It could have been a city in New England, or maybe Wisconsin. Main Street stretched for half a mile from Town Hall to the small department store. Neon tubing brightened every store front, busy proprietors could be seen at work through the large plate gla.s.s windows. There was the bustle you might expect on any Main Street in New England or Wisconsin, but you could not draw the parallel indefinitely.
There were only men. No women.
The hills in which the town nestled were too purple--not purple with distance but the natural color of the gra.s.s.
A somber red sun hung in the pale mauve sky.
This was Earth City, Nowhere.
Arkalion had deposited Temple in the nearby hills, promised they would see one another again. "It may not be so soon," Arkalion had said, "but what"s the difference? You"ll spend the rest of your life here.
You realize you are lucky, Kit. If, you hadn"t come, you would have been dead these five thousand years. Well, good luck."
Dead--five thousand years. The Earth as he knew it, dust. Stephanie, a fifty generation corpse. Nowhere was right. End of the universe.
Temple shuffled his feet, trudged on into town. A man pa.s.sed him on the street, stooped, gray-haired. The man nodded, did a mild double-take. _I"m an unfamiliar face_, Temple thought.
"Howdy," he said. "I"m new here."
"That"s what I thought, stranger. Know just about everyone in these here parts, I do, and I said to myself, now there"s a newcomer. Funny you didn"t come in the regular way."
"I"m here," said Temple.
"Yeah. Funny thing, you get to know everyone. Eh, what you say your name was?"
"Christopher Temple."
"Make it my business to know everyone. The neighborly way, I always say. Temple, eh? We have one here."
"One what?"
"Another fellow name of Temple. Jase Temple, son."
"I"ll be d.a.m.ned!" Temple cried, smiling suddenly. "I will be d.a.m.ned.
Tell me, old timer, where can I find him?"
"Might be anyplace. Town"s bigger"n it looks. I tell you, though, Jase Temple"s our co-ordinator. You"ll find him there, the co-ordinator"s office. Town Hall, down the end of the street."
"I already pa.s.sed it," Temple told the old man. "And thanks."
Temple"s legs carried him at a brisk pace, past the row of store fronts and down to the Town Hall. He read a directory, climbed a flight of stairs, found a door marked:
JASON TEMPLE Earth City Co-ordinator
Heart pounding, Temple knocked, heard someone call, "Come in."
He pushed the door in and stared at his brother, just rising to face him.
"Kit! Kit! What are you doing ... so you took the journey too!"
Jason ran to him, clasped his shoulders, pounded them. "You sure are looking fit. Kit, you could have knocked me over with half a feather, coming in like that."
"You"re looking great too, Jase," Temple lied. He hadn"t seen his brother in five years, had never expected to see him again. But he remembered a full-faced, smiling man somewhat taller than himself, somewhat broader across the shoulders. The Jason he saw looked forty-five or fifty but was hardly out of his twenties. He had fierce, smouldering eyes, gaunt cheeks, graying hair. He seemed a bundle of restless, nervous energy.
"Sit down, Kit. Start talking, kid brother. Start talking and don"t stop till next week. Tell me everything. Everything! Tell me about the blue sky and the moon at night and the way the ocean looks on a windy day and...."
"Five years," said Temple. "Five years."
"Five thousand, you mean," Jason reminded him. "It hardly seems possible. How are the folks, Kit?"
"Mom"s fine. Pop too. He"s sporting a new Chambers Converto. You should see him, Jase. Sharp."
"And Ann?" Jason looked at him hopefully. Ann had been Jason"s Stephanie--but for the Nowhere Journey they would have married.
"Ann"s married," Temple said.
"Oh. Oh. That"s swell, Kit. Really swell. I mean, what the h.e.l.l, a girl shouldn"t wait forever. I told her not to, anyway."
"She waited four years, then met a guy and--"
"A nice guy?"
"The best," said Temple. "You"d like him."
Temple saw the vague hurt come to Jason"s smouldering eyes. Then it was the same. One part of Jason wanted her to remain his over an unthinkable gap, another part wanted her to live a good, full life.
"I"m glad," said Jason. "Can"t expect a girl to wait without hope...."
"Then there"s no hope we"ll ever get back?"
Jason laughed harshly. "You tell me. Earth isn"t merely sixty thousand light years away. Kit, do you know what a light year is?"
Temple said he thought he did.
"Sixty thousand of them. A dozen eternities. But the Earth we know is also dead. Dead five thousand years. The folks, Center City, Ann, her husband--all dust. Five thousand years old.... Don"t mind me, Kit."
"Sure. Sure, I understand." But Temple didn"t, not really. You couldn"t take five thousand years and chuck them out the window in what seemed the s.p.a.ce of a heart beat and then realize they were gone permanently, forever. Not a period of time as long as all of recorded civilization--you couldn"t take it, tack it on after 1992 and accept it. Somehow, Temple realized, the five thousand years were harder to swallow than the sixty thousand light years.
"Well," with a visible effort, Jason snapped out of his reverie.
Temple accepted a cigarette gratefully, his first in a long time. _In fifty centuries_, he thought bitterly, burrowing deeper into a funk.
"Well," said Jason, "I"m acting like a prize b.o.o.b. How selfish can I get? There must be an awful lot you"d like to know, Kit."
"That"s all right. I was told I"d be indoctrinated."
"Ordinarily, you would. But there"s no shipment now, none for another three months. Say, how the devil _did_ you get here?"
"That"s a long story. Nowhere Journey, same as you, with a little a.s.sist to speed things up on Mars. Jase, tell me this: what are we doing here? What is everyone doing here? What"s the Nowhere Journey all about? What kind of a glorified foot-race did I see a while ago, with a bunch of creatures out of the telio science-fiction shows?"