Donald A. Wollheim (ed) (8 page)

The drums beat faster.

The orange fires painted shadow-dances along
the walls.

It was the time of the Coming Together.

Keith felt his heart beating with fierce pride in his chest, and he held
his wife close by his side. Here in the night under an alien sky that glowed
with the light of a million moons—here, at last, was a dream that could not
die.

Ralph
Nostrand
was
silent, watching.

The
old people—it was hard to think of them as robots, for they had been fathers
and mothers and friends—stayed in the rear circles, in the shadows, watching
the children they had led through life.

It was impossible to believe that they were
not proud.

For
many long hours the ceremony went on through the long, long night. There was
feasting and singing—and a little gay romancing among the young men and women
from faraway lands, for these people were not saints.

Fifty
hours after the Coming Together had
begun,
the old,
old chant was started by the pool that was the Home of the Spirit. The words
were mysterious and strange, but did not the gods say that one day they would
be filled with meaning?

Keith saw his two sons singing by the pool.
He felt his wife proud and happy by his side.
"Beyond the clouds that roof our world,
beyond the rains that cool our skies—"

"Beyond
the clouds, beyond the rain . .
."
"Beyond
our skies lie other skies—" "Other skies, other skies . .
."

"Beyond
the great sea where floats our world, beyond our sea floats another
shore—"

"Another
shore, another shore . .
."

"And
there in the great beyond the green Earth waits for us, waits for the coming of
our silver arrows—"

"Silver
arrows into beyond, beyond . .
."

"The green Earth waits in the great
beyond, and there our far brothers dance under a clean blue sky—"

"
Stiver
arrows into beyond, beyond . .
."

"Oh, our brothers of Earth are waiting
for us in the great
bqyond
—"

"Waiting, waiting for the Coming Together!"

"Beyond the clouds that roof our world,
beyond the rains that cool our skies—"

"Waiting, waiting for the Coming Together!"

The drums stopped and there was a silver
silence.

A fight rain fell from the glowing clouds and
sprinkled the plaza with cool, sweet water.

Keith could not speak. He held his wife's
hand and shared her deep understanding. No matter what happened, he was glad
that they had come to Venus, glad even if they failed, for it was better to
fail than never to have tried at all.

He turned slowly and looked at Captain
Nostrand
.

Nostrand
stood very straight, the firelight touching
the old shadows on his face.

His eyes saw far beyond the village of
Halaja
.

He smiled and held out his
hand to Keith. He nodded firmly.

Around the plaza the drums rolled and the
singing began again.

VI.

Five years after
Ralph
Nostrand
had
left for Earth, the village of
Halaja
still lay
peacefully by the slow blue water of the Smoke River.

Half die old robots had died and been buried,
and Bill and Ruth Knudsen had gone home to a small farm in Michigan.

It was time for the Venus colonies to strike off
on
their own
. It was time for the men and women who had guided the new
world to return to the old world.

"I wish we could stay, Keith," Carrie said.

"Me, too.
But this isn't our world, and we're not
needed any more."

"I never thought that
it would be harder to leave than it was to come."

"I never thought we'd
be here nineteen years, either."

"I'm glad we won't
have to say good-by to our boys."

"It'll
be rough enough as it is, Carrie. We'll just bring our old reasonable
facsimiles in and let '
em
die. I hate to do that to
the boys, but they mustn't suspect anything."

They
walked down the jungle pathway toward
Halaja
, arm in
arm, already trying to remember the world they had to leave. Fortunately, the
two robots that had originally been designed to replace them when they went
back to Earth were still waiting at the station clearing.

Robots had infinite patience.

They
would go to
Halaja
when Keith and Carrie slipped
away,
and there they would sicken and die. They would be
buried with the rest in the clearing by the Smoke River, where one day their
sons, too, would lie— "I still wish we could stay, Keith."

He kissed her and ruffled her blond hair.
"It's our turn now, baby. We mustn't rock the boat."

Still, they postponed it as long as they could.

They found excuses to stay in
Halaja
with
their sons.

It took the message from
Nostrand
to make them
leave. It came one night and Mark flew it out in the last station copter. It
read:

KEITH: OLD MAN VANDERVORT VERY ILL AND NOT
EXPECTED TO LIVE. HE WANTS TO SEE YOU IF YOU CAN COME IN TIME. SHIP ON WAY TO
YOU NOW.
ALL O.K. AT THIS END.
WHAT'RE YOU DOING UP
THERE-GOING NATIVE? (SIGNED) RALPH.

"Well," Carrie said, "he couldn't live forever."

"He
took a stab at it, though," Keith said.

"We'll have to go."

"Yes. We'll have to go."

They deft the village that
had been their home one night in the rain, while their sons slept.
The two robot humanoids
who
were their identical twins climbed into the bed that was still warm from their
bodies.

Keith and Carrie walked together through the
plaza of
Halaja
, past the Home of the Spirit, and out
the gate. The rain was cold in their faces. They walked along the pathway
through the
Sirau
-fruit to the damp athletic field to
the west of the village.

They
did not look back.

The copter lifted them into the silver clouds for the last time and
carried them east to the station clearing. They said good-by to Mark
Kamoto
, who would follow them a year later on the voyage of
no return.

The ship that had carried them from Earth
nineteen years ago waited now in the rain to carry them back again.

They looked one last time at the gray-green
wall of the jungle and the yellow light spilling out from the domed station
house. They looked one last time at the banks of luminous clouds that flowed
like a sea of moons through the sky.

They
looked one last time westward into the night, toward the sleeping village of
Halaja
. They boarded the ship.

Ahead of them
was
Earth, and a dying man. Ahead of them, lost now in the immensities that swam
between the worlds, was an old, old man with a white beard and nervous blue
eyes that darted through the shadows of a too-hot room.

Ahead of them
was
James Murray Vandervort and a final question.

Why?

The
land
was crisp and hot and clean
under the Arizona sun. The air was charged
with a fresh golden tang that made you want to stand in the wonderful sand and
fill your lungs over and over again.

The sky was blue and cloudless. The greens of
the desert plants were as bright and vivid as if they had been newly painted.

Like flowers, Keith and
Carrie lifted their faces to the wind and sought the sun. It was good to be
back.

There was no time to go home, and so a Foundation copter lifted them up
into the desert air and carried them westward toward Los Angeles. They found
themselves flinching involuntarily at the freight liners that roared through
the air
lanes
and the flutter of copters that filled
the sky like butterflies. Los Angeles was so vast and white and
glearning
that they could hardly take it in. Far below
them, dots on the calm blue Pacific, the surfaced subs bobbed like schools of
porpoise.

The copter swung north along the coastline
and then veered off to the right up to
Vandervort's
Canyon. They landed on the patio field of the huge estate and an old
buder
took them in tow.

They walked through the richly-carpeted
hallways and up the marble stairs to the second floor. They walked down the
long gray passage and knocked on the mahogany door.

A tiny green light blinked on in the center of the door.

Keith and Carrie entered the huge room, and
it was almost like stepping from Earth to Venus. The hot, humid air boiled out
into the hallway like an overflowing lake.

The room had not changed. The wall-to-wall
brown rug was still there, and the tables and chairs and desks and fireplaces
and flowers and books and drapes—

But
the Old Man had changed.

Nineteen years had taken their toll.

Vandervort
was one hundred and twenty-four years old.

Even
the geriatrics specialists could not save him now.

The Old Man still sat in his huge, soft
chair. He seemed very tiny now, and lost. His white beard was a dirty gray and
his red face was blotched with unhealthy pink. His blue eyes were dull and
glazed.

Ralph
Nostrand
stood by his side, his face fighting with a smile of welcome.

They shook hands.

"Who is it?" choked the Old Man. "Who-s there? Is somebody
there?"

Keith leaned down toward him.
"Van," he said. "Van,
it's
Keith
Ortega."

James Murray Vandervort stiffened as though
an electric shock had shot through his thin, dry body. "Keith!" he
wheezed. He tried to get up, but could not move. "Is it really you—after
all these years?"

"Yes, Van."

The dead blue eyes swam into focus. The Old Man breathed fast and
shallow. "I have to know, Keith," he said. His voice was weak,
a
shadow of the boom that had once filled the chamber and chased the
darkness away. "It's been so hard.
I have to know."

Keith waited him out, feeling a vast pity for
the wreck of a human being that was dying in the big soft chair.
Pity— and something more than that.

"I had to hear you say it, say it with
your own voice," Van-
dervort
said, talking very
fast. His voice was such
a
whisper
that Keith could hardly hear him. "Is everything all right? Is it working,
Keith? Is it working?"

Keith made himself speak slowly and clearly.
"You don't need to worry, Van. It's all right. Everything is all right.
All the colonies are working just as we planned. Nothing can go wrong now. The
new culture of Venus will come through space to Earth within
a
century. The new culture pattern will hit the Earth like a shot in the
arm. We'll go on to the stars one day, Van. Everything is all right."

"I gave them the stars," the Old
Man said, his voice very tired. "I gave them the stars, didn't I?"

"Yes," Keith said.

The Old Man sank back into his chair in
sudden, exhausted relaxation. The old, dead eyes closed. There was a long,
hushed silence. "Is he all right?" Ralph asked. "I think
so."