Read Ebook: The eternal quest by Gilbert Joseph Stevens Lawrence Sterne Illustrator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 29 lines and 3906 words, and 1 pages

"Who--" he began aloud, then shrugged and concentrated on thinking: "Who are you?"

"Speak aloud," came the thought. "It is easier for you, and makes your mental impulses clearer."

There is an individuality in thoughts, as well as in voices and faces. It occurred to Lawrence that the thought waves of this person were the clearest, the gentlest and the saddest of any he had ever encountered.

There was a clarity about them that was superhuman, that is associated with genius. And they were filled with a sorrow that transcended all human understanding. The sorrow of a dying race, of the shattered dreams of a billion years, the sorrow of the Wandering Jew alone on another planet and watching his own dissolve into cosmic dust--a sorrow beyond expression.

He found it dominating his soul, drowning him in a bitterness such as he had never dreamed possible.

Lawrence explained, "My instruments detected a steady stream of free gamma rays out in space, such as could only come from a ruptured atomic power source of some sort, and I flew down to ascertain if there had been an accident." He raised his voice a trifle over the wail of the desert wind. "Who are you?"

The brooding thought crept slowly into his mind, infinitely sad, infinitely weary.

"I am one who saw too far. It is no good for any being to go ahead of his fellows; to dream a greater dream and to find no reality in it. I had a machine, and it should have carried me outside, should have taken me above our lost visions to finer things. It did not. I thought I would climb to heaven. I descended to hell. How they have reversed our ancestors' prophecies, these metal masters of ours." His thoughts washed away in a tide of ultimate despair.

Lawrence's eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness, and he could make out the hammock in the corner of the room with the small form upon it. "You're hurt!"

He came forward, his bewilderment becoming concern. "Here, I'm one of the few men who still know something of medicine. Space Patrol men have to know in case the machines break down. Which," he grimaced, "happens about once in every four hundred years."

The thought stopped Lawrence on the verge of tearing the threadbare cover off the figure on the cot and turning on his flash to examine it.

"Please," it came again, more gently, "I am dying. Believe me, there is nothing you or any other man or machine could do. And I do not care to live any more now; there is nothing to live for--now or for the rest of time."

Pieces of what seemed to be a pattern exploded in Lawrence's brain, and he turned white. Had this man used the disassembler, obtaining it by bribing some minor member of the little man's crew, and had he visited that far-off star and found that which doomed mankind's new hopes? The thought stunned him beyond thinking. That couldn't be true; it couldn't. This was man's last hope, his last stand, it was unthinkable that--

He felt within his brain, currents that were at first puzzled and then cleared.

"No--" and there was a smile in Lawrence's mind, a heartbroken, whimsical thing. "No, I have not been to that system you are thinking of; my journey has been elsewhere. And what I have seen has led me to destroy both my machine and myself." He was silent a moment, overwhelmed by disappointment.

Then, "Let me explain, please.

"In our world we know not happiness, have not known it for such a long, long time. The machines have taken over and there is no longer anything left--only the bare drabness of day after futile, empty day for all our lives. Some feel these things more than others, and the idealist, the dreamer, have suffered in this age more than any other person can conceive. We feel so much, so very, very much, and we long so hard for the little, insignificant things that make up beauty--for beauty is our life."

The wind outside sang a song of other days, of laughter and beauty, and the glorious fortress of mental and physical perfection that had been here. It spoke of the shining towers, and glistening ships that thundered above them.

Then it remembered and died slowly away, taking with it the red dust that drifted across the barren plains.

"Yes," said Lawrence, very softly. "Yes, I understand."

"Not quite," came the whisper in his brain. "You do not, cannot, quite understand. There are things you do not know."

Silence then. Except for the eternal wind and its companion, the dust.

"I disassembled my atoms," the explanation echoed unexpectedly in Lawrence's mind, "and selected a lonely place on another world where they were reassembled. I watched from afar, and there, too, it was the same. The machines. The uncertain, hurt look in people's eyes, and--their lack of purpose.

"I destroyed my machine and myself with it. That was best. There was nothing left for me, you see."

Lawrence stood up by the dusty televisor against the wall. There was infinite compassion and understanding in his voice. He said, "If only you had waited! If only you had known that another planet in another system had a place for us, instead of going elsewhere as you did--without thought or direction."

"There was thought and direction," said the mental voice. "It availed me nothing. Bury me, please, out there on the desert with the wind and sand. I would be with seekers like myself, knowing that their search is impotent, as was mine. Thank you for your good intentions and your kindness. Good-by, my friend."

The sense of rapport faded from Lawrence's brain, and he knew he was in the presence of death. The requiem of the wind sang for another lost thing now, and that was queerly fitting, somehow.

Then he knew! Knew that the being had indeed traveled to other than the little man's star system, and his heart cried out within him unbearably, though he stood still and numb. Knew it when he had picked up the other's hand to place it beneath the covering and had felt--three slender fingers.

The quest was ended.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet