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In the last few years I have been able to ask myself many questions concerning the incident, for now the edge of the encounter has dulled and I can think of it objectively. The thought has occurred to me that we might have considered asking Hezekiah to officiate at the funeral, he rather than Jason reading the burial service and the words of comfort, although, shying from this even now, I know it would have been impossible then. And yet the fact remains that robot, rather than man, has kept not only Christianity, but the very idea of religion alive. This may not be entirely true, I realize, for Red Cloud's people undoubtedly do have a body of beliefs and a pattern of attitude that should be called religion, although as I understand it, it is not formalized, but is highly personal—which probably makes for a better practice and more common sense than the empty formalizations that other religions had become. But the point, it seems to me, is that we should either have held to our religion or have abandoned it entirely. What we did was let it die because we no longer cared and had grown very weary of pretending to believe. This does not apply to the last few thousand years alone. Even before the Disappearance our faith had been allowed to die and in this sense I use the word faith in a most restrictive sense, equating it with organized religion.
I have thought much on this the last number of years, sitting on the patio and watching the seasons pass. In the process I have become a student of the sky and know all the clouds there are and have firmly fixed in mind the various hues of blue that the sky can show—the washed-out, almost invisible blue of a hot, summer noon; the soft robin's egg, sometimes almost greenish blue of a late springtime evening, the darker, almost violet blue of fall. I have become a co
It seems to me, thinking of it, that there must be some universal plan which set in motion the orbiting of the electrons about the nucleus and the slower, more majestic orbit of the galaxies about one another to the very edge of space. There is a plan, it seems to me, that reaches out from the electron to the rim of the universe and what this plan may be or how it came about is beyond my feeble intellect. But if we are looking for something on which to pin our faith—and, indeed, our hope—the plan might well be it. I think we have thought too small and have been too afraid…
25
The concert came to a crashing close and the music trees stood silent in the autumn moonlight, Down in the river valley owls were chuckling back and forth to one another and a faint breeze sent a rustle through the leaves. Jason stirred in his chair, glancing over his shoulder at the great ante
Martha rose from her chair. "I am going in," she said. "Are you coming, Jason?"
"I think I'll stay here for a while," he said. "We don't get too many nights like this, this late in the year. It's a shame to miss it. Do you happen to know where John is? He didn't come out tonight."
"John is getting restless with the waiting," Martha said. "One of these days he will be off to the stars again. He has found, I imagine, this is home no longer. He has been gone too long."
Jason grumbled at her. "No place is home to John. He hasn't got a home. He doesn't want a home. He simply wants to wander. He's like all the rest of them. None of them, no single one of them, cares what happens to the Earth."
"They all are most sympathetic. All of those I talked with. If they could do anything, they said…»
"Knowing," Jason said, "there is nothing they can do."
"I suppose so. Don't take it so hard, Jason. You may be worrying about something that will never come about."
"It's not us I'm worried over," he told her. "It is Red Cloud's people and the robots. Yes, even the robots. They've made a new start of sorts. They should have their chance. There should be no interference,"
"But they refused to help."
"They installed the radio and the beam," he said. "But no real help."
"No real help," he agreed. "I can't understand the robots. I never have been able to."
"Our own robots…"
"Our own robots are different," Jason said. "They are a part of us. They're doing what they were intended for. They have not changed, but the others have. Hezekiah, for example…"
"They had to change," said Martha. "They had no choice. They couldn't hunker down and wait."
"I suppose you're right," said Jason. "I am going in now. Don't stay out too long. It will be getting cold soon…"
"Where is Evening Star? She didn't come out, either. Just the two of us tonight."
"Evening Star is worrying. About that fu
"She has no idea what happened to him? Where he may have gone?"
"If she had, she'd not be worrying. I imagine that she thinks he ran away from her."
"You talked with her?"
"Not about the boy."
"He was a strange one," Jason said. "Well, I'm going in. You'll be coming soon?"
He sat and listened to her footsteps going across the patio, heard the door shut behind her.
Strange about the boy, he thought, strange that he should disappear. The alien in the glen had disappeared as well. He'd gone down to see it and talk with it again and there had been no sign of it, no matter tow he'd hunted. Had it grown tired of waiting and gone away, he wondered. Or could there be some co
Could it be, he wondered, that his own fear was based upon a nonexistent premise? Might it be that a reco
And no matter how he might rebel against the thought of it, to the two of them it would not matter too much. So far as he and Martha were concerned, the People could be held at arm's length—certainly they could not interfere with this house and these few acres if it were amply apparent that they were not welcome. The very thought of them being here upon the planet would be gall upon his tongue, but it was selfishness, an utter arrogance and selfishness.