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the villa. There was, in fact, no sign of any life at all. Nothing stirred to
mar the smooth placidity of the valley. No one peeked out at us. No creature
of the air flew overhead. There was no shrilling sound of insects or the
equivalent of insects. For all the signs we saw, for all we heard, we might be
the only life there was.
"It makes sense," said Sara, "that it should be a nameplate."
"Let's pretend it is," I said. "Let's proceed and look for one that says
Lawrence Arlen Knight."
"Even now," she said, "can't you be serious about it? You said we'd never find
him. You said he was just a story. You said he would be dead . . .
"Don't look at me," I told her. "I could be wrong. I don't think I am, but
there is nothing that makes sense anymore."
"This was your idea. . ."
"And you were against it from the start."
"Not against it," I said. "Just not a true believer."
"We've come all this way," she said, almost plaintively.
"Sara," I said, "so help me, I don't know. Let's just go ahead and keep an eye
on the signs."
We went ahead, plunging down the inclines, toiling up the slopes. There were
other villas and other signs, each of them in different alphabets, if some of
them in fact could be called alphabets, and none that we could read.
The sun beat down, a liquid flood that shattered off the stones and sparkled
off the water. Except for the bubble and the chuckle of the water, the silence
held. There was nothing stirring.
And then another sign in solid block letters that we could read:
LAWRENCE ARLEN KNIGHT
It was all insane, of course. You did not cross a galaxy to find a man-and
find him. You did not find a man who should have years ago been dead. You did
not trace a legend to its end. But there it was, the sign that said Lawrence
Arlen Knight.
And then, as I stood there, the thought crossed my mind-not the home of, but
the grave of, not a villa, but a tomb.
"Sara," I said, but already she was scrambling up the path, sobbing in
excitement and relief, all the tension of the long search resolved at last.
And coming out on the porch of that white-shining structure was a man-an old
man, but a man still hale, snow-white hair and beard, but with shoulders still
unstooped, with his stride still steady. He was dressed in a white toga, and
that was no surprise at all. With a setup such as this he could have worn
nothing but a toga.
"Sara!" I cried, scrambling after her, with Hoot close upon my heels.
She didn't hear. She paid me no attention.
And now the old man was speaking. "Visitors!" he said, holding out his hand.
"My own people! I never thought I'd lay eyes on such again."
The sound of that voice swept all my doubts away. Here was no illusion, no
apparition, no magic. Here was a man, a human, the voice deep and somber,
filled with human gladness at the sight of fellowmen.
Sara held out her hands and the old man grasped them and the two of them stood
there, looking into one another's eyes.
"It's been long," the old man said. "Too long. The trail is far, the way is
hard and no one knew. You-how did you know?"
"Sir," said Sara, still gasping from her climb, "you are- you must be Lawrence
Arlen Knight."
"Why, yes," he said, "of course I am. Who did you expect?"
"Expect?" said Sara. "You, of course. But we could only hope."
"And these good people with you?"
"Captain Michael Ross," said Sara, "and Hoot, a good friend met along the
way."
Knight bowed to Hoot. "You servant, sir," he said. Then he reached out a hand
to me, grasping my hand in a warm, hard grip. In that moment, when there were
other more important things to note, I could only see that his hand, despite
the firmness of the grip, was an old and wrinkled hand, blotched with liver
spots.
"Captain Ross," he said, "you are welcome. There are places here for you, for
all of you. And this young lady-I do not have your name."
"Sara Foster," Sara said.
"To think," he said, "that no longer need I be alone. Wonderful as it all has
been, I have missed the sound of human voices and the sight of human faces.
There are many others here, creatures of great character and fine sensitivity,
but one never quite outgrows the need of his own species."
"How long have you been here?" I asked, trying to figure in my mind how far
back the legend of this man might run.
"When a man lives each day to the full," he told me, "and with the close of
one day looks forward to the next, there is no counting of one's times each
day, each minute becomes a part of all eternity. I have thought about it and I
am not sure there is such a thing as time. It is an abstract concept, a crude
measuring device, a perspective structure built up by certain intelligences,
and by no means all of them, because they feel a need to place themselves into
what they call a spacetime framework. Time as such is lost in foreverness and
there is no need to search for beginning or for end because they never did
exist and under a situation such as here exists the meticulous measuring of
ridiculously small slices of eternity becomes a task that has no meaning in
it. Not, I must make haste to say, that one can slice eternity. . ."
He went on and on and I wondered, looking off across the valley from where I
stood on the marble-columned porch, if he were unbalanced by his loneliness,
or he might know some part of what he said. For this place, this valley that
sprang out of nowhere, did have a look of eternity about it. Although as I
thought this, I wondered how any man might know how eternity would look-but be
that as it may, there was a feel of the unchanging in this place of bright
white sunlight.
"But I ramble on," the old man was saying. "The trouble is I have too much to
say, too much stored up to say. Although there is no reason why I should try
to say it all at once. I apologize for keeping you out here, standing. Won't
you please come in."
We stepped through the open doorway into quiet and classic elegance. There
were no windows, but from somewhere in the roof the sunlight came slanting in,
to highlight with a classic brilliance the chairs and sofa, the writing desk
with a small wooden chest and scattered sheets of paper on its top, the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]