here and now. He couldn’t think of a time and place he’d rather be.
Griffin was staring out into the dazzling fog when he heard footsteps. He did not turn. He knew who it had to be.
The Old Man came up behind him, and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“You’ve done a good job,” he said. “Nobody could have done better.”
“Thank you,” Griffin said. “Now tell me that there was some point to all of this. Tell me I haven’t spent all my adult life knocking myself out for nothing.”
For a long moment he thought he would get no response. Then the Old Man said, “Imagine that you’ve been imprisoned, either justly or injustly, it makes no difference, for the rest of your life. You’ve been locked in a small room with one tiny barred window. You can’t see much—maybe a bit of sky, that’s all.
“But one day a bird comes to the window with a bit of straw in its beak. The next thing you know, it and its mate have built a nest right there in your window. Now, there are any number of ways you could respond to this. You could capture the birds and attempt to train them. You could steal their eggs to vary your diet. You could even kill them and smash their nest to punish them for being free when you’re not. It’s all a matter of temperament.
“What would you do?”
“I’d… study them. I’d try to learn everything I could about them. How they mate, what they eat, their resting metabolism, the developmental patterns of their young.”
“If you’re never going to get out of that cell, then what the hell good does your study do?”
“I don’t have an answer for that. Except that I’d still like to know. Just for its own sake.”
“Knowing is better than ignorance,” the Old Man said.
Griffin weighed the statement judiciously, nodded. “That’s true. But is it enough?”
“To justify your life?” The Old Man was silent for a while. Then he said, “I can’t speak for anybody else. But for me personally, life doesn’t need justification. It just is. And as long as I’m here, I want to know… simply to know. Yes, I honestly believe that’s enough.”
“How much time do we have left?” Griffin asked.
The Old Man cleared his throat. “I don’t think that question has any meaning.”
“I suppose that’s so.” He looked down at his watch without seeing it. Carefully, he removed it from his wrist and slipped it into a pocket.
“It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes,” he answered himself. “Yes, it is. If we’ve ever had a nicer, I can’t remember when.”
