He stopped, for that had not been what he’d meant to say, if in fact he’d meant to say anything at all. It was something that he’d never even thought about; it was as if someone inside of him were speaking through his mouth.
“Or perhaps some currency?”
“You are making fun of me,” Rand said bitterly, “and you have no right …”
“I merely mention certain things,” the Milkman said, “upon which humans place reliance …”
“Tell me one thing,” said Rand, “as simply as you can. Is there any way of going back?”
“Back to where you came from?”
“Yes,” said Rand. “That is what I mean.”
“There is nothing to go back to,” the Milkman said. “Anyone who comes has nothing to go back to.”
“But the old man left. He wore a black felt hat and carried a cane. He dropped them and I found them.”
“He did not go back,” the Milkman said. “He went ahead. And do not ask me where, for I do not know.”
“But you’re a part of this.”
“I am a humble servant. I have a job to do and I try to do it well. I care for our guests the best that I am able. But there comes a time when each of our guests leaves us. I would suspect this is a halfway house on the road to someplace else.”
“A place for getting ready,” Rand said.
“What do you mean?” the Milkman asked.
“I am not sure,” said Rand. “I had not meant to say it.” And this was the second time, he thought, that he’d said something he had not meant to say.
“There’s one comfort about this place,” the Milkman said. “One good thing about it you should keep in mind. In this village nothing ever happens.”
He came down off the porch and stood upon the walk. “You spoke of the old man,” he said, “and it was not the old man only. The old lady also left us. The two of them stayed on much beyond their time.”
“You mean I’m here all alone?”
The Milkman had started down the walk, but now he stopped and turned. “There’ll be others coming,” he said. “There are always others coming.”
What was it Sterling had said about man outrunning his brain capacity? Rand tried to recall the words, but now, in the confusion of the moment, he had forgotten them. But if that should be the case, if Sterling had been right (no matter how he had phrased his thought), might not man need, for a while, a place like this, where nothing ever happened, where the moon was always full and the year was stuck on autumn?
Another thought intruded and Rand swung about, shouting in sudden panic at the Milkman. “But these others? Will they talk to me? Can I talk with them? Will I know their names?”
The Milkman had reached the gate by now and it appeared that he had not heard.
The moonlight was paler than it had been. The eastern sky was flushed. Another matchless autumn day was about to dawn.
Rand went around the house. He climbed the steps that led up to the porch. He sat down in the rocking chair and began waiting for the others.
Founding Father
Cliff’s journal shows that he mailed “Founding Father” to Horace Gold in December of 1956, and that Gold accepted it for publication just eight days later. It appeared in the May 1957 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. The question is: How do you keep an immortal sane?
Winston-Kirby walked home across the moor just before the twilight hour and it was then, he felt, that the land was at its best. The sun was sinking into a crimson froth of clouds and the first gray-silver light began to run across the swales. There were moments when it seemed all eternity grew quiet and watched with held breath.
It had been a good day and it would be a good homecoming, for the others would be waiting for him with the dinner table set and the fireplace blazing and the drinks set close at hand. It was a pity, he thought, that they would not go walking with him, although, in this particular instance, he was rather glad they hadn’t. Once in a while, it was a good thing for a man to be alone. For almost a hundred years, aboard the ship, there had been no chance to be alone.
But that was over now and they could settle down, just the six of them, to lead the kind of life they’d planned. After only a few short weeks, the planet was beginning to seem like home; in the years to come, it would become in truth a home such as Earth had never been.
Once again he felt the twinge of recurring wonder at how they’d ever got away with it. That Earth should allow six of its immortals to slip through its clutches seemed unbelievable. Earth had real and urgent need for all of its immortals, and that not one, but six, of them should be allowed to slip away, to live lives of their own, was beyond all logic. And yet that was exactly what had happened.
There was something queer about it, Winston-Kirby told himself. On the century-long flight from Earth, they’d often talked about it and wondered how it had come about. Cranford-Adams, he recalled, had been convinced that it was some subtle trap, but after a hundred years there was no evidence of any trap and it had begun to seem Cranford-Adams must be wrong.
Winston-Kirby topped the gentle rise that he had been climbing and, in the gathering dusk, he saw the manor house—exactly the kind of house he had dreamed about for years, precisely the kind of house to be built in such a setting—except that the robots had built it much too large. But that, he consoled himself, was what one had to expect of robots. Efficient, certainly, and very well intentioned and obedient and nice to have around, but sometimes pretty stupid.
He stood on the hilltop and gazed down upon the house. How many times had he and his companions, at the dinner table, planned the kind of house they would build? How often had they speculated upon the accuracy of the specifications given for this planet they had chosen from the Exploratory Files, fearful that it might not be in every actuality the way it was described?
But here, finally, it was—something out of Hardy, something from the Baskervilles—the long imagining come to comfortable reality.
There was the manor house, with the light shining from its windows, and the dark bulk of the outbuildings built to house the livestock, which had been brought in the ship as frozen embryos and soon would be emerging from the incubators. And there the level land that in a few more months would be fields and gardens, and to the north the spaceship stood after years of roving. As he watched, the first bright star sprang out just beyond the spaceship’s nose, and the spaceship and the star looked for all the world like a symbolic Christmas candle.
He walked down the hill, with the first night wind blowing in his face and the ancient smell of heather in the air, and was happy and exultant.
It was sinful, he thought, to be so joyful, but there was reason for it. The voyage had been happy and the planet-strike successful and here he was, the undisputed proprietor of an entire planet upon which, in the fullness of time, he would found a family and a dynasty. And he had all the time there was. There was no need to hurry. He had all of eternity if he needed it.
And, best of all, he had good companions.
They would be waiting for him when he stepped through the door. There would be laughter and a quick drink, then a leisurely dinner, and, later, brandy before the blazing fire. And there’d be talk—good talk, sober and intimate and friendly.
It had been the talk, he told himself, more than anything else, which had gotten them sanely through the century of space flight. That and their mutual love and appreciation of the finer points of the human culture—understanding of the arts, love of good literature, interest in philosophy. It was not often that six persons could live intimately for a hundred years without a single spat, without a touch of cabin fever.