Harlan Ellison Alone Against Tomorrow

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He comes but slowly, old man. But he comes. Have patience.
Patience, Pederson chuckled ruminatively. I got that, Pretrie. I got that
and that s about all. I
used to have time, too, but now that s about gone. You say he s coming?
Coming, old man. Time. Just time.
How are the blue shadows, Pretrie?
Thick as fur in the moon valleys, old man. Night is coming.
Are the moons out?
There was a breathing through wide nostrils-ritualistically slit nostrils-and
the alien replied, None yet this night. Tayseff and Teei are below the
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horizon. It grows dark swiftly. Perhaps this night, old man.
Perhaps, Pederson agreed.
Have patience.
Pederson had not always had patience. As a young man, the blood warm in him,
he had fought with his Presby-Baptist father, and taken to space. He had not
believed in Heaven, Hell, and the accompanying rigors of the All-Church. Not
then. Later, but not then.
To space he had gone, and the years had been good to him. He had aged slowly,
healthily, as men do in the dark places between dirt. Yet he had seen the
death, and the men who had died believing, the men who had died not believing.
And with time had come the realization that he was alone, and that some day,
one day, the Gray Man would come for him.
He was always alone, and in his loneliness, when the time came that he could
no longer tool the great ships through the star-spaces, he went away.
He went away, searching for a home, and finally came full-circle to the first
world he had known;
came home to Mars, where he had been young, where his dreams had been born;
Mars, for home is always where a man has been young and happy. Came home where
the days were warm and the nights were mild.
Came home where men had passed but somehow, miraculously, had not sunk their
steel and concrete roots.
Came home to a home that had changed not at all since he d been young. And it
was time. For blindness
had found him, and the slowness that forewarned him of the Gray Man s visit.
Blindness from too many glasses of vik and Scotch, from too much hard
radiation, from too many years of squinting into the vastness. Blind, and
unable to earn his keep.
So alone, he had come home; as the bird finds the tree, as the winter-starved
deer finds the last bit of bark, as the river finds the sea. He had come there
to wait for the Gray Man, and it was there that the
Jilkite Pretrie had found him.
They sat together, silently, on the porch with many things unsaid, yet passing
between them.
Pretrie?
Old man.
I never asked you what you get out of this. I mean-
Pretrie reached and the sound of his claw tapping the formica tabletop came to
Pederson. Then the alien was pressing a bulb of water-diluted vik into his
hand. I know what you mean, old man. I have been with you close on two
harvestings. I am here. Does that not satisfy you?
Two harvestings. Equivalent to four years Earth-time, Pederson knew. The
Jilkite had come out of the dawn one day, and stayed to serve the old blind
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man. Pederson had never questioned it. One day he was struggling with the
coffee pot (he dearly loved old-fashion brewed coffee and scorned the use of
the coffee briquettes) and the heat controls on the hutch...the next he had an
undemanding, unselfish manservant who catered with dignity and regard to his
every desire. It had been a companionable relationship; he had made no great
demands on Pretrie, and the alien had asked nothing in return.
He was in no position to wonder or question.
Though he could hear Pretrie s brothers in the chest-high floss brakes at
harvesting time, still the
Jilkite never wandered far from the hutch.
Now, it was nearing its end.
It has been easier with you. I-uh-thanks, Pretrie, the old man felt the need
to say it clearly, without embroidery.
A soft grunt of acknowledgment. I thank you for allowing me to remain with
you, old man, Pederson, the Jilkite answered softly.
A spot of cool touched Pederson s cheek. At first he thought it was rain, but [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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