My fellow traveler stood vigil, unmoving, and I stared back at him. If it wasn't a natural phenomenon, it was there to spy on me. Dared I sleep? I dared.
When I awoke, my chrono showed me that an hour and a quarter had passed. Nothing had changed. Not forty minutes later, either, nor two hours and ten minutes after that, when I awoke again.
I slept out the rest of the night and found it waiting in the morning.
This day was like the previous one, cold and blank. I broke camp and moved on, reckoning that I was about a third of the way to my destination.
Suddenly, there was a new development. My companion moved from my left and drifted slowly ahead. It turned right then and hovered, about sixty feet before me. By the time I reached that spot, it had moved on, anticipating my path.
That was a thing I didn't like. It was as though the guiding intelligence were mocking me, saying, "Look here, old boy, I know where you're headed and how you intend getting there. Why don't you let me make the way a bit easier?" It was a successful mock, too, for it made me feel like a complete fool. There were several things I could do about it, but I didn't feel like doing them yet.
So I followed. I followed till lunchtime, when it politely halted until I was quite finished; till dinnertime, when it did the same.
Shortly thereafter, however, the light again changed its behavior. It drifted off to the left and vanished. I stopped and stood still for a moment, for I'd grown used to it. Was I supposed to have become so conditioned to following it all day that fatigue and habit would combine to lead me after it now, off my intended path? Perhaps.
I wondered how far it would lead me if I gave it the opportunity.
I decided that twenty minutes of walking after it would be quite enough. I loosened my pistol in its holster and waited for it to come again.
It did. When it repeated its previous performances, I turned and followed. It hurried ahead, waited for me to catch up, hurried on.
After about five minutes, a light rain began to fall. Though the darkness deepened, I could see without using my hand torch. Soon I was soaked all the way through. I cursed and sloughed along, shivering.
Approximately half a mile further along, wetter, colder, darker the day, stronger still the feeling of alienation, I was left alone. The light went out. I waited, but it did not return.
Carefully, I made my way to the place where I had last seen it, circling in from the right, gun in hand, searching with my eyes and my mind.
I brushed against a dry tree-limb and heard it snap.
"Stop! For the love of God! Don't!"
I threw myself to the ground and rolled.
The cry had come from right beside me. I covered that area from a distance of twelve feet.
Cry? Had it been a truly physical sound, or something within my mind? I wasn't certain.
I waited.
Then, so softly that I wasn't certain how I was hearing it, there came to me a sound of sobbing. Soft sounds are difficult to pinpoint, and this was no exception. I turned my head slowly, from right to left, saw no one.
"Who is it?" I asked in a shrill whisper, for these, too, are without direction.
No answer. But the sobbing continued. Reaching out with my mind, I felt pain and confusion, nothing more.
"Who is it?" I repeated.
There was silence, then, "Frank?" said the voice.
This time I decided to wait. I let a minute go by, then said my name.
"Help me," came the reply.
"Who are you? Where are you?"
"Here ..."
And the answers came into my mind, and the nape of my neck crawled and my hand tightened on the pistol.
"Dango! The Capel Knife!"
I knew then what had happened, but I didn't have guts enough to turn on my torch and take a good look. I didn't need to, though.
My will-o-the-wisp chose that moment to return.
It drifted past me, rose high, higher, brightness increasing in intensity to a level far beyond anything it had exhibited earlier. It hovered at a height of fifteen or twenty feet and blazed like a flare. Below it stood Dango. He had no choice but to stand.
He was rooted to the spot.
His lean, triangular face bore a long, black beard and flowing hair that twined away among his limbs, his leaves. His eyes were dark and sunken and wretched. The bark that was a part of him bore insect holes, birddroppings and char-marks of numerous small fires about the base. I saw then that blood dripped from the limb I had broken as I'd passed him by.
I rose, slowly.
"Dango ..." I said.
"They're gnawing at my feet!" he told me.
"... I'm sorry." I lowered the gun, almost dropped it.
"Why didn't he let me stay dead?"
"Because once you were my friend, and then you were my enemy," I said. "You knew me, well."
"Because of you?" The tree swayed, as if reaching after me. He began to curse me, and I stood there and listened as the rain mingled with his blood and soaked into the ground. We had been partners in a joint venture one time, and he'd tried to cheat me. I'd brought charges, he was acquitted and tried to kill me afterwards. I put him in the hospital, back on Earth, and he'd died in an auto accident a week after his discharge. He would have killed me if he'd gotten the chance-- with a knife, I know. But I never gave him the chance. You might sort of say I helped his bad luck along when it came to the accident. I knew he'd never rest until he'd nailed me or was dead, and I didn't feel like getting nailed.
The raking light made his features look ghastly. He had the complexion of a mushroom and the eyes of an evil cat. His teeth were broken and there was a festering sore on his left cheek. The back of his head was joined with the tree, his shoulders merged with it and there were two branches which might contain his arms. From the waist down he was tree.
"Who did it?" I asked.
"The big green bastard. Pei'an... ." he said. "Suddenly, I was here. I don't understand. There was an accident ..."
"I'll get him," I said. "I'm going after him now. I'm going to kill him. Then I'll get you out--"
"No! Don't go!"
"It's the only way, Dango."
"You don't understand what it's like," he said. "I can't wait... . Please."
"It may only take a few days, Dango."
"... And he may get you instead. Then it'll be never. Christ! How it hurts! I'm sorry about that deal, Frank. Believe me... . Please!"
I looked down at the ground and up at the light.
I raised the gun and lowered it.
"I can't kill you any more," I said.
He bit his lip and the blood ran down his chin and into his beard and the tears came out of his eyes. I looked away from his eyes.
I stumbled backwards and began mumbling in Pei'an. Only then did I realize I was near a power-pull. I could feel it suddenly. And I grew taller and taller, and Frank Sandow grew smaller and smaller, and when I shrugged the thunders rumbled. When I raised my left hand they roared. When I drew it down to my shoulder the flash that followed blinded me and the shock raised my hair upon my head.
... I was alone with the smells of ozone and smoke, there, before the charred and splintered thing that had been Dango the Knife. Even the will-o-the-wisp was gone now. The rain came down in torrents and laid the smells to rest.
I staggered back in the direction from which I had come, my boots making sucking sounds in the mud, my clothes trying to crawl under my skin.
Somehow, somewhere--I don't remember exactly--I slept.
Of all the things a man may do, sleep probably contributes most to keeping him sane. It puts brackets about each day. If you do something foolish or painful today, you get irritated if somebody mentions it, today. If it happened yesterday, though, you can nod or chuckle, as the case may be. You've crossed through nothingness or dream to another island in Time. How many memories can he summoned up in a single instant? Many, it would seem. Actually, though, they're only a small fraction of those which exist, somewhere. And the longer you've been around, the more of them you have. So, once I have slept, there are many things which come to aid me when I wish to anesthetize a particular occurrence. This may sound callous. It is not. I do not mean that I live without pain for things gone by, without guilt. I mean that over the centuries I have developed a mental reflex. When I have been swamped emotionally, I sleep. When I awaken, thoughts of other days come forth, fill my head. After a time, memory the vulture circles closer and closer, then descends upon the thing of pain. It dismembers it, gorges itself upon it, digests it with the past standing to witness. I suppose it is a thing called perspective. I have seen many persons die. In many fashions. I have never been unmoved. But sleep gives memory a chance to rev its engine and hand me back my head each day. For I have also seen people live, and I have looked upon the colors of joy, sorrow, love, hate, satiation, peace.