They’d let him live among them, more than likely finally as one of them, probably without the thought of payment for his living space and food. He may have worked a little in the fields and he may have puttered up things, but he would have been essentially their guest, for no alien creature could fit himself economically into such a simple culture.
They had helped him through his final days and watched him in his dying and when he had finally died they’d done to him a certain act of high respect and honor.
What was that word again? He could not remember it. The indoctrination had been inadequate; there were word gaps and blank spaces and blind spots and that was wholly understandable in a place like this.
He saw the gnome was waiting for him to explain the magic, to explain it better than Clay had been able to explain it. Or maybe Clay had not attempted to explain, for they might not have asked him.
The gnome waited and hoped and that was all, for he could not ask. You do not ask another race about the details of their magic.
“It is a … (no word for representation, no word for picture) … place that Clay saw. He tried to bring it back to life. He tried to tell you and I what he had seen. He tried to make us see it, too.”
“Magic,” said the gnome.
Lathrop gave up. It was impossible. To the gnome it was simple magic. So be it—simple magic.
It was a valley with a brook that gurgled somberly and with massive trees, and a deep wash of light that was more than sunlight lay over all of it. There was no living creature in it and that was typical, for Clay was a landscape artist without the need of people or of other creatures.
A happy place, thought Lathrop, but a solemn happiness. A place to run and laugh, but not to run too swiftly nor to laugh too loudly, for there was a lordly reverence implicit in the composition.
“He saw many places,” Lathrop told the gnome. “He put many places on a (no word for canvas or board or plane) … on a flat like that. Many different planets. He tried to catch the… (no word for spirit) … the way that each planet looked.”
“Magic,” said the gnome. “His was powerful magic.”
The gnome moved to the far wall of the room and poked up a peat fire in a primitive stove fashioned out of mud. “You are hungry,” said the gnome.
“I ate.”
“You must eat with us. The others will be coming. It is too dark to work.”
“I will eat with you,” said Lathrop.
For he must break the bread with them. He must be one of them if he were to carry out his mission. Perhaps not one of them as Clay had been one of them, but at least accepted. No matter what horrendous and disgusting thing should comprise the menu, he must eat with them.
But it was more than likely that the food would not be too bad. Roots and vegetables, for they had gardens. Pickled insects, maybe, and perhaps some alcoholic concoction he’d have to be a little careful with.
But no matter what it was, he would have to eat with them and sleep with them and be as friendly and as thoughtful as Clay had been thoughtful and friendly.
For they’d have things to tell him, data that he’d given up all hope of getting, the story of the final days of Reuben Clay. Perhaps even some clue to the mystifying “lost years,” the years when Clay had dropped completely out of sight.
He sat quietly, thinking of how the trail had come to an end, out near the edge of the galaxy, not too many light-years from this very place. For year on absorbing year he had followed Clay’s trail from star to star, gathering data on the man, talking with those who’d known him, tracking down one by one the paintings he had made. And then the trail had ended. Clay had left a certain planet and no one knew where he’d gone; for years Lathrop had searched for some hint to where he’d gone, and had been close to giving up when he finally had found evidence that Clay had come to this place to die. But the evidence had strongly indicated that he had not come here directly from where the trail stopped, but had spent several years at some other place. So there was still a gap in the story that he followed—a gap of lost years, how many years there was no way of knowing.
Perhaps here, in this village, he might get a clue to where Clay had spent those years. But, he told himself, it could be no more than a clue. It could not be specific, for these little creatures had no concept of time or otherwhere.
More than likely the painting here in this burrow was in itself a clue. More than likely it was a painting of that unknown place Clay had visited before coming here to die. But if that were so, thought Lathrop, it was a slender hope, for one might spend three lifetimes—or more—combing planet after planet in the vain hope recognizing the scene Clay had spread upon the canvas.
He watched the gnome busy at the stove, and there was no sound except the lonely whining of the wind in the chimney and at the tunnel’s mouth. Lonely wind and empty moor and the little villages of heaped earth, here at the far edge of the galaxy, out in the rim of the mighty wheel of suns. How much do we know of it, he thought, this thing we call our galaxy, this blob of matter hurled out into the gulf of space by some mighty Fist? We do not know the beginning of it nor the end of it nor the reason for its being; we are blind creatures groping in the darkness for realities and the few realities we find we know as a blind man knows the things within his room, knowing them by the sense of touch alone. For in the larger sense we all are as blind as he—all of us together, all the creatures living in the galaxy. And presumptuous and precocious despite our stumbling blindness, for before we know the galaxy we must know ourselves.
We do not understand ourselves, have no idea of the purpose of us. We have tried devices to explain ourselves, materialistic devices and spiritualistic devices and the application of pure logic, which was far from pure. And we have fooled ourselves, thought Lathrop. That is mostly what we’ve done. We have laughed at things we do not understand, substituting laughter for knowledge, using laughter as a shield against our ignorance, as a drug to still our sense of panic. Once we sought comfort in mysticism, fighting tooth and nail against the explanation of the mysticism, for only so long as it remained mysticism and unexplained could it comfort us. We once subscribed to faith and fought to keep the faith from becoming fact, because in our twisted thinking faith was stronger than the fact.
And are we any better now, he wondered, for having banished faith and mysticism, sending the old faiths and the old religions scurrying into hiding places against the snickers of a galaxy that believes in logic and pins its hope on nothing less than fact. A step, he thought—it is but a step, this advancement to the logic and the fact, this fetish for explaining. Some day, far distant, we may find another fact that will allow us to keep the logic and the fact, but will supply once again the comfort that we lost with faith.
The gnome had started cooking and it had a good smell to it. Almost an Earth smell. Maybe, after all, the eating would not be as bad as he had feared.
“You like Clay?” the gnome asked.
“Liked him. Sure, I liked him.”
“No. No. You do like he? You make the streaks like he?”
Lathrop shook his head. “I do nothing now. I am (how did you say retired?) … My work is ended. Now I play (play, because there was no other word).”
“Play?”
“I work no more. I do now as I please. I learn of Clay’s life and I (no word for write) … I tell his life in streaks. Not those kind of streaks. Not the kind of streaks he made. A different kind of streaks.”
When he had sat down he’d put his knapsack beside him. Now he drew it to his lap and opened it. He took out the pad of paper and a pencil. “This kind of steaks,” he said.