If I come back, thought Blake, if you still are here. If there is anybody here. If Earth is worth the coming back to.
'Yes, he said. 'Yes, of course, I'll phone you.
He reached out and flipped the toggle to break communication.
And sat, unstirring, in the dark and silence, feeling the Earth drawing back and away from him, flowing outwards in an expanding circle that left him all alone.
35
Earth lay behind. The Sun had shrunk, but was still the Sun and not another star. The ship was falling down the long tunnel of gravitational vectors that would, in a little time, build up its velocity to the point where the stars would seem to start shifting in their courses and their colours, and it then would begin its slow transition into that other universe which existed beyond the speed of light.
Blake sat in the pilot's chair, gazing through the curved transparency that opened out on space. It was so quiet here, he thought, so quiet and peaceful — the uneventfulness of the emptiness that lay between the stars. In a little while he'd have to get up and take a turn about the ship to satisfy himself that all was right and well, although he knew it would be. With a ship such as this nothing could go wrong.
— Going home, said Quester, speaking quietly in Blake's mind. Going home again.
— But not for long, Blake told him. Only long enough to pick up the data that we missed before — that you didn't have the time to get. Then moving on, to where you can reach out to other stars.
And going on and on, he thought, always moving on to harvest other stars, running the data gathered from them through the biological computer that was Thinker's mind. Seeking, ever seeking, for the hints and clues that would make the pattern of the universe fall into a framework of understanding. And what would they find? he wondered. Many things, perhaps, that no one now could suspect.
— Quester's wrong, said Thinker. We have no home. We cannot have a home. Changer found that out. In time we'll realize that we do not need a home.
— The ship will be our home, said Blake.
— Not the ship, said Thinker. If you insist on a home, then the universe. All space is home to us. The entire universe.
And that, thought Blake, might have been in substance what the mind of Theodore Roberts had tried to say to him. Earth is no more than a point in space, he'd said. And so, of course, were all the other planets, all the other stars — only points of matter and of energy, concentrated in remote localities, with emptiness between. Intelligence, Roberts had said, is all there is; it's the one significance. Not life alone, not matter, not energy, but intelligence. Without intelligence, all this scattered matter, all the flaming energy, all the emptiness, was of no consequence because it did not have a meaning. It was only intelligence that could take the matter and the energy and make it meaningful.
Although, thought Blake, it would be good to have an anchor somewhere in all this emptiness, to be able to point, if only in one's mind, to a particular glob of energy, and say that is my home — to have a place to tie to, to possess some frame of reference.
He sat in his chair, staring out at space, remembering once again that moment in the chapel when he had sensed for the first time his basic homelessness — that he never could belong, not on Earth, not anywhere, that while of Earth he never could be of Earth, that while human in his form he never could be human. But that moment, he realized now, also had shown him that no matter how homeless he might be, he was not alone and could never be alone. He had the other two, and he had more than that. He had the universe and all the ideas, all the fantasies, all the seething intellectual ferment that had ever risen in it.
Earth could have been a home, he thought; he had a right to expect it could be home. A point in space, he thought. And that was right — Earth was a tiny point in space. But no matter how tiny it might be, man needed such a point as a homing signal, as a beacon. The universe was not enough because it was too much. As a man from Earth, one stood for something, possessed identity; but the man of the universe was lost among the stars.
He heard the soft fall of the footstep and sprang up and swung around.
Elaine Horton stood just inside the door.
He took a quick step forward, then halted, frozen in his tracks.
'No! he shouted. 'No! You don't know what you're doing. A stowaway, he thought — a mortal on an immortal ship. And she had refused to talk with him, she'd…
'But I do, she said. 'I do know what I'm doing. I'm where I belong.
'An android, he said in bitterness. 'A simulated human. Sent to make me happy. While the real Elaine…
'Andrew, she said, 'I am the real Elaine.
He half lifted his arms, a gesture, and she suddenly was in them and he held her close, his body aching in happiness at her being there, at having someone human, at the closeness of a very special human.
'But, you can't! he cried. 'You can't. You don't realize what's going on. I'm not human. I'm not always this way. I turn into other things.
She lifted her head and looked at him. 'But I know, she said. 'You don't understand. I'm the other one — the other one of us.
'There was another man, he said, somewhat stupidly. 'There was…
'Not another man. A woman. The other was a woman.
And that was it, of course, he thought. Theodore Roberts, not knowing, had said the other man.
'But Horton? You are Horton's daughter.
She shook her head. 'There was an Elaine Horton, but she died. Committed suicide. Rather horribly and for some sordid reason. It would have wrecked the senator's career.
'Then you…
'That's right. Not that I knew anything about it. When the senator set out to dig up the facts about the old Project Werewolf, he had found out about me. He saw me and was struck by my resemblance to his daughter. Of course I was in suspended animation then, had been for years on end. We were very naughty people, Andrew. We did not turn out at all the way they thought we would.
'I know, he said. 'I know. I'm a little glad right now we didn't. So you knew all the time…
'Just recently, she said. 'The senator, you see, had Space across the barrel. They wanted very much to keep the Werewolf business under wraps. So when he came to them, frantic with grief at his daughter's death, crazy at the thought he was a ruined man, they gave me to him. I thought I was his daughter. I loved him as my father. I had been brainwashed, conditioned, whatever it is that they do to you, to make me think that I was his daughter.
'He must have pulled a lot of weight. To hush up his daughter's death and then take you…
'He was the one who could manage it, she declared. 'He was a lovely man, such a lovely father — but ruthless when it came to politics.
'You loved him.
She nodded. 'That's it, Andrew. In many ways, he still is father to me. No one can ever guess what it took for him to tell me.
'And you? he asked. 'It cost you something, too.
'Don't you see, she said. 'I couldn't stay. Once I knew, I simply couldn't stay. I would have been a freak, as much as you. Living on and on. And once the senator should die, what would be left for me?
He nodded, understanding, thinking of two people, two humans, facing that decision.
'Besides, she said, 'I belonged with you. I think I knew it from the first — from that moment you stumbled, all soaked and cold, into that old stone house.
'The senator told me…
'That I didn't want to see you, that I didn't want to talk with you.
'But why? he asked. 'But why?
'They were trying to scare you off, she said. 'They were afraid you wouldn't go, that you'd try to cling to Earth. They wanted you to think there was nothing left for you on Earth. The senator and the mind of Theodore Roberts and all the rest of them. Because we had to go, you see. We are the instruments of Earth, the gift of the Earth to the universe. If the intelligences of the universe ever are to find out what is happening, what has happened, what will happen, what it's all about, we can help in the doing of it.