceful, a seeming to be full of grace, a creature set apart, a wild sprite that was human in a tantalizing way, a strange, concentrated essence of humanity that stood and moved apart from the rest of them, not because she wished to do so but because she had to do so. She seldom spoke. When she did speak, it was usually to her grandfather. It was not that she ignored the rest of them but that she seldom felt the need to speak to them. When she spoke, her words were clear and gentle, perfectly and correctly spoken, not the jargon or the mumbling of the mentally deficient, which she at times appeared to be, leaving all of them wondering if she were or not, and, if so, what kind of direction the deficiency might take.

Meg was with her often, or she with Meg. Watching the two of them together, walking together or sitting together, Cushing often tried to decide which of them it was who was with the other. He could not decide; it was as if some natural magnetic quality pulled the two of them together, as if they shared some common factor that made them move to each other. Not that they ever really met; distance, of a sort, always separated them. Meg might speak occasionally to Elayne, but not often, respecting the silence that separated them—or the silence that, at times, could make them one. Elayne, for her part, spoke no oftener to Meg than she did to any of the others.

"The wrongness of her, if there is a wrongness," Meg once said to Cushing, "is the kind of wrongness that more of us

I

should have."

"She lives within herself," said Cushing.

"No," said Meg. "She lives outside herself. Far outside herself."

When they reached the river, they set up camp in a grove of cottonwoods growing on a bank that rose a hundred feet or so above the stream, a pleasant place after the long trek across the barren prairie. Here, for a week, they rested. There were deer in the breaks of the bluffs that rimmed the river's eastern edge. The lowlands swarmed with prairie chicken and with ducks that paddled in the little ponds. There were catfish in the river. They lived well now, after scanty fare.

Ezra established rapport with a massive cottonwood that bore the scars of many seasons, standing for hours on end, facing the tree and embracing it, communing with it while its wind-stirred leaves seemed to murmur to him. So long as he was there, Elayne was there as well, sitting a little distance off, cross-legged on the ground, the moth-eaten elk skin pulled up about her head, her hands folded in her lap. At times, Shivering Snake deserted Rollo and stayed with her, spinning and dancing all about her. She paid it no more attention than the rest of them. At other times, the Followers, purple blobs of shadow, sat in a circle about her, like so many wolves waiting for a feast, and she paid them no more attention than she paid Shivering Snake. Watching her, Cushing had the startling thought that she paid them no attention because she had recognized them for what they were and dismissed them from her thoughts.

Rollo hunted grizzly, and for a couple of days Cushing went out to help him hunt. But there were no grizzlies; there were no bear of any kind.

"The oil is almost gone," wailed Rollo. "I'm already getting squeaky. Conserving it, I use less than I should."

"The deer I killed was fat," said Cushing.

"Tallow!" Rollo cried. "Tallow I won't use.

"When the oil is gone, you'll damn well use whatever comes to hand. You should have killed a bear back on the Minnesota. There were a lot of them."

"I waited for the grizzly. And now there are no grizzlies."

"That's all damn foolishness," said Cushing. "Grizzly oil is no different from the oil from any other bear. You're not clear out, are you?"

"Not entirely. But nothing in reserve.

"We'll find grizzly west of the river," said Cushing.

Andy had eaten the scant bitter prairie grass in the East with reluctance, consuming only enough of it to keep life within his body. Now he stood knee-deep in the lush grass of the valley. With grunts of satisfaction, his belly full to bulging, he luxuriated by rolling on the sandy beach that ran up from the river's edge, while killdeer and sandpiper, outraged by his invasion of their domain, went scurrying and complaining up and down the sands.

Later Andy helped Rollo and Cushing haul in driftwood deposited by earlier floods on the banks along the river. Out of the driftwood Cushing and Rollo constructed a raft, chopping the wood into proper lengths and lashing the pieces together as securely as possible with strips of green leather cut from the hides of deer. When they crossed the river, Rollo and Meg rode the raft—Meg because she couldn't swim, Rollo because he was afraid of getting wet since his oil supply was low. The others clung to the raft. It helped them with their swimming and they tried as best they could to drive it across the stream and keep it from floating too far down the river. Andy, hesitant to enter the swift-flowing water, finally plunged in and swam so lustily that he outdistanced them and was waiting for them on the other side, nickering companionably at them when they arrived.