The Book
Page 3
seemed surprised that the ship had landed,and only the children hung around and inspected it. Almost all theothers went off about their regular business--which seemed to befarming--and when Beauclaire tried learning the language, he foundvery few of the people willing to spend time enough to teach him.
But they were always more or less polite, and by making a pest ofhimself he began to succeed. On another day when Wyatt came back fromthe brown-eyed girl, Beauclaire reported some progress.
"It's a beautiful language," he said as Wyatt came in. "Amazinglywell-developed. It's something like our Latin--same type ofconstruction, but much softer and more flexible. I've been trying toread their book."
Wyatt sat down thoughtfully and lit a cigarette.
"Book?" he said.
"Yes. They have a lot of books, but _everybody_ has this oneparticular book--they keep it in a place of honor in their houses.I've tried to ask them what it is--I think it's a bible of somekind--but they just won't bother to tell me."
Wyatt shrugged, his mind drifting away.
"I just don't understand them," Beauclaire said plaintively, glad tohave someone to talk to. "I don't get them at all. They're quick,they're bright, but they haven't the damnedest bit of curiosity about_anything_, not even each other. My God, they don't even gossip!"
Wyatt, contented, puffed quietly. "Do you think not seeing the starshas something to do with it? Ought to have slowed down the developmentof physics and math."
Beauclaire shook his head. "No. It's very strange. There's somethingelse. Have you noticed the way the ground seems to be sharp and jaggedalmost everywhere you look, sort of chewed up as if there was a war?Yet these people swear that they've never had a war within livingmemory, and they don't keep any history so a man could really findout."
When Wyatt didn't say anything, he went on:
"And I can't see the connection about no stars. Not with these people.I don't care if you can't see the roof of the house you live in, youstill have to have a certain amount of curiosity in order to stayalive. But these people just don't give a damn. The ship landed. Youremember that? Out of the sky come Gods like thunder--"
* * * * *
Wyatt smiled. At another time, at any time in the past, he would havebeen very much interested in this sort of thing. But now he was not.He felt himself--remote, sort of--and he, like these people, did notparticularly give a damn.
But the problem bothered Beauclaire, who was new and fresh and lookingfor reasons, and it also bothered Cooper.
"Damn!" Coop grumbled as he came stalking into the room. "Here youare, Billy. I'm bored stiff. Been all over this whole crummy placelookin for you. Where you been?" He folded himself into a chair,scratched his black hair broodingly with long, sharp fingers. "Game o'cards?"
"Not just now, Coop," Wyatt said, lying back and resting.
Coop grunted. "Nothin to do, nothin to do," he swiveled his eyes toBeauclaire. "How you comin, son? How soon we leave this place? LikeSunday afternoon all the time."
Beauclaire was always ready to talk about the problem. He outlined itnow to Cooper again, and Wyatt, listening, grew very tired. There isjust this one continent, Beauclaire said, and just one nation, andeveryone spoke the same tongue. There was no government, no police, nolaw that he could find. There was not even, as far as he could tell, asystem of marriage. You couldn't even call it a society, really, butdammit, it existed--and Beauclaire could not find a single trace ofrape or murder or violence of any kind. The people here, he said, justdidn't give a damn.
"You said it," Coop boomed. "I think they're all whacky."
"But happy," Wyatt said suddenly. "You can see that they're happy."
"Sure, they're happy," Coop chortled. "They're nuts. They got funnylooks in their eyes. Happiest guys I know are screwy as--"
The sound which cut him off, which grew and blossomed and eventuallyexplained everything, had begun a few seconds ago, too softly to beheard. Now suddenly, from a slight rushing noise, it burst into anenormous, thundering scream.
They leaped up together, horrified, and an overwhelming, giganticblast threw them to the floor.
* * * * *
The ground rocked, the ship fluttered and settled crazily. In that onelong second, the monstrous noise of a world collapsing grew in the airand filled the room, filled the men and everything with oneincredible, crushing, grinding shock.
When it was over there was another rushing sound, farther away, andanother, and two more tremendous explosions; and though all in all thenoise lasted for perhaps five seconds, it was the greatest any of themhad ever heard, and the world beneath them continued to flutter,wounded and trembling, for several minutes.
Wyatt was first out of the ship, shaking his head as he ran to getback his hearing. To the west, over a long slight rise of green andyellow trees, a vast black cloud of smoke, several miles long and veryhigh, was rising and boiling. As he stared and tried to steady hisfeet upon the shaking ground, he was able to gather himself enough torealize what this was.
Meteors.
He had heard meteors before, long before, on a world of Aldebaran. Nowhe could smell the same sharp burning disaster, and feel the windrushing wildly back to the west, where the meteors had struck andhurled the air away.
In that moment Wyatt thought of the girl, and although she meantnothing to him at all--none of these people meant anything in theleast to him--he began running as fast as he could toward the west.
Behind him, white-faced and bewildered, came Beauclaire and Cooper.
When Wyatt reached the top of the rise, the great cloud covered thewhole valley before him. Fires were burning in the crushed forest tohis right, and from the lay of the cloud he could tell that thevillage of the people was not there any more.
He ran down into the smoke, circling toward the woods and the streamwhere he had passed an afternoon with the girl. For a while he losthimself in the smoke, stumbling over rocks and fallen trees.
Gradually the smoke lifted, and he began running into some of thepeople. Now he wished that he could speak the language.
They were all wandering quietly away from the site of their village,none of them looking back. Wyatt could see a great many dead as hemoved, but he had no time to stop, no time to wonder. It was twilightnow, and the sun was gone. He thanked God that he had a flashlightwith him; long after night came, he was searching in the raw gashwhere the first meteor had fallen.
He found the girl, dazed and bleeding, in a cleft between two rocks.He knelt and took her in his arms. Gently, gratefully, through thenight and the fires and past the broken and the dead, he carried herback to the ship.
* * * * *
It had all become frighteningly clear to Beauclaire. He talked withthe people and began to understand.
The meteors had been falling since the beginning of time, so thepeople said. Perhaps it was the fault of the great dust-cloud throughwhich this planet was moving; perhaps it was that this had not alwaysbeen a one-planet system--a number of other planets, broken andshredded by unknown gravitational forces, would provide enough meteorsfor a very long time. And the air of this planet being thin, there wasno real protection as there was on Earth. So year after year themeteors fell. In unpredictable places, at unknowable times, themeteors fell, like stones from the sling of God. They had been fallingsince the beginning of time. So the people, the unconcerned people,said.
And here was Beauclaire's clue. Terrified and shaken as he was,Beauclaire was the kind of man who saw reason in everything. Hefollowed this one to the end.
In the meantime, Wyatt nursed the girl. She had not been badly hurt,and recovered quickly. But her family and friends were mostly deadnow, and so she had no reason to leave the ship.
Gradually Wyatt learned the language. The girl's name was ridiculouswhen spoken in English, so he called her Donna, which was somethinglike her real name. She was, like all her people, unconcerned aboutthe meteors and her dead. Sh
e was extraordinarily cheerful. Herfeatures were classic, her cheeks slim and smiling, her teeth perfect.In the joy and whiteness of her, Wyatt saw each day what he had seenand known in his mind on the day the meteors fell. Love to him wassomething new. He was not sure whether or not he was in love, and hedid not care. He realized that he needed this girl and was at homewith her, could rest with her and talk with her, and watch her walkand understand what beauty was; and in the ship in those days a greatpeace began to settle over him.
When the girl was well again, Beauclaire was in the middle oftranslating the book--the bible-like book which all the people seemedto treasure so much. As his work progressed, a striking change beganto come over him. He spent much time alone under the sky, watching thesoft haze through which, very soon, the stars would