“War between the tribes. Apaches were tough, fierce warriors.”
Solo fell silent, his eyes examining the stone room they had laid him in.
“I thought your body could repair itself,” Rip whispered.
“Nothing lasts forever, Rip.” After a bit, the voyager between the stars added, “Pretty proud of you last night, son. I’ve seen a great many men in serious straits; you are right up there with the best. I’m proud to have known you.”
Rip was embarrassed. “Is there anything we can do for you?”
“Leave me alone with my memories.”
So they did. Rip, Charley and Uncle Egg sat on the ledge and watched the sun rise.
“I was pretty scared when I fell off the saucer,” Egg admitted to Rip and Charley.
“Me too,” Rip said.
“But you jumped after me.”
“I figured Charley would save us. And she did.”
“What if she couldn’t have?”
“Unc,” Rip said with a big grin, “you and I would now be going over our accounts with St. Peter. Gonna have to do that sooner or later anyway.”
Just thinking about the fall made Egg’s heart thud powerfully. Another dose of adrenaline. He had looked death in the face, yet lived to tell the tale. This morning that seemed a good thing. There was more life to be lived.
The three of them watched the sunlight chase the shadows from the great canyon, watched the colors change, watched the extraordinary eternal panorama as the earth spun on its axis, just as it had done since the dawn of time. Snow on the rims … an early winter morning in the greatest canyon on earth.
Meanwhile, inside the stone room by the fire, Adam Solo had a conversation with the captain of the starship. He told him who he was, when he was marooned on this planet, who he was with; he informed the captain of his many adventures as fast as he thought them and told him the starship exploration landing team should go to Washington, the White House. Washington is the capital of the United States, the largest, most advanced economy on the planet, and a democracy. That is the best place for diplomacy with the people of this planet, who live in over one hundred eighty nations in every stage of economic and moral development.
Solo also informed the captain that Egg Cantrell, Rip and Charley had a saucer and access to another, which was now parked above the lawn of the White House.
I may not be alive when you arrive, Solo added. Rip and Egg Cantrell and Charley Pine are people you need to talk to. They are brave, wise and compassionate. In my thirteen centuries on this planet, I have met few who are their equals.
15
Adam Solo lay inside the ancient cliff dwelling watching the sunlit sky through the window, which was just a hole in the stone wall. His wound pained him greatly, yet he was thinking about the people he had known here. It was so long ago … and they were of course long dead. Dead for almost seven hundred years.
There had been a man and his wife, and kids, and the wife’s mother, and several young men from the tribe who had yet to find wives. In this place they had planned their lives, their future, their children’s future. They were safe here from the nomads who would have killed and robbed them. Safe. On this tiny ledge facing this great canyon.
There was food if they worked hard to get it, water was accessible. Survival was the challenge. What more did men need?
Indeed. What does anyone need but people to love and cherish, food, water, clothes and shelter?
The Indians had lived their lives, loved, raised children, passed on what they knew and surrendered to their own mortality eventually, when enough years had passed, leaving another generation to carry on … and a generation after that, and so on.
Solo knew that was the way of life. The way of life wherever it was found in the universe.
So he lay on a sleeping bag trying to ignore the pain, thinking of these things and of those people who had lived here whom he had known. Remembering.
Ah, I have too many memories, he thought. Too many people who have gone on before me, leaving me here to struggle and try to survive. And in the end, I was shot by a fool who saw the glimmer of a big reward. Those Indians who lived here, the Vikings, the Iroquois, the white settlers who tried to wrestle a living from the land and so often failed, what would they have thought of the Internet? Of flying saucers? Of starships?
Most of those people had been happy, like the Indians who had lived in this house overlooking the Grand Canyon. Happy! They had been contented with their lives in a way he had never been.
He had always been searching for a way home. For a way back to the life he had once known. Oh, he had tried. Tried to be as content as the people around him. Tried to be content with a good hunt, a good crop, or with rain when the fields needed it. Tried, but it was never enough.
Now as he lay in pain, trying to ignore it, he thought about being content. Somehow that great gift had escaped him. He had never been content. Never accepted life on its own terms. Always he wanted to escape from this savage planet. Wanted a starship to rescue him.
What a fool he had been! A fool!
He had everything life had to offer for hundreds of years, over a thousand, over half a hundred earth generations, and hadn’t appreciated it.
He could hear Egg and Charley and Rip talking outside. They were worried about him!
Adam Solo began weeping.
Soon he drifted off to sleep.
He awoke when Charley Pine tried to gently roll him over to check the wound below his right shoulder blade.
“Sorry,” she muttered and rolled him over anyway. She took the sodden bandage off, left the bit of rag in the exit wound and used one of Rip’s old tee shirts as a body bandage.
When she rolled him back onto his back, her face was drawn, pale. “You’re still bleeding,” she said. “No doubt internally too. You really need a doctor that can pump you full of platelets.”
“Too big a risk,” he muttered.
“Don’t be such a cynic.”
You know as well as I do what might happen if a DNA sample from me fell into the wrong hands. The people of this planet aren’t ready for knowledge like that. They aren’t politically, ethically or morally ready. When they are, they’ll get there by themselves.
“You’re dying. You know that, of course.” It was a flat statement, not a question.
I should have died a hundred times already. I’m ready for what comes next. If anything.
“Christ, you are a cynic!”
I’ve seen many people die. It’s as natural as going to sleep. I don’t fear it.
“So what was your closest escape from the grim reaper?”
Adam Solo thought about that, sorting through the memories. Finally he told her, It was a cattle drive, bringing a herd up from Texas. Crossing the Canadian my horse got into quicksand. I threw a rope at something on the bank — I forget what — and missed. The horse struggled and sank and I tried to get off and got trapped. If I had gone down with the horse I would have died. I knew it. My body’s ability to repair itself would have counted for nothing. Then a friend of mine rode up and threw me a rope. He dragged me out. His name was Billy Vance, and he was nineteen, a young nineteen, full of himself.
“So you made it.”
Yeah. Lived to die another day.
“So what happened to Billy Vance?” Her face was serious, pensive, as she tried to understand.
We made it to Dodge; the owner sold the herd and paid us off. I talked Billy into going with me to Colorado to hunt for gold, and he agreed. But on our last night in Dodge he caught a gambler cheating at cards and called him on it. The gambler got a bullet into Billy and two into me. Billy died and I didn’t. A month later, when I recovered, I went to Colorado by myself.