"Do you see?" he asked.
"Yes, I see. What is…"
"It is the Talisman," Ulysses said, enraptured, his breath rasping in his throat. "And she is our new custodian. The one we've hunted through the years."
33
You did not become accustomed to it, Enoch told himself as they tramped up through the woods. There was not a moment you were not aware of it. It was something that you wanted to hug close against yourself and hold it there forever, and even when it was gone from you, you'd probably not forget it, ever.
It was something that was past all description — a mother's love, a father's pride, the adoration of a sweetheart, the closeness of a comrade, it was all of these and more. It made the farthest distance near and turned the complex simple and it swept away all fear and sorrow, for all of there being a certain feeling of deep sorrow in it, as if one might feel that never in his lifetime would he know an instant like this, and that in another instant he would lose it and never would be able to hunt it out again. But that was not the way it was, for this ascendant instant kept going on and on.
Lucy walked between them and she held the bag that contained the Talisman close against her breast, with her two arms clasped about it, and Enoch, looking at her, in the soft glow of its light, could not help but think of a little girl carrying her beloved pussy cat.
"Never for a century," said Ulysses, "perhaps for many centuries, perhaps never, has it glowed so well. I myself cannot remember when it was like this. It is wonderful, is it not?"
"Yes," said Enoch. "It is wonderful."
"Now we shall be one again," Ulysses said. "Now we shall feel again.
Now we shall be a people instead of many people…"
"But the creature that had it…"
"A clever one," Ulysses said. "He was holding it for ransom."
"It had been stolen, then."
"We do not know all the circumstances," Ulysses told him. "We will find out, of course."
They tramped on in silence through the woods and far in the east one could see, through the treetops, the first flush in the sky that foretold the rising moon.
"There is something," Enoch said.
"Ask me," said Ulysses.
"How could that creature back there carry it and not feel — feel no part of it? For if he could have, he would not have stolen it."
"There is only one in many billions," Ulysses said, "who can — how do you say it? — tune in on it, perhaps. To you and I it would be nothing. It would not respond to us. We could hold it in our hands forever and there would nothing happen. But let that one in many billions lay a finger on it and it becomes alive. There is a certain rapport, a sensitivity — I don't know how to say it — that forms a bridge between this strange machine and the cosmic spiritual force. It is not the machine, itself, you understand, that reaches out and taps the spiritual force. It is the living creature's mind, aided by the mechanism, that brings the force to us."
A machine, a mechanism, no more than a tool — technological brother to the hoe, the wrench, the hammer — and yet as far a cry from these as the human brain was from that first amino acid which had come into being on this planet when the Earth was very young. One was tempted, Enoch thought, to say that this was as far as a tool could go, that it was the ultimate in the ingenuity possessed by any brain. But that would be a dangerous way of thinking, for perhaps there was no limit, there might, quite likely, be no such condition as the ultimate; there might be no time when any creature or any group of creatures could stop at any certain point and say, this is as far as we can go, there is no use of trying to go farther. For each new development produced, as side effects, so many other possibilities, so many other roads to travel, that with each step one took down any given road there were more paths to follow. There'd never be an end, he thought — no end to anything.
They reached the edge of the field and headed up across it toward the station. From its upper edge came the sound of running feet.
"Enoch!" a voice shouted out of the darkness. "Enoch, is that you?"
Enoch recognized the voice.
"Yes, Winslowe. What is wrong?"
The mailman burst out of the darkness and stopped, panting with his running, at the edge of light.
"Enoch, they are coming! A couple of carloads of them. But I put a crimp in them. Where the road turns off into your lane — that narrow place, you know. I dumped two pounds of roofing nails along the ruts. That'll hold them for a while."
"Roofing nails?" Ulysses asked.
"It's a mob," Enoch told him. "They are after me. The nails…
"Oh, I see," Ulysses said "The deflation of the tires."
Winslowe took a slow step closer, his gaze riveted on the glow of the shielded Talisman.
"That's Lucy Fisher, ain't it?"
"Of course it is," said Enoch.
"Her old man came roaring into town just a while ago and said she was gone again. Up until then everything had quieted down and it was all right. But old Hank, he got them stirred up again. So I went down to the hardware store and got them roofing nails and I beat them here."
"This mob?" Ulysses asked. "I don't…"
Winslowe interrupted him, gasping in his eagerness to tell all his information. "That ginseng man is up there, waiting at the house for you. He has a panel truck."
"That," said Enoch, "would be Lewis with the Hazer's body."
"He is some upset," said Winslowe. "He said you were expecting him."
"Perhaps," suggested Ulysses, "we shouldn't just be standing here. It seems to my poor intellect that many things, indeed, may be coming to a crisis."
"Say," the mailman yelled, "what is going on here? What is that thing Lucy has and who's this fellow with you?"
"Later," Enoch told him. "I'll tell you later. There's no time to tell you now."
"But, Enoch, there's the mob."
"I'll deal with them," said Enoch grimly, "when I have to deal with them. Right now there's something more important."
They ran up the slope, the four of them, dodging through the waist — high clumps of weeds Ahead of them the station reared dark and angular against the evening sky.
"They're down there at the turnoff," Winslowe gasped, wheezing with his running. "That flash of light down the ridge. That was the headlights of a car."
They reached the edge of the yard and ran toward the house. The black bulk of the panel truck glimmered in the glow cast by the Talisman. A figure detached itself from the shadow of the truck and hurried out toward them.
"Is that you, Wallace?"
"Yes," said Enoch. "I'm sorry that I wasn't here."
"I was a bit upset," said Lewis, "when I didn't find you waiting."
"Something unforeseen," said Enoch. "Something that must be taken care of."
"The body of the honored one?" Ulysses asked. "It is in the truck?"
Lewis nodded. "I am happy that we can restore it."
"We'll have to carry him down to the orchard," Enoch said. "You can't get a car in there."
"The other time," Ulysses said, "you were the one who carried him."
Enoch nodded.
"My friend," the alien said, "I wonder if on this occasion I could be allowed the honor."
"Why, yes, of course," said Enoch. "He would like it that way."
And the words came to his tongue, but he choked them back, for it would not have done to say them — the words of thanks for lifting from him the necessity of complete recompense, for the gesture which released him from the utter letter of the law.
At his elbow, Winslowe said: "They are coming. I can hear them down the road."
He was right.
From down the road came the soft sound of footsteps padding in the dust, not hurrying, with no need to hurry, the insulting and deliberate treading of a monster so certain of its prey that it need not hurry.