"They had a man here once," he said to Wyatt, "who was as good a writer as there ever was. He wrote a book which these people use as their Bible. It's like our Bible sometimes, but mostly it's just the opposite. It preaches that a man shouldn't worship anything. Would you like to hear some of it?"
Wyatt had been pinned down and he had to listen, feeling sorry for Beauclaire, who had such a long way to go. His thoughts were on Donna, who had gone out alone to walk in the woods and say goodbye to her world. Soon he would go out and bring her back to the ship, and she would probably cry a little, but she would come. She would come with him always, wherever he went.
"I have translated this the best way I could," Beauclaire said thickly, "but remember this. This man could write. He was Shakespeare and Voltaire and all the rest all at once. He could make you feel. I couldn't do a decent translation if I tried forever, but please listen and try to get what he means. I've put it in the style of Ecclesiastes because it's something like that."
"All right," Wyatt said.
BEAUCLAIRE waited for a long moment, feeling this deeply. When he read, his voice was warm and strong, and something of his emotion came through. As Wyatt listened, he found his attention attracted, and then he felt the last traces of his sadness and weariness fall away.
He nodded, smiling.
These are the words Beauclaire had gathered from the Book :
Rise up smiling, and walk with me. Rise up in the armor of thy body and what shall pass shall make thee unafraid. Walk among the yellow hills, for they belong to thee. Walk upon grass and let thy feet descend into soft soil; in the end when all has failed thee the soil shall comfort thee, the soil shall receive thee and in thy dark bed thou shalt find such peace as is thy portion.
In thine armor, hear my voice. In thine armor, hear. Whatsoever thou doest, thy friend and thy brother and thy woman shall betray thee. Whatsoever thou dost plant, the weeds and the seasons shall spite thee. Wheresoever thou goest, the heavens shall fall upon thee. Though the nations shall come unto thee in friendship thou art curst. Know that the Gods ignore thee. Know that thou art Life, and that pain shall forever come into thee, though thy years without end and thy days without sleep, even and forever. And knowing this, in thine armor, thou shalt rise up.
Red and full and glowing is thy heart; a steel is forging within thy breast. And what can hurt thee now? In thy granite mansion, what can hurt thee ever? Thou shalt only die. Therefore seek not redemption nor forgiveness for thy sins, for know that thou hast never sinned.
Let the Gods come unto thee.
When it was finished, Wyatt sat very still.
Beauclaire was looking at him intently.
Wyatt nodded. "I see," he said.
"They don't ask for anything," Beauclaire said. "No immortality, no forgiveness, no happiness. They take what comes and don't —wonder."
Wyatt smiled, rising. He looked at Beauclaire for a long while, trying to think of something to say. But there was nothing to say. If the young man could believe this, here and now, he would save himself a long, long, painful journey. But Wyatt could not talk about it — not just yet.
He reached out and clapped Beauclaire gently upon the shoulder. Then he left the ship and walked out toward the yellow hills, toward the girl and the love that was waiting.
WHAT will they do, Beauclaire asked himself, when the stars come out? When there are other places to go, will these people, too, begin to seek?
They would. With sadness, he knew that they would. For there is a chord in Man which is plucked by the stars, which will rise upward and outward into infinity, as long as there is one man anywhere and one lonely place to which he has not been. And therefore what does the meaning matter? We are built in this way, and so shall we live.
Beauclaire looked up into the sky.
Dimly, faintly, like God's eye peeking through the silvery haze,
a single star had begun to shine.
—MICHAEL SHAARA
Forecast
With Plainclothesman Baley in graver danger than ever, and the Spacers holding the threat of retaliation over Earth's head, THE CAVES OF STEEL by Isaac Asimov concludes next month with a chilling revelation ... and a blinding burst of hope. But what a bitterly paradoxical hope! The hunt for a killer is always tense enough, but knowing that the fate of a world depends on the solution—the solution that must be exactly found and sprung or it's worse than none at all—would daunt any man. Yet Baley is inexorably forced to find and spring his solution in exactly the wrong way!
If he keeps it to himself, he will be declassified, replaced by a robot, and the Spacers will relentlessly move in. If he reveals it, the only result can be chaos!
THE CAVES OF STEEL is a study of threat to a society; Alan Nourse's THE DARK DOOR is a novelet-length analysis of pure distillate of personal terror. Wise as you are to the methods of infiltration, you wouldn't believe this one—it's too preposterous. But you'll meet and flee from it just the same!
There's a fine, likable chap whom Theodore Sturgeon calls MR. COSTELLO, HERO . . . a man who can't help worrying about every human being on all the worlds and in the ships between them. It takes real heroism to be willing to help people even if it has to be over their dead bodies!
Michael Shaara, Galaxy
(Series: # )
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