A Choice of Gods

Out of the corner of his eye, David Hunt saw the alien creeping closer. He waved his hands at it in a pantomime of pushing it away.

"Get out of here!" he yelled.

27

Jason picked up the microphone and thumbed the switch. And what did one say, he wondered. Was there a convention of radio conversation? If so, he didn't know it.

He said, "This is Jason Whitney of the planet Earth. Are you still out there?"

He waited and after a pause the voice came: "Jason who? Please identify."

"Jason Whitney."

"Whitney. Are you a human? Or another robot?"

"I am human," Jason said.

"Are you qualified to talk with us?"

"I am the only one who can. I'm the only human here."

"The only…"

"There are other humans. Not many. Only a few of us. At the moment the others are not here."

The voice was puzzled, but it said, "Yes, we understand. We were told there were few humans. A few humans only and some robots."

Jason sucked in his breath, cutting off the questions that came unbidden to his tongue. How would you know? Who told you there were humans? Certainly not John. And if any of the others out in space had found the People, they would come post ing back to Earth to bring the news as quickly as they could, just as John had done. No one would have found the People and talked with them casually and then gone on without getting word to Earth.

Should he let them know, he wondered, that their coming had been anticipated? Like how come it took so long, we had expected you much sooner. That would set them back on their heels exactly as they had set him back on his. But he throttled the desire. He could tell them nothing now. It might be to Earth's advantage if they did not know.

"We had not expected," said the voice, "to find a directional beam or a radio. Once we found the beam, of course…"

"Our robots," Jason said, "use radios to talk back and forth."

"But the beam…"

"I see no reason why you and I should argue," Jason told them smoothly. "Especially since I have no idea who you are."

"But the beam…"

"Just on the bare chance," said Jason, "that someone might want to visit us. It takes little effort to keep it operational. Now please identify yourself. Tell me who you are."

"We once lived on Earth," the voice said. "We were taken from it long ago. Now we are coming back."

"Then," said Jason, calmly, "you must be the People. We had wondered, all these years, what could have happened to you."

"The People?"

"That is what we called you—if you are the ones who disappeared from Earth."

"We are the ones."

"Well, welcome back," said Jason.

He smiled quietly to himself. As if they'd just stepped across the road to visit friends and were late in getting back. It could not be the way they had expected it. What they had expected, more than likely, was a sort of gibbering joy that they had found their way back to Earth and that after all the years the poor creatures who had been left behind were united once again with others of their race.

"We had expected we would have to hunt for you," the voice said. "We had feared, in fact, that we would not find you."

Jason chuckled. "You have been spared that fear. Are you coming in to visit us? I don't quite see how you can. We have no landing field."

"We need no field. We'll send down a boat, with two men. The boat can land anywhere. Just keep the beam going. The boat will ride it down."

"There's a cornfield near the house," said Jason. "You'll recognize it by the corn shocks. You can manage there?"

"Very nicely."

"When can we be expecting you?"

"By morning light."

"In that case," said Jason, "we'll kill the fatted calf."

Alarm sounded in the voice. "You'll do what?" It asked.

"Never mind," said Jason. "Just a saying. We'll be seeing you."

28

The oak log finally burned through and broke into two pieces, collapsing, sending up a shower of sparks that fu

"It worries me," said Jason. "How did they come to know? How could they have learned there was anybody here? It must have been quite natural for them to have assumed the entire race was taken. By rights, they should have thought they were coming to a planet with no inhabitants. They would have known, at least assumed, that the robots had been left behind and that they would have guessed the robots would persist. They might logically have imagined they'd find a robot civilization, but they couldn't know…"

"Don't worry about it," said John. "We'll get the answer soon enough. The important thing is that you handled it just right. You left them guessing. They must be mighty puzzled people. Your reactions were not typical to the situation and you've got them worried. They don't know what to think. They're up there psyching you right now."

"No matter what," said Martha, "you shouldn't take on so. This is no life and death affair."

"To me it is," said Jason. "And it is to Red Cloud. We can't let them rain everything."

"Maybe they won't," said Martha.

"Another planet for them to take over," Jason said. "Do you think they'd miss a chance like that?"

"But a planet," suggested John, "with its resources stripped. They know the planet has been stripped; they stripped it."

"Minerals, of course," said Jason. "The minerals are gone and most of the fossil fuels. Although they probably could salvage a lot of the minerals from the ruins—it's not all gone back to rust. And the cities would be quarries for building stone. Since the Disappearance the forests have grown up again. The forests today can't be much inferior to what they were when the Europeans took over the continent. The same would be true of the rest of the world. Back to primordial woodlands. Billions of board feet of lumber. The land has renewed itself. It's fertile once again, as it was before man first scratched the earth to plant a crop. The sea is full of fish."

"We can bargain with them," Martha said. "We can talk with them."

"We have nothing to bargain with," said Jason, bitterly. "We can appeal to their better nature, but I have no hope in that."

• Footsteps came clumping down the hall, Jason leaped to his feet.

"It's only Hezekiah," Martha said. "Thatcher sent him word."

Hezekiah came into the room. "There was no one," he said, "to a

"Of course you haven't," Martha said. "Thank you for coming. Won't you please sit down."

"I do not need to sit," said Hezekiah, primly. "Damn it, Hezekiah," Jason said, "stop practicing your humility on us. In this house you're like any of the rest of us."

"I thank you, Mr. Jason," Hezekiah said. He sat down on a sofa. "I must admit that I have become partial to this human thing of sitting. In my case there is no earthly reason for it, but I enjoy it, although I suspect my enjoyment of it is something of a sin. I am told you have received word from the coming People. Aside from my realization of the problem posed by their imminent arrival, I am considerably intrigued at the opportunity to get from them some account of the development of their belief in the matter of religion. It would be a comfort…"

"You will find no comfort," John told him. "You can hope for nothing from them. I saw no evidence of any religious belief while I was on their planet."

"No evidence at all, sir?"

"None at all," said John. "No churches, no places of worship, no inclination to worship. No ministers or preachers or priests. And don't act so startled. Certainly it would be possible for a society to exist, quite comfortably, without any kind of faith. In fact, even before the Disappearance, we almost did. And in case you are wondering, there is no evidence that the lack of faith had anything to do with the Disappearance."