26
As one awakened from a deep sleep, a hypnotic trance, Cal opened hiseyes.
Man's ancient thought filled his being, the subject of man's dreams, ofyearnings, of philosophies. In ancient eidetic memory, the unbrokenthread persisted: If I could only grasp this elusive thing, always justbarely beyond my reach, I would not need the ox, the wagon, the train,the plane, the spaceship to transport me from here to there.
And now, at last, the thought was in Cal's grasp. Express the things andforces balanced in equation to describe them as they are; or, equally,to alter the things and forces instead to fit the equation balance onehad in mind; purely a matter of choice. Each was the use of natural law.No chaos here, no magic, one as much true science as the other.
How long had he slept, and dreamed? A few minutes? An hour? Or by chancewas he another Rip Van Winkle, doomed to find the colonists aged ordead?
But why wonder?
A short distance first, just outside the amphitheater, just a smalltest. He first rearranged the relative position of himself to theamphitheater, to be outside instead of in it. He diagrammed the forcesin his mind that would alter the relationship, connected them.
He was standing outside the entrance arch.
With a hoarse cry, Louie, who had been watching all the while throughthe open arch, shrank back away from Cal, wavered in uncertainty, thenfell to his knees, then groveled in the dust.
"Forgive me!" he cried. "In my blind, senseless vanity, I did not knowyou were a Holy One. I was going to kill you, I confess. Woe! Woe! I sawyou lying there in Their temple, defaming it in blasphemy by your sleep.But when I tried to enter, I could not. Their will prevented me. Someshielding force protected you. And then I knew you were a Holy One.Forgive me. Let me live to expiate my sin."
"Louie, Louie," Cal said sadly.
As if in tangled ball, the thought stream of Louie, twisted and warpedby the false reasonings and interpretations fed to him in childhood,seemed clearly revealed to Cal. Again a change in concept ofrelationship to reality, the schematic of forces visualized, theuntangling, straightening of thought.
Louie scrambled to his feet, a rueful grin on his face.
"Sorry, Cal," he said. "I must have gone nuts there for a while, shockand all. I'm all right now. Don't worry anymore about me. I'll get onback to the rest."
"Sure, Louie. See you there," Cal agreed.
A rearrangement of relationships, and Cal walked out from behind a bushto approach Jed and Tom.
"You must not have gone all the way to the top," Jed said when he lookedup and caught sight of Cal. "It's just barely past noon, I reckon.Didn't expect to see you back until nightfall."
"I took a short cut," Cal said with a grin. "Little past noon," hecontinued, as if musing with a thought. "About the same time of day thateverything happened a couple of weeks ago."
"Yeah, about the same time of day," Jed said, and looked at himcuriously.
Tom had arisen to his feet and was staring at Cal curiously, sensing adifference in the E. Now Jed felt it too, and looked at Cal withpuzzlement on his face.
"There's something important about it being around this time of day,Cal?" he asked.
"Not really," Cal said, "but I thought it might be helpful. I couldrestore the village, the fields, the escape ship, everything just as itwas; make it feel like a continuation of the same day to the people. Itbeing the same time of day would help the illusion that no time hadpassed, nothing had happened."
Tom's eyes narrowed in speculation.
"You can do that, Cal?" he asked. "You've solved the problem?"
"Yes," Cal said simply. "I'll tell you about it sometime. There's quitea few loose ends to catch up right now." He turned to Jed. "How aboutit, Jed?" he asked. "Think it'll be too much of a shock to put thingsback as they were?"
In spite of himself, Jed was trembling. He drew a deep breath, firmedhis jaw. Seemed to set himself as one does in the dentist's chair at theapproach of the drill.
It was a bigger equation, a more complex one, but not different in kind.
The village of Appletree sprang suddenly into being, the hangar with themetallic gleam of the ship inside, the fields, the pasture fences withthe calves separated from the cows. A few people, clothed, were walkingon the dirt street between the houses. They looked at one another. Theylooked up at the sky, at the fields around them, the forests beyond.They looked back at one another. They shook their heads, and blinkedtheir eyes, as if suddenly wakened from a sleep, a dream, the craziestdream.
Later they would compare the dream, and with Jed's help piece together,and feel the shock, and wonder.
Upon the hill, away from the village, where Jed lay, clothed, in thehammock swung between two trees, Martha came out of the house, clothed.
"I must have sat down in a chair for a minute and fallen asleep orsomething, Jed," she said as she came to stand beside him. "And I hadthe funniest dream. You can't imagine. You know how sometimes we'lldream about being out in front of folks, all naked ..."
"That wasn't any dream, Martha," he answered with a grin. "All thepeople in the village are going to start realizing it pretty soon.They'll need some help. We'd better walk down there. Them people acrossthe ridge, too. Bet they'll be hightailing it back over here first thingyou know. And something else, there's an E ship here, come to find outwhy we didn't communicate."
"Well whatever on Earth are you talkin' about, Jed?" she askedcuriously. "It won't be time to communicate for a couple of days yet.You ought to know that. Have you been dreaming, too? Or you and the boysfermenting something? Here, let me smell your breath!"
"Aw, now Martha," he said with a huge grin. He clambered out of thehammock and stood up, took her in his arms, hugged her tightly.
"Jed!" she scolded. "Right out here in the front yard in front ofeverybody." But she didn't struggle away from him.
"Won't matter a bit," he said. "Not after what's been goin' on in frontof everybody right along."
"Whatever has been goin' on can't be half as bad as what I've beendreamin'," she said.
"Better start gettin' used to the idea that it wasn't a dream, Martha,"he cautioned.
"Jed!" she scolded again, her face aflame with embarrassment.