A Choice of Gods

What did matter, he told himself, were the Indians, the descendants of the old aborigines who at one time had called this continent their home—and the robots as well as the Indians. Neither of them had asked for the kind of culture and civilization that had been forced upon them; the robots had not even asked for life. Enough injustice had been visited upon each of them in the past; it was more than decency could bear that they be made the victims of a new injustice. They had to have their chance. And if the People came they would have no chance.

What was this fatal disease that his own race carried? Fatal not to itself, but to all others that came in contact with it, although in the end, perhaps, fatal even to itself. It had all begun, he told himself, when the first man had scratched the ground and planted seed and must, therefore, secure to himself the ground in which to plant the seed. It had started with the concept of ownership—ownership of land, ownership of natural resources, ownership of labor. And perhaps from the concept of security as well, the erecting of fences against the adversities of life, the protection of one's station in life and the ambition to improve that station and, obtaining that improvement, to fortify it so well against one's neighbors that they could never wrest it from one. Thinking of it, he felt certain that the idea of security must, in its first instance, have risen from the concept of ownership. The two sprang from the same roots, really were the same. The man who owned was safe.

The Indians owned not one foot of ground, would spurn such ownership, for ownership would have meant they were tied to what they owned. And the robots, he wondered—did they in some ma

The social structure, swept away by the Disappearance, might be reestablished now on Earth, and what could be done about it? What could he, Jason Whitney, do to prevent it being reestablished? There was no answer, none that he could find.

The robots were a puzzle. Stanley had said that he and his fellows were deeply concerned and yet when the Project had decided against offering help they had accepted the decision without question. Although they had been helpful in a most important way. They had supplied and installed the directional beam and the radio and batteries that operated them. Without such a setup it would have been impossible to contact the People when they arrived. Without the directional beam it would have been highly probable that they could arrive and leave without ever knowing there were people on the planet. They would land, perhaps at several places, make their surveys and then return to their new home planets to report that Earth was uninhabited. And it was important, Jason told himself—terribly important—that he have a chance to talk with them. What he could do by talking he had no idea, but at least he must have this chance to talk with those men on the ship that must, by now, be coming near to Earth. With the homing beam reaching out in space they would know there still were people here and would have means to seek them out.

Jason sat huddled in his chair. He felt lonely and forsaken; once again he wondered if he could be mistaken in all of this, and brushed the thought away. Mistaken for himself, perhaps, even mistaken for the robots, but certainly not mistaken for Red Cloud and his people—and perhaps not for himself or the robots, either.

He tried deliberately to wipe his mind clear of the whole affair. Perhaps if he could wipe it clean and keep it clean for a little while, he could think the clearer when the time came to think again. He sat as easily as he could, not thinking, willing the tenseness in him to soften and relax. He saw the moon glinting off the roofs of the monastery buildings and making slim white ghosts of the music trees. The last few nights, he thought, the trees had done much better, as good or even better than in the days of long ago. Their improvement had come about, he recalled, in the middle of the concert on the evening of the day his brother John had come home from the stars. He had noticed it then and had wondered over it for a little time, but there had been too much to do, too much to worry over, to think of it for long. On the night of the day John came home, he thought, but the fact of the homecommg could not have a thing to do with it. John's coming home could have made no difference to the music trees.

A foot crunched on the paving stones and Jason swung around in his chair. Thatcher was hurrying toward him.

"Mr. Jason, sir," the robot said, "there is someone calling on the radio. I told him to wait and I would put you on."

Jason rose from the chair. He was aware of a weakness in his knees, a goneness in his belly. This was it, he thought, this was it at last. He wasn't ready for it. He would never, he realized, have been ready for it.

"Thank you, Thatcher," he said. "There is something I'd like you to do for me."

"Anything at all, sir." Thatcher was excited. Jason looked at him curiously—he had never thought he'd see Thatcher excited.

"Would you please send one of the robots down to Red Cloud's camp. Tell him what has happened. Tell him that I need him. Ask him if he'll come."

"Immediately," said Thatcher. "I'll make the trip myself."

"That is fine," said Jason. "I had hoped you would. Horace knows you. He might resent any other robot yelling him awake."

Thatcher turned and started off.

"Just a moment," Jason said. "There is something further. Would you ask Red Cloud to send someone up the river and fetch Stanley down. We should have him here. And Hezekiah, too. One of the other robots can rout out Hezekiah."

26

He had killed that last bear when it had been so close that there had been no time to get off a decent shot. He had killed all the others, too—one bear for each of the claws in the necklace that hung about his throat. Some of the others, perhaps all of them, had been killed by the arrows he had fired—stout, true, well-fletched arrows driven by a powerful bow. But now he could not be sure, not absolutely sure, about the arrows.

Although it was not only killing. It was healing, too.

He had killed the bears, but he had healed the trees. He had thought so at the time and now he was sure he had. He had sensed something wrong with them and he had made it right, although he had never really known what had been wrong with them.

The alien came hobbling through the moonlit trees and squatted close to him. It made the worms go round and round and tumble all about. It had been following him for days and he was weary of it.

"Get out of here," he yelled. "Go away," he shouted.

It paid no attention. It stayed there, redistributing the worms. He had been tempted at times to do to it whatever it was he had done to the bears. But he told himself that it would not be right to do it to the alien. The alien was no real threat, or at least he didn't think it was; it was just a nuisance.

The alien squirmed closer.

"I gave you what you wanted," shouted David Hunt at it. "I fixed up what was wrong with you. I took away the ache. Now leave me alone."

The alien backed away.

David crouched at the foot of the mighty maple and tried to think it out—although, actually, there was not too much to think about. The record seemed quite clear: He had cured the trees, he had cured this strange creature which continually came sneaking up on him, he had cured the bird of its broken wing and an old black bear of an aching tooth and he had purged a bed of asters of a deadly thing that sucked the life from them (and was not quite easy in his mind on that one, for in helping the asters it appeared that he had killed some other form of life—a lowly life perhaps, but it still was life). As if a great compassion came rolling out of him to make all things well and whole and yet, quite strangely, he felt no great compassion. Rather, he felt an uneasiness when he sensed an unwell or aching thing and somehow he must make it right again. Right, perhaps, so he'd not be bothered with it. Was he to go through life, he wondered, sensing all the wrongness with the world? He had been all right until that night he had listened to the trees—until he had sensed the wrongness in them, he had been oblivious to wrongness, had not been aware of wrongness and quite carefree because he did not know of it. Something in the music, he wondered. Something in the robot that had stood beside him? And what did it mean, he wondered—that he must go stumbling through life aware of every little trouble, every little ill, and could get no rest or peace until he bad fixed them all?