Damon Knight - Orbit 20

“No, but I don’t have to.” She began to walk unsteadily toward the tent. “Because it’s not true,” she said, then ducked under the flap of the low tent.

It was true, though. He wanted to exorcise a devil, Farley thought, sitting down again. And Sam wanted to find God. All Victoria wanted was to learn the truth. They’d both use her, and through her they might find what they looked for. Across the fire from him, Sam sat brooding, staring into the flames.

“I want to stay up tonight,” Sam said abruptly. “Just in case there is something down there.”

Farley nodded. “We’ll take turns. You want to sleep first?”

Sam shrugged, then wordlessly got up and went to his sleeping bag spread on the ground a short distance from the fire.

Farley sat with his back against a pine tree and watched the shifting patterns of light and shadow as the moon moved across the sky. From time to time he added a small stick to the fire, not enough to blaze much, just to maintain a glow to keep the coffee hot. A fire during a night watch was friendly, he thought, nudging a spark into flame.

What was he doing here? What he had answered was part of it. Maybe all of it. He didn’t know. For hundreds of years people around this area had known this piece of land was strange, not to be trusted. The Indians had shunned it for generations. His father had known it was not safe for cattle or men and had fenced it off. Easier to cross off three hundred acres out of ninety thousand than to pursue a riddle that probably could not be solved anyway. He would have done the same if Sam and Victoria had not forced him to examine it. He was examining many things suddenly, he admitted to himself.

“You have so many books!” Victoria had exclaimed. “Did you major in geology?”

There were four shelves of geology books. “Nope. That’s why I have to keep reading. Can’t find the one I’m looking for, I guess.”

“And that is?”

“Life and death, desert style. Something like that. Someone who can relate the earth cycles to life cycles. I’m not sure, that’s why I keep reading and searching.”

“You’ll have to write it yourself,” Victoria had said.

And Fran had asked, “Aren’t you lonely?”

He was sure he was not lonely in the sense she meant, but there had to be more. A few months ago he had not known that. Every day he got up at dawn and worked as hard as any of the hands on the ranch, doing the same kind of work, doing more than any of them most days. Dinner at six, read, bed by ten. There were women in Bend, one in Prineville, all very casual, non-compelling.

He was evading again. Why was he here? He had come home because he could not live in the city. He had found strength in this harsh desert. But evil had followed him, had claimed his mother. Sometimes when the phone rang late at night, he found himself pausing, willing it to be his father telling him it was all over finally. Sometimes he found himself watching Serena playing with her children and he almost hated her for being able to find a good life so simply without any effort at all.

He could have married Serena. They had experimented with sex together; at the time they both had assumed they would marry when they were grown. Something in him had said no, and he had practically pushed her into the arms of Charlie Hendricks. And Fran. She would have gone to school with him. Their parents had expected it, and even discussed the financial arrangements. Instead he had decided he couldn’t handle a bride and the university at the same time. Leave him alone, his mother had said, he’ll find himself in school. But he had found nothing.

He had been drafted and at first he had believed he was finally going to do something worthwhile. He had discovered only despair and hopelessness. School again, sinking ever deeper, then the flight home to the safety of the land. Here, he had thought, was the only place he had been able to find any hope. Here nothing was unclean, nothing was evil. The coyotes, the bobcats, the summer frosts and the winter droughts all were proper here.

He had sought refuge in work on this healing land, only to learn that evil was here too. Not the land! he wanted to howl. And he knew this time there was no place he could go, no last refuge he could bury himself in.

Reluctantly, compelled by circumstances he could not understand, he accepted that finally, after years of flight, he would stand and confront the enemy.

Victoria dreamed that her boss was coming, that he would rage at her for not doing her work better. “I’m doing the best I can,” she cried. “Even a child could do it better,” he stormed at her. And she woke up.

The light was as it had been the other night, perhaps not as bright, but almost. She didn’t make any noise; she knew that either Farley or Sam would be up, and for the moment she didn’t want to talk to anyone. She remembered the dream. No boss had ever raged at her in that way. A child could do it better, of that she was certain. Slowly she sat up and waited for the moment of terror to pass. It always overwhelmed her when she first awakened; then it receded, but never completely.

Now she could see Sam, a clear profile against the pale horizon. His full beard made his head look grotesquely oversized. He had aged. It was as if he had left Shangri-la and before her eyes were passing into the mundane world where age caught up. He looked old and tired. He looked frightened. She tried to imagine Farley frightened as Sam was, and somehow it was harder to picture him so. She didn’t understand Farley. Something was driving him, and she didn’t know what.

Something was out there that each of them needed to learn about. They had followed Farley’s plan, had searched all day by sunlight, on horseback, then on foot, and had found nothing. But the moon changed the land; it made strange things possible.

“You should be sleeping,” Sam said when she joined him.

“I know. The silence and the moonlight woke me up, I think. Has it been quiet all evening?”

“Yup. Not a thing stirring.”

She sighed. “The desert is very beautiful at night, isn’t it. That’s a surprise. I’d read that, but it’s like reading that the ocean is beautiful, or that the sunset is beautiful. It’s meaningless until you see it. I can almost understand why Farley wants to stay here.”

Sam laughed. “Nobody understands why Farley stays here. He’s a hermit.”

“Sam,” she said, “after tonight, then what?”

He shrugged.

“I mean, what if nothing happens?”

“Then I come back tomorrow night, and the next night, and the next night.”

“But what if nothing ever happens?”

“Vicky, don’t talk about that right now. Let’s watch the horse. Let’s watch the desert. Watch the shadows on the face of the moon. They deepen as you watch. Let’s not talk about anything else right now.”

She sat down beside him. “May I smoke?”

Sam laughed irritably. “I wish you’d stayed asleep.”

“I know. I’m just nervous. What if noth—” Suddenly she stopped. The horse had a listening attitude; its ears were straight up, poised. They were like the ears of a racehorse before the signal. It was sniffing the air. And now, coming from nowhere, Farley was there with them.

The three of them watched the horse as he sniffed the air and pawed. He was pulling at the tether, neighing. The other horses, hobbled on the safe side of the fence, answered sleepily. They weren’t interested. Whatever it was that had wakened the one horse hadn’t bothered them. Now he was acting wild, rearing.

Farley said, “You two stay here, I’m going to go get it.” He ran to the gate and opened it very quickly.

Victoria closed her eyes. She didn’t know what she expected, but she didn’t expect him to return with the horse. Somehow that seemed too simple.