Mari Wolf

“ Why don't they admit that we've lost, that the normals own the Earth? Why don't they stop breeding and let us die?"
"Your parents were normal, Eric. If all of us died, others would be born, someday."
He nodded and then he closed his eyes and fought against the despair that rose suddenly within him and blotted out the last of the contentment and the unreality. He fought against it and lost. And suddenly Lisa was very real, more real even than the books had ever been. And the dirty old women were suddenly people—individuals, not savages. ”

“ Walden said. "There aren't any others now. We'd know it if there were." He turned away from Eric, to the plastic wall that looked out across the garden and the children playing and the long, level, flower-carpeted plain.
"Sometimes, when there's more than one of them, they go out there away from us, out to the hills where it's wild. But they're found, of course. Found, and brought back." He sighed. "The last of them died when I was a boy."
Others like him. Within Walden's lifetime, others, cut off from their own race, lonely and rootless in the midst of the new. ”

“ Strange men, violent men: the barbarian trampling his enemy to death beneath his horse's hooves, the knight in armor marching to the Crusade, the spaceman. And the quieter men: the farmer, the artisan, the poet—they too were his people, and far easier to understand than the others.
The skill of reading mastered, and the long, sweeping vistas of the past. Their histories. Their wars. "Why did they fight, Walden?" And Walden's sigh. "I don't know, Eric, but they did." ”

“ She laughed again. "Their kindness means nothing. Their love means nothing. To them, we're animals."
The old woman, Nell, rocked back and forth, her face still in revery. Flies crawled over her bare arms, unheeded.
"I got away," Mag said. "I saw them coming. They can't run fast, and I knew the hiding places. I never went back to the valleys. Nell would have starved without me. And there was Lisa to care for, later...."
The flies settled on Eric's hands and he brushed them away, shivering.
Mag smiled. The bitterness left her face. "I'm glad I don't have to send Lisa down to the valley." ”

“ The old race was gone, gone with all its conflicts, all its violence, its stupidity—and its flaming rockets in the void and its Parthenon in the moonlight.
Eric came into the study and stopped. The room was filled with strangers. There were half a dozen men besides Walden, most of them fairly old, white-haired and studious looking. They all turned to look at him, watched him gravely without speaking.
"Well, there he is." Walden looked from face to face. "Are you still worried? Do you still think that one small boy constitutes a threat to the race? What about you, Abbot?" ”

“ We came here from the other mountains when Mag was only a baby."
They walked toward the hut, and as they neared it he smelled a new smell, that of stale smoke and stale sweat overlying the general odor of decay.
"Let's talk out here," he said, not wanting to go inside.
They sat down on the hard earth and the two women turned their faces toward him, Mag watching him intently, Nell listening, her head cocked to one side like an old crippled bird's.
"I always thought I was the only one like me," Eric said. "The people don't know of any others. They don't know you exist. They wouldn't believe it." ”

“ The world of the new race was peaceful, comfortable, lovely—and completely static. Only Eric knew the haunting loneliness that had carried the old race to the stars, and he couldn't communicate it, even if he had dared to! ”

“ But all the time he remembered his own trips to the canyon, taken so openly.
"Oh, Eric, they're not—"
He swung up over the last ridge and looked down, and her words choked off in her throat. Below them lay the canyon, and in it, the long line of aircars, landed now, cutting off the gorge, the light reflecting off them, bronze in the sunset. And the tiny figures of men were even now spreading out from the cars. ”

“ They had foreseen conflict, struggle between old race and new, suspicion and hatred and tragedy. The happy ending was superficial. Everyone was motivated as they had been motivated.
He shut the book and sat there, wanting to reach back across the years to the old race writers who had been so right and yet so terribly, blindly wrong. The writers who had seen in the new only a continuation of the old, of themselves, of their own fears and their own hungers.
"Why did they die, Walden?" He didn't expect an answer.
"Why does any race die, Eric?" ”

“ He thought of the years he had spent with Walden, learning, absorbing the old race knowledge, and he remembered that all through those years Walden had never once made him feel uncomfortable because of the difference between them.
He looked at the old man for a long time, wishing that it was day so he could read the other's expression, wondering how he had managed to take this man for granted for so long.
"Why?" he whispered. "Why are you helping me? Why aren't you like the others?"
"I never had a son, Eric. Perhaps that's the reason."
Eric thought of Myron and shook his head. ”

“ He didn't want to go back to the museum. He flew blindly, not looking down at the neat domed houses and the gardens and the people, but ahead, to the eastern sky and the upthrust scarp of the hills. The hills, where people like him had fled, for a little while.
The occasional aircars disappeared. The gardens dropped away, and the ordered color, and there was grass and bare dirt and, ahead, the scraggly trees and out-thrust rocks of the foothills. No people. Only the birds circling, crying to each other, curious about the car. Only the scurrying animals of the underbrush below. ”

“ The thin man, Drew, broke in angrily. "He's not full grown yet. Just fourteen, isn't he? How can you be sure what he'll be like later? He'll be a problem. They've always been problems."
They were afraid. That was what was the matter with them. Walden sighed. "Tell them what you've been studying, Eric," he said aloud.
For a minute Eric was too tongue-tied to answer. He stood motionless, waiting for them to laugh at him.
"Go on. Tell them."
"I've been reading about the old race," Eric said. "All about the stars. About the people who went off in the starships and explored our whole galaxy." ”

“ Because always before, around the normals, even around his own parents and Walden, he had been the helpless one.
He liked this new feeling, and wished it could last. But it couldn't. He couldn't do as the old women expected him to, leave the valley and his parents, leave the books and the museum and the ship, just to hide in the hills like a beast with them.
He had come to find his people, but these three were not they.
"You two go on off and talk," Mag said. "We're old. We don't matter now. You've got things to settle between you." ”

“ Her eyes widened. "How can you?" she said. "Men are friends. Women are friends. But you're a man and I'm a woman and it's different."
He shook his head helplessly, trying to think of a way to explain things to her. He couldn't say that he found her dirty and unattractive and almost another species. He couldn't say that he'd searched the hills, often thinking of the relationship between man and woman, but that she wasn't the woman, that she never could be the woman for him. He couldn't tell her that he pitied her in perhaps the same way that the normals pitied him. ”

“ Down back over the ridge, out of sight of the aircars and into the foothills, and all the while knowing that there was nowhere to run to now.
"No, Eric! We've got to go back. We've got to find Mag and Nell—" Her voice rose in anguish, then broke, and she was crying.
"We can't help them by going back," he said harshly. "Maybe they got away. Maybe they didn't. But the others would catch us for sure if they got near us."
Run. It was all they could do, now. Run to other hills and leave the aircar and hide, and live as Lisa had lived, as others of their kind had lived. ”

“ He worked hard all day long, scarcely ever leaving the museum grounds. He studied the subjects that now were the most fascinating to him of all the old race's knowledge—the subjects that related to the starships. Astronomy, physics, navigation, and the complex charts of distant stars, distant planets, worlds he'd never heard of before. Worlds that to the new race were only pin-pricks of light in the night sky.
All day long he studied. But in the evening he would go down the winding ramp to the ship. ”

“ Gwin shook her head at the perception, but Myron nodded.
"Books. I didn't know there were any outside the museums."
Walden smiled again. "Only mine. Books are fascinating things. All the knowledge of a race, gathered together on a few shelves...."
"Knowledge?" Myron shrugged. "Imagine storing knowledge in those—boxes. What are they? What's in them? Just words...."
The books faded as Walden sighed. "You'd be surprised what the old race did, with just those—boxes."
He looked across at Eric, who was now bouncing his ball and counting, out loud, up to three, and then going back and starting again. ”

“ He liked to lie on his stomach close to the wall and look out at the garden with its riotous mass of flowers and the insects that flew among them. Some flew quickly, their wings moving so fast that they were just blurs. ”

“ When he awoke it was late morning and the stars were gone and clouds drifted across the mouth of the well.
There was no answer here. The starship would never fly.
And Eric went back to the mountains.
It was two weeks later that the councilmen stood facing Walden across the great museum table. They had come together, Abbot and Drew and the others, and they faced him together, frowning. Their thoughts were hidden. Walden could catch only glimpses of what lay beneath their worry.
"Every day." Abbot's eyes were hard, unyielding. "Why, Walden? Why does he go there every day?" ”

“ There was one answer, only one answer, and with it, a hot violence in his blood as the old race pattern came into focus, as the fear and the futility fell away.
It was only a few steps to the ship. Eric caught Lisa's arm and pulled her after him and ran toward it, reaching up to the door. In one motion he flung it open and lifted her through it, then he swung about to face the others.
"Let us go!" he shouted. "Promise to let us go, or we'll take off anyway and if we die at least you'll die too!"
Abbot stopped. He looked back at Walden, his face scornful. "You see?" he said aloud. "They're mad. ”

“ Instinctively Gwin reached out to him, and then she drew back. She couldn't reach his emotions. There was no perception. There was no way she could enter his dreams and rearrange them and comfort him.
"Poor devil," his father said again. "He's got his whole life to be lonely in."
The summer passed, and another winter and another summer. Eric spent more and more time by himself. He liked to sit on the glassed-in sunporch, bouncing his ball up and down and talking to it, aloud, pretending that it answered him back. ”

“ Eric didn't answer. He looked past Walden, at the car, wishing he could somehow call to Lisa, wishing they could perceive so that he could reassure her and promise her that somehow he'd still take her to freedom. But it would be an empty promise....
"I've warned you too late. You've found your people, but it won't do you any good. They'll hunt you through the hills, and I won't be able to help you any more." ”

“ He wanted to be her friend. Because he was sure now that he could search the mountains forever, and perhaps find other people, even if those he found were like her, and Mag and Nell.
"Listen, Lisa," he said. "I can't live up here. I live in the valley. I came in an aircar, and it's down in the canyon below here. I have to go back—soon. Before it gets completely dark."
"Why?"
"If I don't the normals will come looking for me. They'll find the aircar and then they'll find us. And you and your family will be taken away. Don't you understand?" ”

“ Eric said.
"Me? Call me Mag. Come on, boy. Come on. What are you waiting for?"
She turned and started off up the hill, walking so fast that she was almost out of sight among the trees before Eric recovered enough to follow her. He stumbled after her, clawing his way up the steep slope, slipping and grabbing the branches with his hands and hauling himself up the rocks.
"You're a slow one." The old woman paused and waited for him to catch up. "Where've you been all your life? You don't act like a mountain boy."
"I'm not," Eric said. "I'm from the valley...." ”

“ For he was of the old race. He shared their hungering.
Walden was reading in his study when the council members arrived. They came without advance warning and filed in ceremoniously, responding rather coolly to his greeting.
"We're here about the boy," Abbot began abruptly. "He's at the museum now, isn't he?"
Walden nodded. "He's been spending most of his time there lately."
"Do you think it's wise, letting him wander around alone?"
Trouble. Always trouble. Just because there was one young boy, Eric, asking only to be let alone. ”

“ Nell was sick. I did the hunting. We almost starved, for a while, but there's lots of game in the hills. It's a good life here. But I've been sorry for Lisa. She's a woman now. She needs a man. I'm glad you came. I would have hated to send her out looking for a normal one."
"But—" Eric stopped, his head whirling. He didn't know what to say. Anything at all would sound wrong, cruel.
"It's dangerous," Mag went on, "taking up with the normals. ”

“ Walden snorted. Even with perception, men could be fools.
The summer that Eric was sixteen Walden took him to the museum. The aircar made the trip in just a few hours—but it was farther than Eric had ever traveled in his life, and farther than most people ever bothered traveling. ”

“ They think it's wrong. They think we're animals. One of us has to pick a man who's stupid—a farmer, maybe—and even then it's like being a pet. A beast."
It took a moment for Eric to realize what she was saying, and when he did realize, the thought horrified him.
"Lisa's father was stupid," Mag said. "He took me in when I came down from the hills. He didn't send for the others. Not then. He kept me and fed me and treated me kindly, and I thought I was safe. I thought our kind and theirs could live together."
She laughed. Deep, bitter lines creased her mouth. "A week later the aircar came. ”