Highway of Eternity (14 page)

Enid looked at it, puzzled.

“You still fail of understanding?”

“I'm afraid I do. You must tell me more.”

“You see all those humans out there, processioning in all seriousness, all of them striving, all of them seeking, but seeking different things. A marvelous painting, perhaps, that one can put upon a canvas. Or a piece of music that will be listened to by many other music lovers. Or an architectural model that someone out there has been striving to draft for years.”

“So that is it,” said Enid. “That is what they are looking for.”

“Yes, assuredly. I had thought you knew.”

“I knew they were looking for something. I did not know for what.”

“It is not the humans only who are looking.”

“You mean that there is something you seek? And you need some help? Sir, I cannot comprehend in what manner I can help you.”

“I have sought an idea, trying time after time to run it to the ground, and each time a little short. So when I learned of this processional and its seeking out, I said to myself, if it works for humans, surely there must be a modicum of hope it also would work for me.”

“And has it worked?”

“I think it has. I think I have it all in mind, but I cannot tell unless I find someone to hold a finger where the two strings cross.”

“Except it's not a finger. And it's not a string.”

“That is correct, fair lady. You catch on rapidly and you listen closely. Will you listen further?”

Enid looked around quickly. There still was no sign of Jones, the robot.

“I will listen further, closely.”

“First of all,” said Horseface, “I must be honest with you. I must tell you sorrowfully of my fraudulence. All the other aliens here attending this procession make up a group of special selection. They have been brought along because they have the power to elevate human sensitivity to high hallucinatory levels. Given such soaring hallucinations, the participatory humans then can grasp the pattern of the great art toward which they strain. Furthermore, there are among these sundry aliens some who have the power to guide the humans in a materialization of their visions—to create a painting from the mind without any painting being done—a short cut, one might say, between conception and execution. Or the power to create music, the realistic sound itself, without the aid of score or instrument.”

“But that's impossible,” cried Enid, suddenly envisioning a shower of painted canvases falling from the sky to the sound of music coming out of nowhere.

“Not impossible in every case,” said Horseface.

“This is all very honest of you,” said Enid. “But you told me that you are fraudulent. Why?”

“Because I joined this procession, not to work for the humans, but rather for myself. I had thought perhaps that the fervor of this assemblage would spur and supplement my ability.”

“What you are trying to say is that you were in this procession for yourself, in the hope that it would give you the edge you needed to develop the idea that you have. And that while it apparently has given you that edge, you still are unable to accomplish it for the lack of someone to hold a finger on the string.”

“Admirably you outline the situation in most exact detail. Having understood, are you of a mind to help me?”

“Tell me first what this object is you have the need to develop.”

“That, alas, I cannot do since it involves concepts not understandable to a human without much instruction being given.”

“It would not be detrimental? It would be of harm to no one?”

“Look at me,” said Horseface. “Do I appear as one who would be willing to do harm?”

“Looking at you, I cannot tell.”

“Then please take my word. The object would be of harm to no one.”

“And if I am able to help you, what would I get out of it?”

“We'd be partners in it. You'd own half of it, have equal rights in it.”

“That is generous of you.”

“Not at all,” said Horseface. “Without your help, it will never come to be. So now will you permit me to explain what you must do to help me?”

“Yes, I think I will.”

“Then close your eyes and think at me.”

“Think at you?”

“Yes, think at me. I'll think back at you.”

“I've never, in my life, thought at anyone.”

“It is not difficult,” said Horseface. “You close your eyes and, concentrating all your mind, think of me.”

“It sounds terribly silly,” said Enid, “but I suppose it's worth a try.”

She closed her eyes and concentrated about thinking at him, but had a feeling far back in her mind that she was making a bad job of it since she did not know how to think at someone.

But she felt him thinking at her. It was a little terrifying, though somewhat like hearing Henry in her mind; she hung in there and did not try to pull away. There was nothing she could lose, although she doubted very much she had anything to gain. It was all an exercise in absolute futility.

But a picture formed inside her mind that she could not have possibly thought up by herself. It was a picture of a complicated structure made up of and hung together by many colorful lines. The colorful lines all were thin and had a rather dainty look about them, but the structure, which she could not see too well because there was too much of it, had the feel of being most substantial. She seemed to be standing in the very center of it, with it stretching so far to every side of her that she could not see the end of it.

“Now, right here,” said the invisible Horseface, speaking in her mind, “is where you lay your finger.”

“Where?” she asked.

“Right here,” he said, and when he said it she saw exactly where she should lay her finger and she laid it there, pressing down hard as one would press hard upon the crossing of two strings that tied up a package.

Nothing happened, nothing that she noticed right away. Somehow, however, the structure all around her seemed to become more solid, and the wind had quit its blowing. All this time she had been keeping her eyes on her finger to make sure she was holding tight against the string that wasn't there.

Horseface spoke to her, not speaking in her mind, but aloud. “All right,” he said, “the job is done. There is no longer any need of holding the finger.”

She looked up and there he was, some little distance from her, climbing up the bare bones of the structure as if it were a ladder. She heard a shout beneath her and looked down. The procession was all spread out below her, and all the people were looking up at her, shouting, waving their arms, crying in amazement.

Frightened, she reached out and grasped one of the colorful bars that went into the making of the structure. The bar she grasped was lavender and it tied into two other bars, one of them lemon yellow and the other a deeply glowing plum. It was solid in her grasp. Wondering where her feet were, she glanced down and saw that they were planted firmly on another bar, a red one as substantial as the lavender one she gripped. All around her, everywhere she looked, were other bars; the structure quite surrounded her. She looked out through it at the hills and valleys and saw that the ridgetop, with its snaking procession, was only a small part of the landscape that lay beneath her.

The structure tipped smoothly over on one side and she found herself spread-eagled over the landscape, facing down toward it. She gasped and felt panic reaching out for her, but the panic went away when she realized she was as comfortable in that position as she had been in the other. Her orientation, she realized, was keyed into the structure, not the land that she had left. She looked around quickly to try to locate the traveler, but she couldn't find it.

The structure tipped back to where it had been before. It had started to grow little dangles and spangles all over it with no specific pattern. Horseface was clambering down toward her, like an awkward spider swarming down a web. He reached her level and stood peering at her.

“What do you think of it?” he asked “Is it not beautiful?”

She gulped. “This was what you were trying to make?”

“Of course,” he said. “I thought that you would know.”

“What is it?” she asked. “Please tell me what it is.”

“It is a net,” said Horseface, “useful for the fishing of the universe.”

Enid crinkled up her face, staring at what he called a net. It was a flimsy thing and it had no shape.

“Certainly,” she said, “you would not go fishing the universe in so slight a thing as this.”

“Time means nothing to it,” said Horseface, “nor does space. It is independent of both time and space except as it makes use of them.”

“How come you know so much about it?” demanded Enid. He did not look to be the sort of creature that would know too much of anything. “Did you study somewhere? Not on this Earth, of course, but …”

“I studied at the tribal knee,” said Horseface. “There are old stories and very ancient legends.”

“You can't depend on legends with a thing like this. You must have the knowledge, know the theory and the basic facts.”

“I made it, did I not? I told you where to hold your finger on the string?”

Enid said, weakly, “Yes, you did.”

It was changing as she watched it, losing some of its flimsiness, gaining strength and form, although not as yet an impressive strength and form. The ornaments with which it had been sprinkled changed from spangles, growing into objects, no longer merely glinting ornaments, but objects that had some relationship with this slab-sided structure Horseface called a net, although she could not figure out, for the life of her, what the relationships might be. What bothered her the most was that he called it a net and it certainly had no resemblance to a net. She tried to think of something that it might resemble and came up with nothing.

“We will travel in it,” Horseface told her, “from one planet to another, without a tick of time, without a touch of space.”

“We can't cross space in it,” said Enid. “There is nothing to protect us. We'd die in the cold and emptiness. Even if we could, we'd arrive at some unknown planet and plunge into an atmosphere that would choke us or fry us or …”

“We would know where we were going. There'd be no unknowns to us. There are charts to follow.”

“Where do such charts come from?”

“From long ago and far away.”

“Have you ever seen them? Do you have them now?”

“There is no need to possess them physically or to see them. They are a part of my mind, a genetic part of me, passed on to me by my forebears.”

“You're talking about ancestral memory.”

“Yes, of course. I thought that you would guess. Ancestral memory, ancestral intelligence and knowledge, the knowing of what went into the net, or should go into the net.”

“And you claim this net of yours can do many wondrous things?”

“How wondrous not even I can know. Time means nothing to it nor does …”

“Time,” said Enid. “That is what I am getting at. I lost a friend in time. I know the time factor, but not the space.”

“Nothing to it,” said Horseface. “It is a very simple matter.”

“But I told you I don't know …”

“You think you do not know. But the chances are you do. All you need to do is bespeak the net. Let it pry into yourself. It can find the forgetfulness.”

“But how can I talk with it?”

“You cannot talk with it. It can talk with you.”

“How do I let it know that I want it to talk to me? How can I be sure we can communicate, the net and I?”

“You thought at me when you said you couldn't and you thought upon the knot …”

“Now that it's all done, now that you have your precious net, can you tell me what I really did? There wasn't any knot and there wasn't any finger.”

“My dear,” he said, “there is no way I can tell you. Not that I would not if I could, but there is no way. You may have called into play some ability you are not aware you have and which I was not sure you would have. Even when I talked about the laying of the finger, I was not entirely sure that it would work. I only hoped it would.”

“Well, then, let's forget the jabber. There is no way of getting sense from you. I want very much to get back to my friend again and to do that you say I talk with this silly net. Please tell me how to start.”

“Most assuredly I will,” he said. “All in proper time. But first there is an errand must be run and once the errand's done …”

He reached out and took hold of one of the ornaments scattered all about the net.

“Duck your head and hang on tight,” he said.

Nothing happened and she raised her head and opened her eyes. The planet was pink-and-purple and the sky was golden-green.

“You see!” Horseface said triumphantly. “We are here and nothing happened to us.”

Enid drew in a cautious breath, shallow at first and then more deeply. The air seemed to be all right. She did not choke on it; it did not strangle her and it had no bad smell.

“What's the matter with you?” he asked. “Are you indisposed?”

“Not at all,” said Enid, “but the sky can't be that color. There is no such thing as a deep green sky. The land is bad enough, although it can be pink and purple, I suppose, but the sky cannot be green.”

Although, she told herself, the sky
was
green. She was alive, and everything was all right, perhaps, because she didn't know anything at all about what was going on.

Horseface started clambering down the net, the lower corner of which hung just above the ground.

“I won't be long,” he told her. “I'll be back directly. You wait here for me. Don't go wandering off. Stay close.”

The land was pink-and-purple. There were purple grasses and pink trees and, despite its coloring, the land was as flat and as drab and uninteresting as any she had ever seen. It stretched out on all sides to a hazed horizon that was a sickly blend of pink and green and gold and purple. Except for occasional trees and a number of scattered mounds, the land was empty. Nothing moved upon it, not even a flittering bird or butterfly. It was empty with a vengeance.