Read Online Way Station by Clifford D. Simak - Free Book Online
Authors: Clifford D. Simak
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truthfully. For all the others there would necessarily be silence or evasion.
They would ask how come that he had not aged-how he could stay young when all mankind grew old.
And he could not tell them that he did not age inside the station, that he only aged when he stepped out of it, that he aged an hour each day on his daily walks, that he might age an hour or so working in his garden, that he could age for fifteen minutes sitting on the steps to watch a lovely sunset.
But that when he went back indoors again the aging process was completely canceled out.
He could not tell them that. And there was much else that he could not tell them. There might come a time, he knew, if they once contacted him, that he’d have to flee the questions and cut himself entirely from the world, remaining isolated within the station’s walls.
Such a course would constitute no hardship physically, for he could live within the station without any inconvenience. He would want for nothing, for the aliens would supply everything he needed to remain alive and well. He had bought human food at times, having Winslowe purchase it and haul it out from town, but only because he felt a craving for the food of his own planet, in particular those simple foods of his childhood and his campaigning days.
And, he told himself, even those foods might well be supplied by the process of duplication. A slab of bacon or a dozen eggs could be sent to another station and remain there as a master pattern for the pattern impulses, being sent to him on order as he needed them.
But there was one thing the aliens could not provide-the human contacts he’d maintained through Winslowe and the mail. Once shut inside the station, he’d be cut off completely from the world he knew, for the newspapers and the magazines were his only contact. The operation of a radio in the station was made impossible by the interference set up by the installations.
He would not know what was happening in the world, would know no longer how the outside might be going. His chart would suffer from this and would become largely useless; although, he told himself, it was nearly useless now, since he could not be certain of the correct usage of the factors.
But aside from all of this, he would miss this little outside world file:///F|/rah/Clifford%20D.Simak/Clifford%20Simak%20-%20Waystation.txt (23 of 103) [1/19/03 4:01:51 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Clifford%20D.Simak/Clifford%20Simak%20-%20Waystation.txt that he had grown to know so well, this little corner of the world encompassed by his walks. It was the walks, he thought, more than anything, perhaps, that had kept him human and a citizen of Earth.
He wondered how important it might be that he remain, intellectually and emotionally, a citizen of Earth and a member of the human race. There was, he thought, perhaps no reason that he should. With the cosmopolitanism of the galaxy at his fingertips, it might even be provincial of him to be so intent upon his continuing identification with the old home planet. He might be losing something by this provincialism.
But it was not in himself, he knew, to turn his back on Earth. It was a place he loved too well-loving it more, most likely, than those other humans who had not caught his glimpse of far and unguessed worlds. A man, he told himself, must belong to something, must have some loyalty and some identity.
The galaxy was too big a place for any being to stand naked and alone.
A lark sailed out of a grassy plot and soared high into the sky, and seeing it, he waited for the trill of liquid song to spray out of its throat and drip out of the blue. But there was no song, as there would have been in spring.
He ploped down the road and now, ahead of him, he saw the starkness of the station, reared upon its ridge.
Funny, he thought, that he should think of it as station rather than as home, but it had been a station longer than it had been a home.
There was about it, he saw, a sort of ugly
They would ask how come that he had not aged-how he could stay young when all mankind grew old.
And he could not tell them that he did not age inside the station, that he only aged when he stepped out of it, that he aged an hour each day on his daily walks, that he might age an hour or so working in his garden, that he could age for fifteen minutes sitting on the steps to watch a lovely sunset.
But that when he went back indoors again the aging process was completely canceled out.
He could not tell them that. And there was much else that he could not tell them. There might come a time, he knew, if they once contacted him, that he’d have to flee the questions and cut himself entirely from the world, remaining isolated within the station’s walls.
Such a course would constitute no hardship physically, for he could live within the station without any inconvenience. He would want for nothing, for the aliens would supply everything he needed to remain alive and well. He had bought human food at times, having Winslowe purchase it and haul it out from town, but only because he felt a craving for the food of his own planet, in particular those simple foods of his childhood and his campaigning days.
And, he told himself, even those foods might well be supplied by the process of duplication. A slab of bacon or a dozen eggs could be sent to another station and remain there as a master pattern for the pattern impulses, being sent to him on order as he needed them.
But there was one thing the aliens could not provide-the human contacts he’d maintained through Winslowe and the mail. Once shut inside the station, he’d be cut off completely from the world he knew, for the newspapers and the magazines were his only contact. The operation of a radio in the station was made impossible by the interference set up by the installations.
He would not know what was happening in the world, would know no longer how the outside might be going. His chart would suffer from this and would become largely useless; although, he told himself, it was nearly useless now, since he could not be certain of the correct usage of the factors.
But aside from all of this, he would miss this little outside world file:///F|/rah/Clifford%20D.Simak/Clifford%20Simak%20-%20Waystation.txt (23 of 103) [1/19/03 4:01:51 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Clifford%20D.Simak/Clifford%20Simak%20-%20Waystation.txt that he had grown to know so well, this little corner of the world encompassed by his walks. It was the walks, he thought, more than anything, perhaps, that had kept him human and a citizen of Earth.
He wondered how important it might be that he remain, intellectually and emotionally, a citizen of Earth and a member of the human race. There was, he thought, perhaps no reason that he should. With the cosmopolitanism of the galaxy at his fingertips, it might even be provincial of him to be so intent upon his continuing identification with the old home planet. He might be losing something by this provincialism.
But it was not in himself, he knew, to turn his back on Earth. It was a place he loved too well-loving it more, most likely, than those other humans who had not caught his glimpse of far and unguessed worlds. A man, he told himself, must belong to something, must have some loyalty and some identity.
The galaxy was too big a place for any being to stand naked and alone.
A lark sailed out of a grassy plot and soared high into the sky, and seeing it, he waited for the trill of liquid song to spray out of its throat and drip out of the blue. But there was no song, as there would have been in spring.
He ploped down the road and now, ahead of him, he saw the starkness of the station, reared upon its ridge.
Funny, he thought, that he should think of it as station rather than as home, but it had been a station longer than it had been a home.
There was about it, he saw, a sort of ugly
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