"Laddie, you are worried."
"No, not worried. Just thinking. Wondering. If we do find the Place of Going to the Stars, what difference will it make?"
"We'll know that it is there. We'll know that, once, men traveled to the stars."
"But that's not enough," he said. "Just knowing's not enough."
The next morning his depression had vanished. There was, strangely enough, something exhilarating in the emptiness, a certain crispness and clearness, a spaciousness, that made one a lord of all that one surveyed. They were still alone, but it was not a fearsome aloneness; it was as if they moved across a country that had been tailor-made for them, a country from which all others had been barred, a far-reaching and far-seeing country. The Followers were still with them, but they no longer seemed to be a threat; rather, they were companions of the journey, part of the company.
Late in the day, they came upon two others, two human waifs as desolate as they in that vast stretch of emptiness. They saw them, when they topped a low swell, from half a mile away. The man was old; his hair and beard were gray. He was dressed in worn buckskins and stood as straight as a young oak tree, facing the west, the restless western wind tugging at his beard and hair. The woman, who appeared to be younger, was sitting to one side and behind him, her feet tucked beneath her, head and shoulders bent forward, covered by a ragged robe. They were situated beside a small patch of wild sunflowers.
When Cushing and the others came up to the two, they could see that the man was standing in two shallow holes that had been clawed out of the prairie sod, standing in them barefooted, with a pair of worn moccasins lying to one side. Neither he nor the woman seemed to notice their coming. The man stood straight and unmoving. His arms were folded across his chest; his chin tilted up and his eyes were shut. There was about him a sense of fine-edged alertness, as if he might be listening to something that no one else could hear. There was nothing to hear but the faint hollow booming of the wind as it raced across the land and an occasional rustle as it stirred the sunflower patch.
The woman, sitting cross-legged in the grass, did not stir. It was as if neither of them was aware they were no longer alone. The woman's head was bowed above her lap, in which her hands were loosely folded. Looking down at her, Cushing saw that she was young.
The three of them—Rollo, Meg, and Cushing—stood in a row, puzzled, slightly outraged, awaiting recognition. Andy switched flies and munched grass. The Followers circled warily.
It was ridiculous, Cushing told himself, that the three of them should be standing there like little naughty children who had intruded where they were not wanted and, for their trespass, were being studiously ignored. Yet there was an aura about the other two that prevented one from breaking in upon them.
While Cushing was debating whether he should be angry or abashed, the old man moved, slowly coming to life. First his arms unfolded and fell slowly, almost gracefully, to his sides. His head, which had been tilted back, inclined forward, into a more normal position. His feet lifted, one by one, out of the holes in which he had been standing. He turned his body, with a strange deliberation, so that he faced Cushing. His face was not the stern, harsh, patriarchal face that one might have assumed from watching him in his seeming trance but a kind, although sober, face-the face of a kindly man who had come to peace after years of hardship. Above his grizzled beard, which covered a good part of his face, a pair of ice-blue eyes, set off by masses of crow's feet, beamed out at the world.
"Welcome, strangers," he said, "to our few feet of ground. Would you have, I wonder, a cup of water for my granddaughter and myself?"
The woman still sat cross-legged on the grass, but now she raised her head and the robe that had covered it fell off, bunching at her back. Her face held a terrible sweetness and a horrible innocence and her eyes were blank. She was a prim-faced, pretty doll filled with emptiness.
"My granddaughter, if you failed to notice," said the old man, "is doubly blessed. She lives in another place. This world cannot touch her. Bespeak her gently, please, and have no concern about her. She is a gentle creature and there is nothing to be feared. She is happier than I am, happier than any one of us. Most of all, I ask you, do not pity her. It is the other way around. She, by all rights, could hold pity for the rest of us."
Meg stepped forward to offer him a cup of water, but he waved it away. "Elayne first," he said. "She is always first. And you may be wondering what I was doing, standing here in the holes I dug, and shut within myself. I was not as shut in as you might have thought. I was talking with the flowers. They are such pretty flowers and so sentient and well-mannered… I almost said ‘intelligent, and that would not have been quite right, for their intelligence, if that is what you can call it, is not our intelligence, although, perhaps, in a way, better than our intelligence. A different kind of intelligence, although, come to think of it, ‘intelligence' may not be the word at all."
"Is this a recent accomplishment," asked Cushing, with some disbelief, "or have you always talked with flowers?"
"More so now than was the case at one time," the old man told him. "I have always had the gift. Not only flowers, but trees and all other kinds of plants—grasses, mosses, vines, weeds, if any plant can rightly be called a weed. It's not so much that I talk with them, although at times I do. What I mostly do is listen. There are occasions when I am sure they know that I am there. When this happens, I try to talk with them. Mostly I think they understand me, although I am not certain they are able to identify me, to know with any certainty what it is that is talking with them. It is possible their perceptions are not of an order that permits them to identify other forms of life. Largely, Lam certain, they exist in a world of their own which is as blind to us as we are blind to them. Not blind in that we are unaware of them, for, to their sorrow, we are very much aware of them. What we are entirely blind to is the fact that they have a consciousness even as we have a consciousness.
"You'll pardon me," said Cushing, "if I seem unable immediately to grasp the full significance of what you're telling me. This is something that I have never thought of even in the wildest fantasies. Tell me-just now, were you listening only, or were you talking with them?"
"They were talking to me," said the old man. "They were telling me of a thing of wonder. To the west, they tell me, is a group of plants—I gather they are trees—that seem alien to this land, brought here many years ago. How brought, they do not know, or perhaps I only failed of understanding, but, in any case, great plants that stand as giants of understanding…. Ah, my dear, I thank you.
He took the cup from Meg and drank, not gulping it down but drinking it slowly, as if he were savoring every drop of it.
"To the west?" asked Cushing.
"Yes, to the west, they said."
"But….ow would they know?"
"It seems they do. Perhaps seeds, flying in the wind, may carry word. Or wafting thistledown. Or passed along, one root to another
"It's impossible," said Cushing. "It is all impossible."
"This metal creature, shaped in the form of man—what may it be?" the old man asked.
"I am a robot," Rollo said.
"Robots," said the old man. "Robots? Ah, yes, now I know. I've seen brain cases of robots, but not a living robot. So you are a robot?"