“This is where you were born?” I asked.
“No,” said Catface. “Not where I began. I began on another planet, very far from here. I will show it to you some day if you have the time to look.”
“But you were here,” I said.
“I came as a volunteer,” he said. “Or rather, I was summoned as a volunteer.”
“Summoned? How summoned? Who would summon you? If you’re summoned, you’re not a volunteer.”
I tried to figure out if Catface and I were actually speaking words, and it seemed to me we weren’t, although it made no difference, for we were understanding one another just as well as if we had been speaking words.
“You have the concept of a god,” said Catface.
“Through the history of your race, men have worshipped many gods.”
“I understand the concept,” I said. “I’m not sure I worship any god. Not the way most men would mean if they said they worshipped a god.”
“Nor I,” said Catface. “But if you saw who summoned me, and not only me, but many other creatures; you’d be convinced that they are gods. Which they are not, of course, although there are those who think they are. They are simply a life form, biological or otherwise — of that I can’t be certain — that got an early start at intelligence and over millions of years were wise enough or lucky enough to avoid those catastrophic events that so often cause the downfall and decay of intelligence. They may have been biological at one time; certainly, they must have been. I’m not certain what they are now; over the long millennia, they may have changed themselves….”
“Then you have seen them? Met them?”
“No one ever meets them. They are above all mingling with other creatures. They disdain us, or they may fear us, an unworthy thought that I had at one time. I must have been the only one, for no other has ever spoken to me of such a thing. But I saw one once, or think I saw one once, although I could not see him clearly. To impress the volunteers, they afford them all this glimpse — although care is taken not to let volunteers see too clearly — either through a veil of some sort or a shadow of one of them, I have no idea which.”
“And you were not impressed?”
“At the time, I may have been. It was so long ago, it is difficult to remember. In your numerology, perhaps a million years ago. But I have thought about it since and have concluded that if I was impressed, I should not have been.”
“This is their city? The so-called gods’ city?”
“If you want to think of it that way. It was planned by them, although it was not built by them. It is not a city, really. It is a planet covered by buildings and installations. If that’s a city, then it is a city.”
“You said a galactic headquarters.”
“That is right. A galactic headquarters, not the galactic headquarters. There may be others we do not know about. Other gods we do not know about. It seems credible to me that there may be other galactic groups that function exactly as this city does, but without the benefit of a central headquarters. Nothing nearly so formal as a headquarters, but perhaps some other plan that may perform much better.”
“You’re just guessing there may be another headquarters. You don’t know.”
“A galaxy is large. I don’t know.”
“These people, these gods, take over planets and exploit them?”
“Exploit? I snare the meaning, but the concept is hazy. You mean own? Use?”
“Yes.”
“Not that,” said Catface. “Information only. The knowing, that’s the thing.”
“Gathering knowledge, you mean?”
“That is right. Your comprehension amazes me.
They send out ships, with many study groups. Drop one study group here, another there. Later, another ship comes and picks them up, each one in turn. I was of one study group, the last one. We had dropped four others.”
“Then your ship crashed?”
“Yes. I do not understand how it could have happened. Each of us is a specialist. Knows his job, nothing else. The creatures that operated the ship were also specialists. They should have known, should have foreseen. The crash should not have happened.”
“You told Hiram, or was it Rila, you told one of them that you do not know the location of this planet that you came from. That’s why you don’t know; it was not your specialty to know. Only the pilot or the pilots knew.”
“My specialty was only to go into time. To observe and record the past of the planet under study.”
“You mean your planetary surveys not only included what the planet was at the present moment, but what it, had been in the past. You studied each planet’s evolution.”
“Must do so. The present is only a part of it. How the present came to be is important, too.”
“The others were killed when the ship crashed. But you …”
“I was lucky,” said Catface.
“But once you got here, you did not study the past.
You stayed in Willow Bend, or what was about to become Willow Bend.”
“I made a few excursions only. My observations alone would have been worthless. I made the way for others. And something else — I knew another ship would come to pick us up. They would not know of the crash; they would come expecting to find us. And I told myself if the ship should come, I must be here to meet it. I could not leave. If I went into the past, there would not be others here to call me if the ship should come. The ship would have found evidence of the crash, would assume that all were dead, would not wait. To be picked up, to be rescued as you call it, I knew I must stay close to the crash site so I could be found.”
“But you opened roads for Bowser, roads for us.”
“If I cannot use roads myself, why not let others use them? Why not let my friends use them?”
“You thought of us as friends?”
“Bowser first,” he said, “then the rest of you.”
“Now you are concerned there’ll be no ship to pick you up.”
“Long,” said Catface. “Too long. And yet, they may look. Not many of my kind. We are valuable. They would not lightly give us up.”
“You still have hope?”
“Very feeble hope.”
“That is why you spend so much time in the old home orchard? So you will be there if they come to pick you up.”
“That is why,” said Catface.
“You are happy here?”
“What is happy? Yes, I suppose I’m happy.”
What is happy? he had asked, making out that he did not know what happiness might be. But he knew all right. At one time, he had been happy, exalted, overawed — on that day, when on summons, he had come to that great galactic headquarters, joining the elite company that was legend through those parts of the star system touched by the great confederation.
Unquestionably, not asking how it could be so, I moved with him through that fantastic city, fresh from a backwoods planet, agape at all I saw, filled with wonderment not only at what I saw, but at the fact I should be there at all. And I went with him to other planets as well, catching only glimpses of them, burrowing briefly into the kinds of places they had been in ages past. I stood before glories that put a pang into my heart, glimpsed miseries that engulfed my soul in sadness, worried over mysteries as a dog would worry an ancient bone, grasped frantically at sciences and cultures that were beyond my capacity to understand.
Then, quite suddenly, it was all gone, and I was back in the crab-apple patch, face to face with Catface. My mind still seethed with wonder and I had lost all track of time.
“Hiram?” I asked. “Did Hiram …”
“No,” said Catface. “Hiram could not understand.”
And that was right, of course. Hiram could not have understood. He had complained, I remembered, that Catface had said many things he could not understand.
“No one else,” said Catface. “No one else but you.”
“But I’m confused,” I said. “Many things I do not understand.”
