by Jesse Roarke
manythings. He became aware of who Aristotle was, and what he had done. Hedeveloped an acquaintance with all the great men and cultures of thelost lands of Europa. He learned that he lived on the west coast ofAmeru, and that this coast was one large City; he learned that the oncelarge continent had dwindled greatly in the disasters, that the oceanwaves now poured over the great plains, and all to the eastward. Hefelt occasionally a longing to see the mountains, and the further waters.
He learned and throve. He began to see other figures more distinctly:once in the corridor he met a Man face to face, and they smiled andbowed to each other. It had been a small Man, with a funny beard, andvery bright eyes. It had not been like anybody he had ever seen in theCity. But suddenly he knew that he was not like anybody in the City, andthat it could no longer be his home. The shock of the fact that the Citywas not everything, that there was existence, and desirable existence,outside of it, came to him strongly; but now he was ready for it. Whenthe tumult was over, his mind was at last born, and he was a humanbeing, ready to aim for high goals, and to co-operate with destiny.
That night much of a strange nature, called "Sunrise", came to him, andstrange names, faces, and disciplines were vaguely lodged within him. Heawoke with a most definite feeling of readiness, and with his breakfasthe knew, beyond doubt, that "When the disciple is ready, the Masterappears."
When he had finished eating, he left the library, and walked in thought.How dismal everything was! Nobody knowing, or caring about anythingreally important; nobody seeing anything. And certainly they did not seehim: but he saw them very clearly. And how much was there, still to beseen, all around him? And what was it, what did it mean? He had to getout, he had to find an answer.
He pushed the nearest button, and slid into the suave black Car thatnoiselessly approached. He had never seen a black Car before. Hewondered if his eyes were still playing tricks upon him, if he wouldever see anything aright. Then he dismissed it from his mind.
"Take me out of the City", he said.
There was a slight hesitation; then they were moving, slowly andquietly, in a northeasterly direction.
* * * * *
It was a long ride, past all the familiar features of the City,multiplied many fold. At length the Car shuddered slightly, and thevirtue seemed to go out of it in a gentle rush: it stopped, utterlystill, and the silent door slid open with an eloquent finality. He gotout, and the Car seemed to hasten away as from an undesired doom.
But his weird was upon him; he thought so, in the transfixing old terms;and he turned and beheld an open field, with mountains in the distance.And it came to him that he had ridden this way before, and seen nothingbut City all around him. He thought then of enigmatic things that hehad heard and read in the library: of how certain Tibetans renderedthemselves invisible, or at least passed unseen, by shielding theirthought waves--by giving out no handle for perception to grasp. Sohad this landscape hidden itself, it seemed: shielded itself fromdesecration.
Or perhaps there were beings, perhaps there was existence, that gavecontinual indication, bristled with handles, as it were: but handlesthat could not be grasped or made use of by an organism insufficientlydeveloped. It seemed more of a truism, the more he thought of it.
But it did not seem to matter, on this bright new day. He dismissed thequestion and stepped forward, into the yielding grass.
What a great thing it was to have a mind, to feel alive on such a day!He tried to remember how dim, how crippled he had been; it seemedimpossible. Could he have been only one poor, flickering candle, he whonow blazed with the light of a hundred, or a thousand? Could he haverattled on one cylinder, he who now moved smoothly and noiselessly onsixteen or twenty? It was too marvelous for words, or for thoughts.
For a long time he walked, perspiring freely, then puffing, limping andlaboring. It was hot, with no breezes from the sea. An occasional rillwas refreshing, and a glade was cooling: the leaves rustled gently inthe now and then quickened air, and the birds were sweet with song. Butthere was no sign of human life. At length he sat down on a fallen log,and rested.
He sat long, thinking and dozing. The sun was low in the sky when hearose, and followed some prompting to a ridge not too greatly in thedistance. He had come without provision of any kind, and with no fearfor his welfare: he would see. The ground seemed soft enough, if he hadto sleep there; he took off his shoes and socks, and enjoyed the coolgrass.
He walked on toward the ridge, slowly and confidently, his shoes andsocks in his hand. He had not eaten for many hours, but he did not seemhungry. Food was not the tremendously important thing that it used tobe. He thought of his old esurience, and smiled. Whatever his god was,it was not his belly, it was not his body at all. He still had enoughflab to live on for some time without inconvenience, and it would bebetter to live on it, than to keep stuffing himself. There were no womeneither, and no androids. They were tiresome, and tiring, things. Hesighed almost with contentment.
* * * * *
Soon he crossed the ridge, and saw the smiling farmland in the valleynot far below. This was where the old food supplies had come from: thishad been the life of all but a few, for many centuries. There was agreat peace over it all. With a sense as of treading on hallowed ground,he descended steadily, and soon came upon a large and rambling woodenhouse, unpainted, and comfortable. Really comfortable, in a human way,not in the sham way of the City. There was an elderly woman on theporch, serenely rocking. As he approached, she smiled.
"Welcome, stranger!" she said. "Come on up and rest awhile."
He was glad of the invitation, and he mounted the generous and solidsteps with his shoes and socks still in his hand. He sat down andredonned them, under her friendly smile.
"It feels good, doesn't it?" she asserted. "The real earth, under realfeet. Maybe you read the poet Hopkins before you got out. I did, rightat the last. One poem has always stuck with me, and especially this oneline of it:
Neither can feet feel, being shod.
I wanted to feel things; I was tired of being shod, and insulated,and deadened. I was just a young girl, then. I felt charged with thegrandeur of God, as Hopkins put it, and I had to get out. I've seen alot of God's grandeur, and a lot of His blessing, through a long life.It's been good, here in the real world.
"But it's no use chattering," she continued. "That doesn't reallyexpress or communicate anything. Nature has got a bigger and bettervoice than any of us, and the best thing to do is just to listen for it.I hope you'll stay with us awhile. The longer the better. We like tohelp people who've just escaped. But I still talk too much. Supper'll beready pretty soon, and I have to go tend to it for a few minutes. Justyou sit there and be calm: listen for the still voices."
He was glad to do so, and gladder still to see the men of the familyreturning from the fields. There were three of them, tall and strong,real human beings, healthy and alive, and little marked by unprofitablecare. They had a faith, it seemed, a communion, a divine assurance, moreor less fulfilled.
* * * * *
The older man, the father, welcomed him again, and they were soon seatedat the supper table. He noticed that the men ate heartily, and hadyet not an ounce of excess flesh. He rued his own bulk, and ate butsparingly, only out of politeness. But food had never tasted so goodbefore.
The two sons were already approaching middle age, and were stillunmarried. This occasioned their mother some concern. But, as she said,they didn't seem to care, and God or nature could take care of thesethings better than people could. There was no use straining.
"And there aren't so many young women around," she mused. "There aren'tmany people. Whatever love-making there may be, there's very littlebreeding. It's like the City, in that respect. It seems this just isn'ta very good world these days, comparatively speaking, and people arebeing held back till it gets better. There seems to be a sort of a cloudover everything. I don't know. Anyway, we're contented. At least we hav
eour minds and hearts, and our patience."
He stayed a week, a month: into the natural influences he vigorouslyand gratefully plunged. He helped with the farm work, and grew lean andhard, and mentally as well as physically strong. He stayed on, throughthe winter.
Then, with the spring, his own fertile ground began to burst and ache,and he was no longer satisfied. He was not nature itself, to endureunmoved the countless cycles of diversified sameness; he was rather aflower that faded with a season, a leaf that would soon fall. He waslike a single wave of the vast ocean, and like that wave he must foreverbe moving on, questioning.
* * * * *
And so he left the farm very early one morning, and walked north, as hecould tell by the stars. They would not be surprised, and it was betterthis way, without farewells. They would know that, for him, they hadserved their purpose, and would be
