Read Online Highway of Eternity by Clifford D. Simak - Free Book Online

be talking to himself. “With the family, I mean. Horace, the hardheaded, practical lout, the organizer, the schemer. Emma, the moaner, the keeper of our consciences. Timothy, the student. Enid, the thinker. And I, the loafer, the bad example, the one who makes the others feel virtuous.”
    â€œThere is one thing you said,” Boone told him. “Enid is the thinker. It seemed to me you put a special emphasis, almost a special meaning …”
    â€œIn the time from which we came,” said David, “there was finally time to think. There was no need to break one’s back to make a living or to get ahead. We had made our progress and we had no great regard for it. So, given the time to do so, many turned to thought.”
    â€œPhilosophy?”
    â€œNo, just thinking for the sake of thinking. A way to kill one’s time. It was an activity held in very high regard. It brought about many great ideas, discussed most learnedly and politely, but never put to use. We were tired of putting things to use. The great thing about thinking is there’s never any end to it. You could spend a lifetime thinking, and many people did. Perhaps that was the reason so many of us could equate ourselves with the Infinites’ idea of turning ourselves into units of incorporeal intelligence, thinking entities unhampered by the grossness of a biological body.”
    â€œYou come close to sounding as if you approved of the program pushed by the Infinites.”
    â€œNot at all,” said David. “I am only trying to tell you the situation as it applied to many of the race.”
    â€œBut Enid …”
    â€œWith her, it is slightly different. Look at it this way. Timothy is a student, studying mankind’s past in an attempt to find the basic, early flaws in the human culture, in the hope that the future remnant of the biological race can set up a way of life that has a better chance of reasonable survival. Enid is trying, by the exercise of deductive thought, to arrive at independent scenarios that may serve as guides for the new culture that must be established if any of our race are to survive as biological beings. Both Timothy and Enid are trying to lay out new paths for us. Give them time and they may come up with a new human pattern.”
    Here comes Enid now, said Henry.
    The three sitting on the wall clambered off it and stood, waiting for her.
    â€œWe are about to begin,” said Enid.
    â€œHenry’s here, with us,” said David.
    â€œGood,” she said. “Then all of us will be there. Even Spike is here. He came rolling in just a while ago.”
    They started up the slope toward the house, Corcoran and David walking ahead, Boone falling in beside Enid. She took his arm and spoke in a confidential voice.
    â€œThere is no coffin,” she said. “No time to build one. We wrapped him well in a new white muslin sheet and Timothy found a length of canvas that Emma and I sewed into a shroud. It’s the best that we could do. Horace is in a dither. He thinks we should get away at once.”
    â€œAnd what do you think?”
    â€œI suppose he’s right. We probably have to go. But I hate to leave this house. It’s been home for a long, long time. We are burying Gahan at the foot of an old oak tree back of the house.”
    â€œYou have a fondness for trees?”
    â€œYes. It’s not an unusual love. Many people love them. Would it surprise you if I told you trees will come after men? The trees will supersede us; they will take our place.”
    Boone laughed. “That’s as fine-honed a conceit as I have ever heard.”
    She did not answer and they went up the slope in silence. As they came up to the house, she gestured to her right. “There the travelers are,” she said. “All lined up and waiting.”
    And there they were on the lawn before the house—the two smaller ones the closest and the large one that had served