Highway of Eternity (34 page)

“One of us isn't here,” said Boone, startled at the fact of the missing one. “Martin isn't here. What happened to him?”

“He fell through the net,” said Horseface. “The net let him go.”

“And you said nothing about it? You never even mentioned it?”

“He was not meant to be with us. The net knew.”

“The Infinites are still here,” said Corcoran.

The three of them, huddled together, were standing quite apart from the others.

“I think it's horrible,” said Enid. “You say Martin fell. You are sure you didn't shove him?”

“I was far from him. I could not reach him to shove.”

“I, for one,” said Corcoran, “shall shed no tears for him.”

“Have you any idea where he could be?” asked Boone.

Horseface shrugged elaborately.

The Hat spoke to them. I speak not for myself, he said. I am the tongue of the Rainbow People. Through me, they speak to you.

“But where are the Rainbow People?” asked Boone.

They are the ones you call the rainbows, said The Hat. They welcome you. Later they will talk to you.

Enid asked, “You mean the rainbows, the things we call the rainbows, are the people that you told us of?”

“They don't look like people to me,” said Corcoran.

Wolf moved close against Boone's leg and Boone spoke softly to him. “It's all right,” he said. “Stick close. It's you and I together.”

“That is all the Rainbow People have to say to us?” asked Enid. “That we are welcome, and later they will talk?”

That is all, The Hat informed her. What further do you wish?

The robot said, “Hamburgers are all that I can manage on quick notice. Will you be satisfied with them?”

“If they are food,” Horseface told him, “I'll be satisfied.”

Above the horizon the clumped rainbows lost their intensity, the color fading out. Then they were gone. The fading of the rainbows, Boone thought, had taken some of the warmth away. He shivered as he thought it, even while he knew there was no reason for the shiver. The place was as warm as ever.

It was The Hat, he told himself, that got us into this. The Hat had not allowed consideration of the suggestions that had been made by others. The Hat might even be a Rainbow agent—he knew who they were, where they might be found, and he was the one who spoke for them.

“I vote,” he said, “that we get on the net and leave. Just what the hell are we doing here?”

“So you feel it, too,” said Corcoran.

We came here, said The Hat, for the judging of the Infinites. To the only court that could hear them fairly, the one judiciary with the knowledge to render them their justice.

“Then let's get it over with,” said Corcoran. “Let us get them judged and leave. Better yet, let's just leave the Infinites here to receive their justice. I, for one, don't care one way or the other how the verdict will turn out.”

“But I do,” said Enid, sharply. “These were the ones who wrecked the human race. And I want to know what is to happen to them.”

The judging is not all of it, The Hat told them. There may be here something of interest to all the others of you.

“I can't imagine what,” said Corcoran.

The Rainbows are an ancient race, The Hat said. One of the first, if not the first, people of the universe. They have had the time to evolve beyond anything you can even guess at. Their knowledge and their wisdom encompass more than you can conceive. Now that you are here, it would be well to hear them out. It will demand of you no more than a little of your time.

“The most ancient people of the universe,” said Boone, then said no more. For if they were the most ancient people, then they had been given the time to work out their evolution to what probably was its ultimate condition.

His mind spun as he thought of it. It seemed fantastic—and yet, perhaps no more fantastic than what the humans had accomplished in a few million years, lifting themselves from cunning, but endangered, beasts to a position from which their shrewd and sharpened minds, linked with dextrous hands, had enabled them to take charge of their planet, devising means by which they could survive the animosities of an environment that could turn hostile without notice.

But the Infinites, he thought—good lord, if what the Infinites claimed was true, then the incorporeality they offered was proof against any physical condition, while the Rainbow People, if they had not advanced beyond the energy form they were taking here, still could die of entropy. On the day the universe flattened out to a state where there were no differences, when space and time and energy stood still, the force by which the Rainbow People survived would be gone and they would die with the universe.

And The Hat had claimed that these Rainbow People were the ones who could and should stand in judgment of the Infinites!

Yet, Boone wondered, could it be possible that the Infinites, while able to offer a perfect survivor system to others, were unable, for some reason, to use it for themselves? The Infinites, standing back there on the Highway of Eternity, had cringed, begging help and mercy.

Here they were cringing still, the three of them. They had formed a circle, facing one another, so that their robes seemed to be a part of a single organism.

They had begun a dolorous chant that held within it the sound of loneness and lostness. It was not a death chant, for a death chant, even at its worst, strikes a defiant note. The chanting of the Infinites had no defiance and no hope—it was a dirge to the end of everything.

Out of the stillness that hung over and enclosed the chant, a voice with no sound, and no inflection said: Your sin is that you have erred. You Infinites have sinned because of pride of self. There is no question that your technique is of the highest quality, but you used it too soon. You have condemned members of a race to a lower state of intellectuality than was their destiny. The people of the planet called the Earth were not in the final stages of their development, as it seems you thought; they were simply resting. Given time, which you did not give them, they would have developed a new intellectuality. In acting too soon, you have made them junior citizens of the universe. Of this, you stand condemned and cursed. You shall be returned to your people so that you may inform them of this judgment. Their punishment, and yours, is that you shall know and accuse yourselves throughout the remainder of your racial life of the injustice you have done.

The voice ceased. The Infinites did not stand huddled like a small black tent; they were not there at all.

Corcoran let out his breath, as if he had been holding it for a long time. “I'll be damned,” he said.

“Anyhow,” said Horseface, “we are done with them. Now that judgment has been passed, let us leave this place.” Having said this, he began to climb aboard the net.

There were seven of them, Boone told himself, ticking off each of them—Enid, Corcoran, Wolf, Horseface, the robot, The Hat and, last of all, himself. There had been eleven of them, but Martin had fallen through the net, and the three condemned Infinites were gone.

“We become fewer and fewer,” he said, speaking to himself. “Who will be the next to go?”

You cannot go, said The Hat. There is further still to come.

“Hat, we've had enough of it,” said Corcoran. “Enough of you and your Rainbow People, enough of judgments and delay. We have played your little game longer than was wise.”

Wolf came sidling over. Boone squatted down and threw an arm around the animal. Enid moved to the two of them and leaned over them. She started to say something. Then she disappeared.

Boone no longer was on the angular whiteness of the crystal world. Instead he crouched, Wolf still within the circle of his arm, at the head of a deep and wild ravine flanked by towering hills that sloped sharply upward into a pale blue sky. The hills were covered by ancient, twisted trees and embedded boulders that thrust like gray, shaven skulls out of the sloping terrain. A boisterous wind was blowing up the ravine. Far in the distance, down the savage gully, Boone could see the glint of sun on water.

He rose to his feet, gazing all about him. The crystal world was gone; no single feature of it remained. He and Wolf were quite alone in this different place. The others were not there.

He had, he thought, stepped around another corner, although there had been no reason he should have done so. There had been no danger and no threat; he had been aware of none. He had done nothing, he was sure, to bring him and Wolf to this other place.

He spoke to Wolf. “What do you think of it? What have you to say?”

Wolf made no answer.

“Boone!” a voice called. “Boone, are you here? Where are you?”

“Enid!” Boone shouted.

There she was, up the hillside from them, running down the slope that was too steep for safe running.

Boone plunged up the hill toward her. She started to fall and he leaped to catch her. But even as he leaped he himself was falling, the loose soil giving way beneath the driving effort of his lunge.

They tumbled down together to where Wolf waited. Sitting up, only a few feet apart, they burst out in laughter, half-apologetic laughter at the silliness of what had happened. Boone tried to sweep back a lock of hair that had fallen across her face. His dirt-smudged hand, dirtied in the fall, left a streak of soil across her nose.

“What happened?” she asked. “What brought us here? Did you duck around another corner?”

He shook his head. “I didn't duck around a corner. There was no threat, nothing that could have triggered me.”

“Then what?”

“I don't know,” he said. He moved closer to her and reached out a hand. “Your nose is dirty. Let me wipe it off.”

“And the others?”

“I suppose they're where we left them.”

“Boone, I'm scared. Can you tell me where we are?”

“I don't know,” he said. “And I'm as scared as you.”

They sat side by side, staring down the wild, wind-whipped ravine. Wolf sat solidly, determinedly in front of them.

The soundless voice of the Rainbow People spoke to them, from no direction, out of nowhere, the words ringing in their minds. There was no threat in the voice and no assurance. It was a dead, flat voice.

Listen closely to us, it said. Let us talk of the universe.

“It would be presumptuous of me to talk of the universe,” said Boone. “I have no knowledge of it.”

One of you, the voice said, has given thought to it.

“I have given it no thought,” said Enid. “But there have been times I have pondered on it. I have wondered what it is and the purpose of it.”

Then pay attention, said the voice. Listen very closely.

And then came a rush of thought that beat savagely against them. It was an overpowering force, a gush of half-heard words and wordless thoughts filled with information.

Boone felt his legs buckling under him, as if he stood against a strong and deadly wind that battered at his body and his mind.

“Oh, my God!” he whispered and collapsed upon the hillside. As if through a veil, he saw Enid sitting just a few feet distant and tried to crawl to her, trying to reach some warmth and oneness that he lacked in this storm of information that pounded steadily against him.

Then the storm lifted and was no more, and he lay sprawled on the dirt. Wolf was crouched close against the slope, whining to himself.

Crawling, Boone reached Enid and hoisted himself to a sitting position. She sat frozen, as if not knowing he was there, not knowing she was anywhere. He reached for her and pulled her within his arms. She came close against him and he held her hard.

“Do you know what happened?” he asked. “Do you remember any of what they said?”

She whispered at him, “No, I don't. I feel it all tamped hard inside me, but I know none of it. My mind is full to bursting …”

Another voice shouted at them—a rough, loud voice—a voice that could be heard and was made of honest words.

Boone leaped to his feet. Something was flapping in the air above them and he saw that it was the net. Horseface stood upon it, riding on its flapping like a drunken sailor erect upon a storm-tossed boat.

“Move swiftly,” Horseface roared at them. “Climb upon the net. We will leave this place as soon as you are on the net.”

The net was fluttering lower and Boone, lifting Enid off her feet, threw her bodily upon it. Wolf already was in the air, leaping for it. Horseface came to its edge and reached down a hand. “Up you come,” he said, grasping Boone's outstretched arm and jerking him through the air to a place beside him.

Corcoran was on the far side of the net, hunkered down and fiercely hanging on to it. The robot was wailing. “All my equipment gone!” he howled. “All of it left behind. Without it, how am I to feed you?”

“We had to leave in a hurry,” growled Horseface. “That shoddy sham of crystal was dissolving beneath our feet.”

“How did you know where to reach us?” Enid asked.

“That visor you stole on the pink-and-purple world,” Horseface said. “It was lying face up on the net. I looked at it, wondering at the same time where you could have gone, and I saw you here in the glass. When I saw you, the net knew where it was and came here to pick you up.”

Corcoran shouted at him, “Where are we going now?”

“Where we should have gone in the first place,” said Horseface, “had we not listened to The Hat. To that star the chart showed, the one with the X marked on it.”

“And The Hat?” asked Boone. “He's not with us.”

“Most unfortunate,” said Horseface, unctuously. “He was unable to reach the net in the time remaining.”

15

Henry

The bloated redness of the sun hung above the world—a nearly empty world, a world without grass or other vegetation except for the lone, ancient tree that stood down the ridge from Henry. He floated, his sparkles pulled together as if he cringed against this forbidding world, although he was not cringing. In his years of wandering, he had seen too much to cringe.