Highway of Eternity (21 page)

He stood on a plain. The plain undoubtedly ran to a horizon, but there was no way of knowing, for the grayness of the sky came down to the grayness of the plain and the two could not be separated. The stream from which he had drunk meandered down the plain, coming from nowhere and flowing into nowhere. Down the plain, as well, went a road, not meandering, but straight as a road could run. It was gray as well, but was marked by two darker streaks that appeared to be wheel marks. The wheel tracks were neat, regular and straighter than any actual track could be.

“What the hell kind of place is this?” Boone asked, speaking aloud, not expecting an answer and not getting one.

The road ran two ways and he probably should follow it, but in which direction?

The entire situation was wrong, he told himself. He had no idea where he was or where to go. There was no way to know how long he'd been here. There was water, but no food.

He moved away from the stream and walked out into the middle of the road. He knelt down and felt what he had taken to be wheel marks. While his eyes could not define the elevation of the darker streaks, his fingers told him they were raised an inch or so above the level of the surface. In texture, they seemed to be made of the same material as the surface, but raised above it. Could they, he wondered, be rails? Maybe if he waited long enough a conveyance of some sort would come along, running on the rails, and he could catch a ride on it. That, he knew, was nothing he could count on.

Standing in the middle of the road, he made his decision. He would follow the road in the same direction that the stream ran. He would go with the flowing water. Water, he recalled someone saying long ago, ran toward civilization. Follow a stream and you would eventually find people. That could be right, but logic might not apply to this place. Walking in either direction, he might arrive at nowhere. Perhaps there was nowhere to arrive at.

He trudged along for a while, but nothing changed. The water course still ran along the road, now close to it, now farther off, as it meandered about the plain. There was just the road and brook.

He heard a clicking behind him and swiftly turned about. The clicking had sounded like and was the click of toenails. A wolf was close upon his heels.
The
wolf? Looking at it, he could not tell. This wolf was gray and the other wolf had been gray, but that was not significant, for here everything was gray. He held out his arms and the sleeves of his jacket were gray. His jacket, before he had come here, had been tan.

The wolf had halted and sat down, not more than six feet from him. It wrapped its tail around its feet and cocked its head at him. It grinned.

“I'm glad you like it,” said Boone. “Maybe you can tell me where we are.”

The wolf said nothing. It kept on sitting there and it kept on grinning.

“I think you're the wolf I know,” said Boone. “If you are, snarl a bit at me.”

The wolf lifted its lip in an instant snarl, then went back to grinning. When it had snarled, it had flashed a lot of teeth.

“The same old wolf,” said Boone. “So let the two of us get moving.”

He started striding down the road, and the wolf moved up beside him, walking along with him. It was good to have the wolf here, Boone told himself. After all, it was better to be walking with a friend than with a stranger.

Nothing happened. Nothing changed. Boone kept striding along, and the wolf kept padding with him, and they might just as well have been standing still; no matter how far they walked, it all stayed the same.

He wondered where Enid was and why she had not returned. What could have happened to her?

“Do you remember Enid?” he asked the wolf. The wolf did not answer him.

Far down the road a dot appeared. The dot grew larger.

“There is something coming,” Boone told the wolf.

He stepped off the road and waited. It was, he saw, a vehicle of some sort, running on the tracks.

“It's going the wrong way,” he told the wolf.

The wolf yawned. It might as well have said, “What difference does it make? How do we know which way is the right way?”

“I don't suppose we do,” said Boone.

The dot became a trolley car, a very funny trolley car, open to the weather, although a striped canopy hung over the two seats, one of them facing forward, the other facing back. There was no operator; the car ran by itself.

The trolley slowed, but it did not stop.

“Up you go,” Boone told the wolf.

The wolf leaped up and sat down on one of the seats. Boone jumped in and sat down beside the wolf, both of them facing forward. The car picked up speed.

The car was gray, of course. The canopy was striped only in the sense that the alternating stripes were light gray and dark gray. The gray car went rocketing through the land, with the gray wolf and the gray man sitting on the trolley's seat beneath the flapping canopy.

Finally, on the left hand side of the track and very far ahead, a cube loomed up and became larger as they sped along. The car began to slow, and now it could be seen that the cube was a building, with three tables set outside and chairs around the tables. Someone sat at one of the tables; when the car came to a halt, Boone saw that the person at the table was The Hat, who had sat across the campfire from him and had talked with him about the brotherhood of wolf and man. The Hat's great conical hat was still the same, so huge that it rested on his shoulders and concealed his head.

The wolf jumped out of the car and trotted over to The Hat's table, sitting down and staring at The Hat. Boone got off more slowly and walked to the table, taking the chair opposite The Hat.

I have been waiting for you. I was told you would be coming, The Hat said.

“Who told you?”

That doesn't matter. What does matter is that you've arrived and have brought along your friend.

“I did not bring him,” said Boone. “He came all by himself. He was the one who sought me out.”

You are meant for one another, said The Hat. I told you the two of you were friends.

“It appears this might be an eating place,” said Boone. “How do we go about getting something to eat?”

Your needs are known. It is already on the way.

“For the both of us?”

Of course. For the both of you.

A squat service robot rolled out of the door of the building. A tray rested on top of its squared-off head. It stopped by the table and, lifting its arms, transferred the tray to the table.

“This plate is for the carnivore,” said the robot. “How do I serve it?”

“You place it on the ground,” said Boone. “He eats most naturally that way.”

“I did not cook the meat.”

“That is right. He likes it raw and bloody.”

“And I cut it into mouth-size pieces for easy handling.”

“That was thoughtful of you,” said Boone. “You have the thanks of both of us.”

The robot set the large plate of raw meat on the ground and the wolf began gulping it down. He was hungry; he gulped it fast and without the nicety of chewing.

“He is hungry,” said the robot.

“So am I,” said Boone.

Quickly the robot unloaded the tray on the table in front of Boone—a huge and sizzling steak, a baked potato with a pot of sour cream, a salad with cheese dressing, a dish of green beans, a piece of apple pie, and a pot of coffee.

Boone said to The Hat: “This is the first civilized food I have seen for a week or more. But I'm surprised to find good twentieth-century American cooking in a place like this.”

We know our customers, said The Hat. We fit our cuisine to them. We knew you and the wolf would be our guests.

Boone, ignoring the salad, started on the steak. He spooned cream into the baked potato. He asked, speaking with his mouth full, “Can you tell me where we are? Or are you bound to silence by some foolish secrecy?”

Not at all, said The Hat. For all the good it does you, you're on the Highway of Eternity.

“I have never heard of it.”

Of course you haven't. You were not supposed to. You or any other human.

“But we are here. The wolf and I.”

The Hat said, sadly: There was reason to believe it would never happen. The lesser breeds, we thought, were barred. There was but one chance in many millions that the evolutionary process could stumble on the kind of freakishness that you have. Once the universe was stable. One could cipher what might happen. One could plan. But that is true no longer. Not with you, it isn't. Random biological processes have made a jest of reason.

Boone kept on eating. He was too hungry even to try to be polite. Wolf had finished gulping down his plate of meat and now lay comfortably beside it, only a couple of feet away so that he would be close by if anyone should bring another bait of food. His hunger had been dulled, but little more than dulled, for Wolf was a hard animal to stuff to the point where he could no longer eat.

Boone gulped and swallowed. He spoke to The Hat. “You said the Highway to Eternity?”

That is not what I said. I said the Highway of Eternity.

“Small difference,” Boone told him.

Not so small as you might think.

“Well, it doesn't matter,” said Boone. “If I followed this road, would I reach Eternity? And what is Eternity? What would I find at Eternity? Who, I ask you, would want to reach Eternity?”

You're already in Eternity, said The Hat. Where did you think you were?

“I had no idea,” Boone said. “But Eternity!”

It's a good place to be, said The Hat. It is the end of everything. When you are in Eternity, you have arrived. There is no use of going further.

“I'm supposed to just settle down and stay?”

You might as well. There is no place else to go.

There was something terribly wrong, Boone told himself. The Hat was lying to him, making sport of him. Eternity was not a place; perhaps it was no more than something that some ancient philosopher had thought up, but not a point in space and time. And the road did not end at this little eating place; it kept unrolling into the gray distance. There were obviously other places to go.

The steak and potato were finished. He pushed the platter to one side and pulled the plate of salad in front of him, reversing the usual course of eating. He did not care for salad, although when hungry, as he had been and still seemed to be, he would eat it.

The Hat had not spoken for some time. When Boone glanced across the table, he saw that The Hat had fallen with his hidden face upon the table. His arms, which had been resting on the table top, had slipped off and now dangled from his shoulders.

Startled, Boone rose to his feet and stood staring down at the collapsed figure.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “What has happened to you?”

The Hat did not answer, nor did he stir.

Stepping swiftly around the table, Boone seized him by a shoulder and lifted him. The Hat dangled limply in his grasp.

Dead, Boone thought. The Hat was dead—if he had ever been alive.

He let loose his hold and The Hat collapsed, falling back upon the table. Boone went to the cube and walked through the door. The service robot stood with his back to him, puttering at what appeared to be a stove.

“Quick!” said Boone. “Something's happened to The Hat.”

“He collapsed,” the robot said. “Someone let the air out of him.”

“That's exactly it. I think that he is dead. How did you know?”

“It happens,” said the robot. “It happens all the time.”

“When it does, what do you do? What can be done to help him?”

“I do nothing,” said the robot. “It's no concern of mine. I'm just a service robot. All I do is wait for customers to come rolling down the road. They almost never do. I keep waiting for someone and no one ever comes. It's all one to me. When, and if, they come, I am here to serve them. That is all I do. I can do nothing else.”

“The Hat? What about The Hat?”

“He shows up now and then, but he needs no service. He does not eat. He sits at the table, always that same one. He never talks to me. He sits at the table and keeps staring down the road. Sometimes he collapses.”

“You do nothing for him?”

“What is there to do? I leave him sprawling there and then, after minutes, hours, or days, he's gone.”

“Where does he go?”

The robot shrugged, an elaborate shrug, greatly overdone.

Boone turned about and went out the door. Wolf had pulled The Hat off the chair and was hauling the limpness all about the area, as a pup might drag a rag at play. Tossing The Hat high in the air, Wolf caught him by the middle before he reached the ground and shook him viciously.

A doll, thought Boone, that was what The Hat was, a crudely fashioned rag doll that ranged extensively in time and space and might serve as a voice for someone or something else, acting the part of a dummy for an unknown ventriloquist.

Standing by the table, watching Wolf at play with the rag doll that had been The Hat, he shivered in a chill that came from deep inside himself, a psychic chill that he knew in all honesty came from being scared to death.

When he first had reached this land, he had wondered into what strange place he had been hurled. Now the wonder came on him again, this time a distilled and ghastly wonder. The land or place or condition was stark and alien and he wondered why he had not noticed it before. He felt naked and alone against a menace that he could not even guess at, although there was no apparent menace and he was not alone—Wolf was with him.

Wolf stopped his play with The Hat and looked across the fallen doll, grinning at Boone, happy to have a toy, happy not to be alone. Boone patted his thigh and Wolf came padding at the invitation to sit close beside him. Boone reached out and stroked the head of his partner and Wolf did not draw away.

The coldness, Boone was surprised to find, had melted, and the gray landscape was no more than a gray land once again.