The Trees knew the structure of the snowflake, the chemistry of the raindrop, the molecular pattern of the wind. They realized the fellowship of grasses, of other trees and bushes, the springtime brilliance of the prairie flowers that bloomed briefly in their season; had friendship for the birds that nested in their branches; were aware of ant and bee and butterfly.
They gloried in the sun and knew all that went on around them and talked with one another, not so much a matter of relaying information (although they could do that if need be) as a matter of acknowledging one another's presence, of making themselves known, of saying all was well—a time of comradely contact to know that all was well.
Above them, on the butte, the ancient buildings stood high against the skyline, against the paleness of the blue that held no single cloud, a sky burnished by the rising sun and scrubbed clean by the summer
The small fire burned with no smoke. Meg knelt beside it to cook the pan of bread. Off to one side, Rollo sat absorbed in the ritual of greasing himself, pouring ill-smelling bear oil out of a bottle fashioned from a gourd. Andy stamped and swished his tail to keep away the flies while paying serious attention to the spotty clumps of grass that were scattered here and there. A short distance away the unseen river gurgled and chuckled as it surged between its banks. The sun was halfway up the eastern sky and the day would get warmer later on, but here, in their hiding place beneath the fallen trees, the temperature was still pleasant.
"You say, laddie," said Meg, "that the band you sighted numbered only twenty?"
"Thereabouts," said Cushing. "I could not be sure. No more than that, I think."
"A scout party, more than likely. Sent out, no doubt, to probe the city. To spot the locations of the tribes. May' haps we should stay here for a while. This is a snug retreat and not easily found."
Cushing shook his head. "No, we'll push on, come night. If tile horde is moving east and we are going west, we should soon be free of them."
She inclined her head toward the robot. "And what of him?" she asked.
"If he wishes, he can go with us. I've not talked with him about it."
"I sense about this enterprise," said Rollo, "a seeming urgency and purpose. Even not knowing what it is, I would be willing for the chance to associate myself with it. I pride myself that I might be of some small service. Not needing sleep myself, I could keep a watch while others slept. Being sharp of eye and swift of movement, I could do some scouting. I am well acquainted with the wilds, since I have been forced to live in them, well beyond the haunts of men. I would consume no supplies, since I live on solar energy alone. Give me a few days' sunshine and I have energy stored against a month or more. And I am a good companion, for I never tire of talk."
"That is right," said Cushing. "He has not stopped talking since the minute I found him."
"Reduced, at many times, I've been," said Rollo, "to talking to myself. Which is not bad if there is no one else to talk with. Talking with oneself, it's possible to find many areas of precise agreement, and one need never talk on subjects that are not agreeable.
"The best year I ever spent was long ago when, in the depths of the Rockies, I chanced upon an old mountain man who stood in need of help. He was an ancient personage who had fallen victim to a strange disease of stiffening muscles and aching joints, and had it not been for my coming accidentally upon him, he would not have lasted out the winter, since when the told came he would not have been capable of hunting meat or bringing in the wood that was needed to keep his cabin warm. I stayed with him and brought in game and wood, and since he was as starved for talk as I was, we talked away the winter, he telling of great events in which he had participated or to which he had been a witness, and in many of them there may have been something less than truth, although I never questioned them, for so far as I was concerned, talk, not truth, was paramount. And I spinning tales for him, but little ornamented, of the day's I'd spent since the Time of Trouble. Early the next summer, when the pain in him was less and he was able to make his way about, he set off for what he called a "rendezvous," a summer place of meeting for others such as he. He asked me to go with him, but I declined, for truth to tell, I no longer have any love of man. Excepting the present company, which seems well intentioned, I have had nothing except trouble in those few times I have blundered into men.
"You can remember tile Time of Trouble, then?" said Cushing. "You have lived through it all, and your memory's clear?"
"Oh, clear enough," said Rollo. "I recall the things that happened, but it would be bootless for you to ask me the meaning of it, for I had no understanding of it then, and despite much thinking on it, have no understanding of it now. You see, I was a common yard robot, a runner of errands and a performer of chores. I had no training except in simple tasks, although I understand there were many of my kind who did have some special training, who were skilled technicians and many other things. My memories mostly are unpleasant, although in recent centuries I have learned to live with existing situations, taking each day as it comes and not ranting against conditions as they are. I was not designed to be a lonely mechanism hut that is what I have been forced to become. I have, through bitter circumstances, become able to live for and of myself, although I am never really happy of it. That is why I have so willingly suggested that I associate myself with your enterprise."
"Not even knowing," Meg asked, "what the enterprise might be?"
"Even so," said Rollo, "if it so happens later on that I do not like the look or smell of it, I can simply walk away.
"It's no evil enterprise," said Cushing. "It's a simple search. We are looking for a Place of Going to the Stars."
Rob nodded sagely. "I have heard of it. Not extensively. Nothing that is greatly known, but of which one hears occasionally, many years apart. It is situated, as best I can determine, on a mesa or a butte somewhere in the West. The mesa or the butte is ringed in by an extensive growth of Trees that legend says keep watch upon the place and will allow no one to enter. And there are other devices, it is said, that guard it, although of those devices I have no true and certain knowledge."
"Then there is such a place?"
Rollo spread his hands. "Who knows. There are many tales of strange places, strange things, strange people. The old man I spent the winter with mentioned it—I think only once. But he told many stories and not all of them were truth. He said the place was called Thunder Butte."
"Thunder Butte," said Cushing. "Would you know where Thunder Butte might be?"
Rollo shook his head. "Somewhere in the Great Plains country. That is all I know. Somewhere beyond the great Missouri."
Excerpt from Wilson's History: