But through the oneness and the comfort and the welcome an intruding thought stole out to nag him, He struggled and was let go and became himself again, an identity once more — not Andrew Blake, but changer.
— Quester, when we awake, it will be colder then. Could you take over for the night? You can travel faster and you can sense your way through the darkness and…
— I'll take over. But there are your clothes and knapsack and you'll be naked once again and…
— You can carry them. You have arms and hands, remember? You are all the time forgetting that you have your arms.
— All right! said Quester. All right! All right! All right!
— Willow Grove, said Changer.
— Yes, I know, said Quester. We read the map with you.
The sleep began closing in again, but something touched his arm and he let his eyes come open.
The raccoon, he saw, had crept across the space between them and now lay close against him.
He lifted a corner of the blanket and tucked it about the furry body and then he went to sleep.
25
Changer had said that it would be cooler, and it was cooler, but still too warm for running, too warm for making any time. But, as Quester reached the ridge-top, the wind knifing from the north had a welcome bite to it.
He stopped and stood there, on the flinty ground, exposed to the wind, for here, for some reason of geology, the trees did not intrude, but stopped short of the crest, a somewhat, unusual circumstance, since most of the hills were completely covered by the hardwood forest.
The skies were clear and there were stars this night, although it seemed to Quester not as many stars as could be seen from his native planet. And here, on this high piece of ground he thought, one could stand and snare pictures from the stars, although now he knew from Thinker that they were not pictures only, but the kaleidoscopic impressions of other races and other cultures and that they supplied the raw, bare-bones data from which the truth of the universe might someday be deduced.
He shivered, thinking of it — thinking of how his mind and senses could reach across the light years to harvest the fruits of other minds and senses. He shivered, but he knew even as he did that Thinker would not shiver, even had Thinker been so built, with muscle and with nerves, so that he could shiver. For there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that could astonish Thinker; to him there was no mystic quality in the universe or life, but rather a mass of fact and data, of principle and method, which could be fed into his mind and be utilized by his faculty for logic.
But for me, thought Quester, for me it all is mystic. To me there is no need of reason, no compulsion reaching out for logic, no cold, no intensive drive to burrow to the heart of fact.
He stood on the flinty ridge, his tail drooping almost to the ground, his grizzled muzzle lifted to the sharp edge of the wind. For him it was enough, he thought, that the universe was filled with wonder and with beauty and he had never asked for more — and he knew now that it was his fervent hope that nothing ever would occur to blunt that wonder and the beauty.
Or had that process of blunting already taken place? Had he placed himself in a position (or been placed in a position) where he would find himself with a greater scope than ever to seek out new wonders and fresh mysteries, but with the wonder and the beauty watered down by the knowledge that he was providing material for Thinker to work out the logic?
He tried to test the thought, but as yet the mysticism and the wonder still were his. Here, on this windswept ridge, with the stars shining in the sky above, with the wind blowing through the wood below him, and the wood talking to the dark, with the strange, alien smells and the other-worldly vibrations that shivered in the air, there still was room for wonder that ran like a chill along his nerves.
The space between him and the next hilltop seemed clear of any threat. Far off to the left ribbons of moving lights marked the passing of the cars along the road that cut across the hills. In the valley were habitations, betrayed by beams of light and by the vibrations that came streaming out from them — vibrations, radiations (whatever one might call them) of human life itself and of that strange force the humans called electricity.
There were birds roosting in the trees and some sort of larger animal (although smaller than himself) sneaked through the underbrush to the right of him, mice huddled in their nests, a woodchuck in his den — and uncounted hordes of little burrowers and tiny scavengers moving in the soil and its mulch of rotting leaves. But these he screened out of his consciousness, for at the moment they were no concern of his.
He went quietly down the hill, through the wood, marking every tree and bush along his path, cataloguing and evaluating all the larger creatures, alert for any danger, fearing only that he might meet a danger he would not recognize.
The trees came to an end and the fields were ahead of him — the fields and roads and houses — and here again he hesitated to search out the land ahead.
A human was walking down by the creek with his dog and a car was moving slowly up a private road that ran to a house across the creek, a herd of cows were sleeping in a field but, except for these, the valley seemed clear except for mice and gophers and other smaller residents.
He started across the valley at a trot, then broke into an easy, rocking lope that ate up the ground. He reached the slope of the next high hill and went swarming over it and down the other side.
He hugged the knapsack underneath his left arm and the sack was bulky because it held Changer's clothes as well as all the other items. It was a bother, for it lent him a lopsided balance for which he must compensate and he must for ever be on guard against its being snagged by a bush or branch.
He halted for a moment, dropped the knapsack to the ground and retracted his left arm. Relieved of its burden, the arm snuggled wearily into the pocket in his shoulder. He extruded his right arm and picked up the sack, tucked it underneath the arm and resumed his travelling. Perhaps, he told himself, he should shift the burden oftener, from one arm to the other. It might be easier if he did.
He crossed the valley, went up the next long hill, stopped at its crest to rest a moment before going on.
Willow Grove, Changer had said. A hundred miles. He could be there by dawn if he kept on as he had been going. And what might await the three of them when they reached Willow Grove? Willow was a tree and grove was a group of trees, and it was strange how humans named certain geographic points. There was little logic to it, for a willow grove could die and disappear and then the place name would have no significance.
Impermanent, he thought. But then the humans, themselves, as a race, were impermanent. Their continual changing of their lives, this thing that they called progress, made for impermanence. There was something to be said, he thought, for forging the sort of life a race might wish to live, to set up some basic values, and then be satisfied…
He took a step down the hill, then stopped, tensed and listening.
The sound came again — a faint, far bugling.
A dog, he told himself. A dog that had struck a trail.
He went swiftly, but cautiously, down the hill, sensing ahead and on either side. At the edge of the wood, he stopped to survey the stretch of level valley that lay ahead of him. There was nothing there that was a matter of concern, and he trotted out into the valley, came to a fence and leaped over and then went on.
For the first time, he felt a twinge of fatigue. Despite the relative coolness of the night, he was unused to the heat of Earth. He had been pushing hard, trying to cover as much ground as possible, to reach Willow Grove by morning. He'd have to take it easier for a while, hope to get his second wind. He must pace himself.