Goodness, I hope I never live through anything like this again.”
“You were sitting in on the negotiations?” asked Ben.
“That’s right. And I think we have it all worked out.
I never saw such stubborn sons-of-bitches in all my life — both sides, the government and the rioters. I had to fight off both of them. Over and over, I had to explain to them that Time Associates had a big stake in the matter, that we had to protect our interests and that without us, no one could get anywhere.”
He drained the paper cup he’d been given and held it out. Ben slopped more liquor into it.
“But now,” he said, “I think we have it. The documents are being drawn up. As it stands, if none of the bastards changes his mind, we’ll supply a time road into the Miocene without charge. I had to make that concession. The government points out that the program will cost so much that any fee to us would wreck it. I don’t believe this, but there was nothing much that I could do. If I’d refused, the talks would have collapsed; the government, I think, was looking for some reason to walk out of them. We only furnish the time road, that is all. We say to them, here it is, and then it’s their headache. In exchange for that, the State Department ban is removed and stays removed and there will be no effort, ever, to impose any kind of governmental regulations, state, federal or otherwise.
And, furthermore — and this one, once again, almost wrecked the talks — Mastodonia is accorded recognition as an independent state.”
I looked across the room at Rila and she was smiling — it was the first time she had smiled for days. And, somehow, I knew what she was thinking — that now, we could go ahead with that house in Mastodonia.
“I think,” said Ben, “that is good enough. You did a good job, Court. We’d probably have trouble, anyhow, collecting any fees from the government.”
The door opened and Hiram came into the room.
We all turned to look at him.
He shuffled a few feet forward. “Mr. Steele,” he said, “Catface would like for you to come. He wants to see you. He says it is important.”
I rose and Rila said, “I’ll come with you.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but no. I’d better see what this is about myself. It’s probably nothing. It won’t take too long.”
But I had a horrible feeling it would be more than nothing. Never before had Catface sent for me.
Outside the building, Hiram said, “He’s down near the chicken house.”
“You stay here,” I said. “I’ll go alone.”
I went down across the yard and around the chicken house and there was Catface, in one of the apple trees. As I walked toward the tree, I felt him reach out for me. When he did that, it seemed to me that we were in a place together, just the two of us, with all the rest of it shut out.
“I am glad you came,” he said. “I wanted to see you before I left. I wanted to tell you …”
“Leave!” I shouted at him. “Catface, you can’t leave. Not now. What are you leaving for?”
“I cannot help myself,” said Catface. “I am changing once again. I told you how 1 changed before, back on my home planet after my beginning. …”
“But change?” I asked. “What kind of change? Why should you change?”
“Because I cannot help myself. It comes on me.
It’s no doing of my own.”
“Catface, is this a change you want?”
“I think So. I have not asked myself yet. And yet, I feel happy at it. For I am going home.”
“Home? Back to the planet of your birth?”
“No. To headquarters planet. Now I know that that is home. Asa, do you know what I think?”
I felt cold inside. I felt limp and beaten and suddenly, bereft. “No, I don’t,” I said.
“I think that I am becoming a god. When I go back, I will be one of them. I think this is how they come about. They evolve from other forms of life. Maybe only from my form of life. Maybe from other forms of life as well. I don’t know. I think some day, I will know. I have served my apprenticeship. I have grown up.”
I was in an emptiness, a black abyss of emptiness and the thing that rasped across my soul was the realization that it was not the loss of Catface’s ability to construct time roads for us, but the loss of Catface himself that made the emptiness.
“Asa,” he said, “I am going home. I had lost the way, but now I know the way and I am going home.”
I said nothing. There was nothing I could say. I was lost in the emptiness.
“My friend,” he said, “please wish me well. I must have that to carry with me.”
I said the words, wrenched out of me as if they were dripping gobbets of flesh wrenched from my body; I wanted to say them, I had to say them, and yet they hurt to say: “Catface, I wish you well. Most sincerely, I do wish you well. I shall miss you, Catface.”
He was gone. I did not see him go, but I knew that he was gone. There was a chill wind blowing out of nowhere and the black of the emptiness turned to gray and then it changed to nothing and I was standing in the orchard, at the corner of the hen house, looking at an empty apple tree.
Dusk had come across the land and any minute now, the floodlights would turn on automatically and the homestead would change into a garish night-mare, with the uniformed guards tramping up and down the fence. But, mercifully, for a few moments, I had the dusk and I needed it.
Then, the lights snapped on and I turned about to head for the office building. I was afraid that I would stagger, but I didn’t. I walked stiff and straight, like a wound-up toy. Hiram was nowhere around and Bowser, more than likely, was somewhere hunting woodchucks, although it was a little late for woodchucks. Usually, they went to ground shortly after sundown.
I walked into the office. When I came through the door, they stopped their talking and sat there looking at me.
“Well?” asked Rila.
“Catface is gone,” I said.
Ben came to his feet in a single surge.
“Gone!” he shouted. “Where has he gone?”
“He’s gone home,” I said. “He wanted to say goodbye. That is all he wanted — just to say goodbye.”
“Couldn’t you have stopped him?”
“There was no way to stop him, Ben. He grew up, you see. He served his apprenticeship….”
“Now, just a minute,” said Courtney, trying to be calm. “He’ll be back, won’t he?”
“No, he won’t,” I said. “He changed. He changed into something else. …”
Ben banged his fist on the desk. “What a lousy, damn break! Where does this leave us? I’ll tell you where it leaves us. It leaves us up the creek.”
“Not too fast,” said Courtney. “Let’s not go too fast.
Let us not close out our options. There may be something left. We may salvage something.”
“What do you mean?” asked Ben. “You and your lawyer talk …”
“We could save what we have,” said Courtney. “The Safari contract and that’s a cool two million bucks a year.”
“But the Miocene, What about the Miocene?”
“Not the Miocene, Ben. Mastodonia.”
Rila cried, “Not Mastodonia! I’ll not have them in Mastodonia. They would foul it up. Mastodonia is Asa’s and mine.”
“With Catface gone and no more time roads,” said Courtney, his voice sharp and cold, “you’ll have them in Mastodonia or you will have nothing at all.” He said to me, “You’re sure that Catface is gone, that he won’t be back?”
“That is right.”
“No more time roads?”
“No,” I said. “There’ll be no more time roads.”
“You are sure of that?”
“Positive,” I said. “Why the hell should I lie to you?
You think this is a joke? I tell you, it’s no joke. And I’ll tell you something else. You’re sending no one into
