Way Station

12

Enoch turned from the tank and picked up the block of wood. A little puddle of liquid had drained off it and lay glistening on the floor.

He carried the block across the room to one of the windows and examined it. It was heavy and black and close-grained and at one corner of it a bit of bark remained. It had been sawed. Someone had cut it into a size that would fit the tank where the Thuban rested.

He recalled an article he had read in one of the daily papers just a day or two before in which a scientist had contended that no great intelligence ever could develop on a liquid world.

But that scientist was wrong, for the Thuban race had so developed and there were other liquid worlds which were members of the galactic cofraternity. There were a lot of things, he told himself, that Man would have to unlearn, as well as things to learn, if he ever should become aware of the galactic culture.

The limitation of the speed of light, for one thing.

For if nothing moved faster than the speed of light, then the galactic transport system would be impossible.

But one should not censure Man, he reminded himself, for setting the speed of light as a basic limitation. Observations were all that Man-or anyone, for that matter-could use as data upon which to base his premises. And since human science had so far found nothing which consistently moved faster than the speed of light, then the assumption must be valid that nothing could or did consistently move faster. But valid as an assumption only and no more than that.

For the impulse patterns which carried creatures star to star were almost instantaneous, no matter what the distance.

He stood and thought about it and it still was hard, he admitted to himself, for a person to believe.

Moments ago the creature in the tank had rested in another tank in another station and the materializer had built up a pattern of it-not only of its body, but of its very vital force, the thing that gave it life. Then the impulse pattern had moved across the gulfs of space almost instantaneously to the receiver of this station, where the pattern had been used to duplicate the body and the mind and memory and the life of that creature now lying dead many light years distant. And in the tank the new body and the new mind and memory and life had taken almost instant form-an entirely new being, but exactly like the old one, so that the identity continued and the consciousness (the very thought no more than momentarily interrupted), so that to all intent and purpose the being was the same.

There were limitations to the impulse patterns, but this had nothing to do with speed, for the impulses could cross the entire galaxy with but little lag in time. But under certain conditions the patterns tended to break down and this was why there must be many stations-many thousands of them. Clouds of dust or gas or areas of high ionization seemed to disrupt the patterns and in those sectors of the galaxy where these conditions were encountered, the distance jumps between the stations were considerably cut down to keep the pattern true. There were areas that had to be detoured because of high concentrations of the distorting gas and dust.

Enoch wondered how many dead bodies of the creature that now rested in the tank had been left behind at other stations in the course of the journey it was making-as this body in a few hours' time would lie dead within this tank when the creature's pattern was sent out again, riding on the impulse waves.

A long trail of dead, he thought, left across the stars, each to be destroyed by a wash of acid and flushed into deep-lying tanks, but with the creature itself going on and on until it reached its final destination to carry out the purpose of its journey.

And those purposes, Enoch wondered-the many purposes of the many creatures who passed through the stations scattered wide in space? There had been certain instances when, chatting with the travelers, they had told their purpose, but with the most of them he never learned the purpose-nor had he any right to learn it. For he was the keeper only.

Mine host, he thought, although not every time, for there were many creatures that had no use for hosts. But the man, at any rate, who watched over the operation of the station and who kept it going, who made ready for the travelers and who sent them on their way again when that time should come. And who performed the little tasks and courtesies of which they might stand in need.

He looked at the block of wood and thought how pleased Winslowe would be with it. It was very seldom that one came upon a wood that was as black or finegrained as this.

What would Winslowe think, he wondered, if he could only know that the statuettes he carved were made of woods that had grown on unknown planets many light years distant. Winslowe, he knew, must have wondered many times where the wood came from and how his friend could have gotten it. But he had never asked. And he knew as well, of course, that there was something very strange about this man who came out to the mailbox every day to meet him. But he had never asked that, either.

And that was friendship, Enoch told himself.

This wood, too, that he held in his hands, was another evidence of friendship-the friendship of the stars for every humble keeper of a remote and backwoods station stuck out in one of the spiral arms, far from the center of the galaxy.

The word had spread, apparently, through the years and throughout space, that this certain keeper was a collector of exotic woods-and so the woods came in. Not only from those races he thought of as his friends, but from total strangers, like the blob that now rested in the tank.

He put the wood down on a table top and went to the refrigerator. From it he took a slab of aged cheese that Winslowe had bought for him several days ago, and a small package of fruit that a traveler from Sirrah X had brought the day before.

"Analyzed," it had told him, "and you can eat it without hurt. It will play no trouble with your metabolism. You've had it before, perhaps? So you haven't. I am sorry. It is most delicious. Next time, you like it, I shall bring you more."

From the cupboard beside the refrigerator he took out a small, flat loaf of bread, part of the ration regularly provided him by Galactic Central. Made of a cereal unlike any known on Earth, it had a distinctly nutty flavor with the faintest hint of some alien spice.

He put the food on what he called the kitchen table, although there was no kitchen. Then he put the coffee maker on the stove and went back to his desk.

The letter still lay there, spread out, and he folded it together and put it in a drawer.

He stripped the brown folders off the papers and put them in a pile. From the pile he selected the New York Times and moved to his favorite chair to read.

NEW PEACE CONFERENCE AGREED UPON, said the lead-off headline.

The crisis had been boiling for a month or more, the newest of a long series of crises which had kept the world on edge for years. And the worst of it, Enoch told himself, was that the most of them were manufactured crises, with one side or the other pushing for advantage in the relentless chess game of power politics which had been under way since the end of World War II.

The stories in the Times bearing on the conference had a rather desperate, almost fatalistic, ring, as if the writers of the stories, and perhaps the diplomats and all the rest involved, knew the conference would accomplish nothing-if, in fact, it did not serve to make the crisis deeper.

Observers in this capital [wrote one of the Times's Washington bureau staff] are not convinced the conference will serve, in this instance, as similar conferences sometimes have served in the past, to either delay a showdown on the issues or to advance the prospects for a settlement. There is scarcely concealed concern in many quarters that the conference will, instead, fan the flames of controversy higher without, by way of compensation, opening any avenues by which a compromise might seem possible. A conference is popularly supposed to provide a time and place for the sober weighing of the facts and points of arguments, but there are few who see in the calling of this conference any indications that this may be the case.

The coffee maker was going full blast now and Enoch threw the paper down and strode to the stove to snatch it off. From the cupboard he got a cup and went to the table with it.

But before he began to eat, he went back to the desk and, opening a drawer, got out his chart and spread it on the table. Once again he wondered just how valid it might be, although in certain parts of it, at times, it seemed to make a certain sort of sense.

He had based it on the Mizar theory of statistics and had been forced, because of the nature of his subject, to shift some of the factors, to substitute some values. He wondered now, for the thousandth time, if he had made an error somewhere. Had his shifting and substitution destroyed the validity of the system? And if so, how could he correct the errors to restore validity?

Here the factors were, he thought: the birth rate and the total population of the Earth, the death rate, the values of currencies, the spread of living costs, attendance of places of worship, medical advances, technological developments, industrial indices, the labor market, world trade trends-and many others, including some that at first glance might not seem too relevant: the auction price of art objects, vacation preferences and movements, the speed of transportation, the incidence of insanity.

The statistical method developed by the mathematicians of Mizar, he knew, would work anywhere, on anything, if applied correctly. But he had been forced to twist it in translating an alien planet's situation to fit the situation here on Earth-and in consequence of that twisting, did it still apply?

He shuddered as he looked at it. For if he'd made no mistake, if he'd handled everything correctly, if his translations had done no violence to the concept, then the Earth was headed straight for another major war, for a holocaust of nuclear destruction.

He let loose of the corners of the chart and it rolled itself back into a cylinder.

He reached for one of the fruits the Sirrah being had brought him and bit into it. He rolled it on his tongue, savoring the delicacy of the taste. It was, he decided, as good as that strange, birdlike being had guaranteed it would be.

There had been a time, he remembered, when he had held some hope that the chart based on the Mizar theory might show, if not a way to end all war, at least a way to keep the peace. But the chart had never given any hint of the road to peace. Inexorably, relentlessly, it had led the way to war.

How many other wars, he wondered, could the people of the Earth endure?

No man could say, of course, but it might be just one more. For the weapons that would be used in the coming conflict had not as yet been measured and there was no man who could come close to actually estimating the results these weapons would produce.

War had been bad enough when men faced one another with their weapons in their hands, but in any present war great payloads of destruction would go hurtling through the skies to engulf whole cities-aimed not at military concentrations, but at total populations.

He reached out his hand for the chart again, then pulled it back. There was no further need of looking at it. He knew it all by heart. There was no hope in it. He might study it and puzzle over it until the crack of doom and it would not change a whit. There was no hope at all. The world was thundering once again, in a blind red haze of fury and of helplessness, down the road to war.

He went on with his eating and the fruit was even better than it had been at first bite. "Next time," the being had said, "I will bring you more." But it might be a long time before he came again, and he might never come. There were many of them who passed through only once, although there were a few who showed up every week or so-old, regular travelers who had become close friends.

And there had been, he recalled, that little group of Hazers who, years ago, had made arrangements for extra long stopovers at the station so they could sit around this very table and talk the hours away, arriving laden with hampers and with baskets of things to eat and drink, as if it were a picnic.

But finally they had stopped their coming and it had been years since he'd seen any one of them. And he regretted it, for they'd been the best of companions.

He drank an extra cup of coffee, sitting idly in the chair, thinking about those good old days when the band of Hazers came.

His ears caught the faint rustling and he glanced quickly up to see her sitting on the sofa, dressed in the demure hoop skirts of the 1860s.

"Mary!" he said, surprised, rising to his feet.

She was smiling at him in her very special way and she was beautiful, he thought, as no other woman ever had been beautiful.

"Mary," he said, "it's so nice to have you here."

And now, leaning on the mantelpiece, dressed in Union blue, with his belted saber and his full black mustache, was another of his friends.

"Hello, Enoch," David Ransome said. "I hope we don't intrude."

"Never," Enoch told him. "How can two friends intrude?"

He stood beside the table and the past was with him, the good and restful past, the rose-scented and unhaunted past that had never left him.

Somewhere in the distance was the sound of fife and drum and the jangle of the battle harness as the boys marched off to war, with the colonel glorious in his full-dress uniform upon the great black stallion, and the regimental flags snapping in the stiff June breeze.

He walked across the room and over to the sofa. He made a little bow to Mary.

"With your permission, ma'am," he said.

"Please do," she said. "If you should happen to be busy…"

"Not at all," he said. "I was hoping you would come."

He sat down on the sofa, not too close to her, and he saw her hands were folded, very primly, in her lap. He wanted to reach out and take her hands in his and hold them for a moment, but he knew he couldn't.

For she wasn't really there.

"It's been almost a week," said Mary, "since I've seen you. How is your work going, Enoch?"

He shook his head. "I still have all the problems. The watchers still are out there. And the chart says war."

David left the mantel and came across the room. He sat down in a chair and arranged his saber.

"War, the way they fight it these days," he declared, "would be a sorry business. Not the way we fought it, Enoch."

"No," said Enoch, "not the way we fought it. And while a war would be bad enough itself, there is something worse. If Earth fights another war, our people will be barred, if not forever, at least for many centuries, from the cofraternity of space."

"Maybe that's not so bad," said David. "We may not be ready to join the ones in space."

"Perhaps not," Enoch admitted. "I rather doubt we are. But we could be some day. And that day would be shoved far into the future if we fight another war. You have to make some pretense of being civilized to join those other races."

"Maybe," Mary said, "they might never know. About a war, I mean. They go no place but this station."

Enoch shook his head. "They would know. I think they're watching us.

And anyhow, they would read the papers."

"The papers you subscribe to?"

"I save them for Ulysses. That pile over in the corner. He takes them back to Galactic Central every time he comes. He's very interested in Earth, you know, from the years he spent here. And from Galactic Central, once he'd read them, I have a hunch they travel to the corners of the galaxy."

"Can you imagine," David asked, "what the promotion departments of those newspapers might have to say about it if they only knew their depth of circulation."

Enoch grinned at the thought of it.

"There's that paper down in Georgia," David said, "that covers Dixie like the dew. They'd have to think of something that goes with galaxy."

"Glove," said Mary quickly. "Covers the galaxy like a glove. What do you think of that?"

"Excellent," said David.

"Poor Enoch," Mary said contritely. "Here we make our jokes and Enoch has his problems."

"Not mine to solve, of course," Enoch told her. "I'm just worried by them. All I have to do is stay inside the station and there are no problems. Once you close the door here, the problems of the world are securely locked outside."

"But you can't do that."

"No, I can't," said Enoch.

"I think you may be right," said David, "in thinking that these other races may be watching us. With an eye, perhaps, to some day inviting the human race to join them. Otherwise, why would they have wanted to set up a station here on Earth?"

"They're expanding the network all the time," said Enoch. "They needed a station in this solar system to carry out their extension into this spiral arm."

"Yes, that's true enough," said David, "but it need not have been the Earth. They could have built a station out on Mars and used an alien for a keeper and still have served their purpose."

"I've often thought of that," said Mary. "They wanted a station on the Earth and an Earthman as its keeper. There must be a reason for it."

"I had hoped there was," Enoch told her, "but I'm afraid they came too soon. It's too early for the human race. We aren't grown up. We still are juveniles."

"It's a shame," said Mary. "We'd have so much to learn. They know so much more than we. Their concept of religion, for example."

"I don't know," said Enoch, "whether it's actually a religion. It seems to have few of the trappings we associate with religion. And it is not based on faith. It doesn't have to be. It is based on knowledge. These people know, you see."

"You mean the spiritual force."

"It is there," said Enoch, "just as surely as all the other forces that make up the universe. There is a spiritual force, exactly as there is time and space and gravitation and all the other factors that make up the immaterial universe. It is there and they can establish contact with it…"

"But don't you think," asked David, "that the human race may sense this? They don't know it, but they sense it. And are reaching out to touch it. They haven't got the knowledge, so they must do the best they can with faith. And that faith goes back a far way. Back, perhaps, deep into the prehistoric days. A crude faith, then, but a sort of faith, a grasping for faith."

"I suppose so," Enoch said. "But it actually wasn't the spiritual force I was thinking of. There are all the other things, the material things, the methods, the philosophies that the human race could use. Name almost any branch of science and there is something there for us, more than what we have."

But his mind went back to that strange business of the spiritual force and the even stranger machine which had been built eons ago, by means of which the galactic people were able to establish contact with the force. There was a name for that machine, but there was no word in the English language which closely approximated it. «Talisman» was the closest, but Talisman was too crude a word. Although that had been the word that Ulysses had used when, some years ago, they had talked of it.

There were so many things, so many concepts, he thought, out in the galaxy which could not be adequately expressed in any tongue on Earth. The Talisman was more than a talisman and the machine which had been given the name was more than a mere machine. Involved in it, as well as certain mechanical concepts, was a psychic concept, perhaps some sort of psychic energy that was unknown on Earth. That and a great deal more. He had read some of the literature on the spiritual force and on the Talisman and had realized, he remembered, in the reading of it, how far short he fell, how far short the human race must fall, in an understanding of it.

The Talisman could be operated only by certain beings with certain types of minds and something else besides (could it be, he wondered, with certain kinds of souls?). «Sensitives» was the word he had used in his mental translation of the term for these kinds of people, but once again, he could not be sure if the word came close to fitting. The Talisman was placed in the custody of the most capable, or the most efficient, or the most devoted (whichever it might be) of the galactic sensitives, who carried it from star to star in a sort of eternal progression. And on each planet the people came to make personal and individual contact with the spiritual force through the intervention and the agency of the Talisman and its custodian.

He found that he was shivering at the thought of it-the pure ecstasy of reaching out and touching the spirituality that flooded through the galaxy and, undoubtedly, through the universe. The assurance would be there, he thought, the assurance that life had a special place in the great scheme of existence, that one, no matter how small, how feeble, how insignificant, still did count for something in the vast sweep of space and time.

"What is the trouble, Enoch?" Mary asked.

"Nothing," he said. "I was just thinking. I am sorry. I will pay attention now."

"You were talking," David said, "about what we could find in the galaxy. There was, for one thing, that strange sort of math. You were telling us of it once and it was something…"

"The Arcturus math, you mean," said Enoch. "I know little more than when I told you of it. It is too involved. It is based on behavior symbolism."

There was some doubt, he told himself, that you could even call it math, although, by analysis, that was probably what it was. It was something that the scientists of Earth, no doubt, could use to make possible the engineering of the social sciences as logically and as efficiently as the common brand of math had been used to build the gadgets of the Earth.

"And the biology of that race in Andromeda," Mary said. "The ones who colonized all those crazy planets."

"Yes, I know. But Earth would have to mature a bit in its intellectual and emotional outlook before we'd venture to use it as the Andromedans did. Still, I suppose that it would have its applications."

He shuddered inwardly as he thought of how the Andromedans used it. And that, he knew, was proof that he still was a man of Earth, kin to all the bias and the prejudice and the shibboleths of the human mind. For what the Andromedans had done was only common sense. If you cannot colonize a planet in your present shape, why, then you change your shape. You make yourself into the sort of being that can live upon the planet and then you take it over in that alien shape into which you have changed yourself. If you need to be a worm, then you become a worm-or an insect or a shellfish or whatever it may take. And you change not your body only, but your mind as well, into the kind of mind that will be necessary to live upon that planet.

"There are all the drugs," said Mary, "and the medicines. The medical knowledge that could apply to Earth. There was that little package Galactic Central sent you."

"A packet of drugs," said Enoch, "that could cure almost every ill on Earth. That, perhaps, hurts me most of all. To know they're up there in the cupboard, actually on this planet, where so many people need them."

"You could mail out samples," David said, "to medical associations or to some drug concern."

Enoch shook his bead. "I thought of that, of course. But I have the galaxy to consider. I have an obligation to Galactic Central. They have taken great precautions that the station not be known. There are Ulysses and all my other alien friends. I cannot wreck their plans. I cannot play the traitor to them. For when you think of it, Galactic Central and the work it's doing is more important than the Earth."

"Divided loyalties," said David with slight mockery in his tone.

"That is it, exactly. There had been a time, many years ago, when I thought of writing papers for submissions to some of the scientific journals. Not the medical journals, naturally, for I know nothing about medicine. The drugs are there, of course, lying on the shelf, with directions for their use, but they are merely so many pills or powders or ointments, or whatever they may be. But there were other things I knew of, other things I'd learned. Not too much about them, naturally, but at least some hints in some new directions. Enough that someone could pick them up and go on from there. Someone who might know what to do with them."

"But look here," David said, "that wouldn't have worked out. You have no technical nor research background, no educational record. You're not tied up with any school or college. The journals just don't publish you unless you can prove yourself."

"I realize that, of course. That's why I never wrote the papers. I knew there was no use. You can't blame the journals. They must be responsible. Their pages aren't open to just anyone. And even if they had viewed the papers with enough respect to want to publish them, they would have had to find out who I was. And that would have led straight back to the station."

"But even if you could have gotten away with it," David pointed out, "you'd still not have been clear. You said a while ago you had a loyalty to Galactic Central."

"If," said Enoch, "in this particular case I could have got away with it, it might have been all right. If you just threw out ideas and let some Earth scientists develop them, there'd be no harm done Galactic Central. The main problem, of course, would be not to reveal the source."

"Even so," said David, "there'd be little you actually could tell them. What I mean is that generally you haven't got enough to go on. So much of this galactic knowledge is off the beaten track."

"I know," said Enoch. "The mental engineering of Mankalinen III, for one thing. If the Earth could know of that, our people undoubtedly could find a clue to the treatment of the neurotic and the mentally disturbed. We could empty all the institutions and we could tear them down or use them for something else. There'd be no need of them. But no one other than the people out on Mankalinen Ill could ever tell us of it. I only know they are noted for their mental engineering, but that is all I know. I haven't the faintest inkling of what it's all about. It's something that you'd have to get from the people out there."

"What you are really talking of," said Mary, "are all the nameless sciences-the ones that no human has ever thought about."

"Like us, perhaps," said David.

"David!" Mary cried.

"There is no sense," said David angrily, "in pretending we are people."

"But you are," said Enoch tensely. "You are people to me. You are the only people that I have. What is the matter, David?"

"I think," said David, "that the time has come to say what we really are. That we are illusion. That we are created and called up. That we exist only for one purpose, to come and talk with you, to fill in for the real people that you cannot have."

"Mary," Enoch cried, "you don't think that way, too! You can't think that way!"

He reached out his arms to her and then he let them drop-terrified at the realization of what he'd been about to do. It was the first time he'd ever tried to touch her. It was the first time, in all the years, that he had forgotten.

"I am sorry, Mary. I should not have done that."

Her eyes were bright with tears.

"I wish you could," she said. "Oh, how I wish you could!"

"David," he said, not turning his head.

"David left," said Mary.

"He won't be back," said Enoch.

Mary shook her head.

"What is the matter, Mary? What is it all about? What have I done!"

"Nothing," Mary said, "except that you made us too much like people. So that we became more human, until we were entirely human. No longer puppets, no longer pretty dolls, but really actual people. I think David must resent it-not that he is people, but that being people, he is still a shadow. It did not matter when we were dolls or puppets, for we were not human then. We had no human feeling."

"Mary, please," he said. "Mary, please forgive me." She leaned toward him and her face was lighted by deep tenderness. "There is nothing to forgive," she said. "Rather, I suppose, we should thank you for it. You created us out of a love of us and a need of us and it is wonderful to know that you are loved and needed."

"But I don't create you any more," Enoch pleaded. "There was a time, long ago, I had to. But not any longer. Now you come to visit me of your own free will."

How many years? he wondered. It must be all of fifty. And Mary had been the first, and David had been second. Of all the others of them, they had been the first and were the closest and the dearest.

And before that, before he'd even tried, he'd spent other years in studying that nameless science stemming from the thaumaturgists of Alphard XXII.

There had been a day and a state of mind when it would have been black magic, but it was not black magic. Rather, it was the orderly manipulation of certain natural aspects of the universe as yet quite unsuspected by the human race. Perhaps aspects that Man never would discover. For there was not, at least at the present moment, the necessary orientation of the scientific mind to initiate the research that must precede discovery.

"David felt," said Mary, "that we could not go on forever, playing out our little sedate visits. There had to be a time when we faced up to what we really are."

"And the rest of them?"

"I am sorry, Enoch. The rest of them as well."

"But you? How about you, Mary?"

"I don't know," she said. "It is different with me. I love you very much."

"And I…"

"No, that's not what I mean. Don't you understand! I'm in love with you."

He sat stricken, staring at her, and there was a great roaring in the world, as if he were standing still and the world and time were rushing swiftly past him.

"If it only could have stayed," she said, "the way it was at first. Then we were glad of our existence and our emotions were so shallow and we seemed to be so happy. Like little happy children, running in the sun. But then we all grew up. And I think I the most of all."

She smiled at him and tears were in her eyes.

"Don't take it so hard, Enoch. We can…"

"My dear," he said, "I've been in love with you since the first day that I saw you. I think maybe even before that."

He reached out a hand to her, then pulled it back, remembering.

"I did not know," she said. "I should not have told you. You could live with it until you knew I loved you, too."

He nodded dumbly.

She bowed her head. "Dear God, we don't deserve this. We have done nothing to deserve it."

She raised her head and looked at him. "If I could only touch you."

"We can go on," he said, "as we have always done. You can come to see me any time you want. We can…"

She shook her bead. "It wouldn't work," she said. "There could neither of us stand it."

He knew that she was right. He knew that it was done. For fifty years she and the others had been dropping in to visit. And they'd come no more. For the fairyland was shattered and the magic spell was broken. He'd be left alone-more alone than ever, more alone than before he'd ever known her.

She would not come again and he could never bring himself to call her up again, even if he could, and his shadow world and his shadow love, the only love he'd ever really had, would be gone forever.

"Good bye, my dear," he said.

But it was too late. She was already gone.

And from far off, it seemed, he heard the moaning whistle that said a message had come in.