Way Station

by Clifford D. Simak

the Iron Brigade, the 5th New Hampshire, the 1st Minnesota, the 2nd Massachusetts, the 16th Maine. And there was Enoch Wallace.

virtually wiped out at Gettysburg in 1863.

A man had a right to expect that in the world of peace there really would be peace fencing out the violence and the horror.

the Earth now was on galactic charts, a way station for many different peoples traveling star to star.

Funny, he thought, that he should stay human, that in a century of association with these beings from the many stars he should have, through it all, remained a man of Earth.

of it was the galactic station and the other side the living space for the keeper of the station.

And what think you of it? he asked the river. For yours is the memory and the perspective and the time and by now you should have the answers, or at least some of the answers.

As if this were a special place, one of those special places that each man must seek out for himself, and count himself as lucky if he ever found it, for there were those who sought and never found it. And worst of all, there were even those who never hunted for it.

There was need for such a tool, for the galaxy was Babel. Even the galactic science of pasimology, polished as it might be, could not surmount all the obstacles, could not guarantee, in certain cases, the basic minimum of communication.

he would miss this little outside world that he had grown to know so well, this little corner of the world encompassed by his walks. It was the walks, he thought, more than anything, perhaps, that had kept him human and a citizen of Earth.

A man, he told himself, must belong to something, must have some loyalty and some identity. The galaxy was too big a place for any being to stand naked and alone.

It was a hopeless thing, he thought, this obsession of his to present the people of the Earth as good and reasonable. For in many ways they were neither good nor reasonable; perhaps because they had not as yet entirely grown up. They were smart and quick and at times compassionate and even understanding, but they failed lamentably in many other ways.

if they only could be told what was out in space, then they’d get a grip upon themselves and they would measure up and then, in the course of time, would be admitted into the great cofraternity of the people of the stars.

Once admitted, they would prove their worth and would pull their weight, for they were still a young race and full of energy—at times, maybe, too much energy. Enoch

if his translations had done no violence to the concept, then the Earth was headed straight for another major war, for a holocaust of nuclear destruction.

Inexorably, relentlessly, it had led the way to war.

If Earth fights another war, our people will be barred, if not forever, at least for many centuries, from the cofraternity of space.”

It’s too early for the human race. We aren’t grown up. We still are juveniles.” “It’s a shame,” said Mary. “We’d have so much to learn. They know so much more than we. Their concept of religion, for example.”

“You mean the spiritual force.” “It is there,” said Enoch, “just as surely as all the other forces that make up the universe. There is a spiritual force, exactly as there is time and space and gravitation and all the other factors that make up the immaterial universe. It is there and they can establish contact with it …”

The assurance would be there, he thought, the assurance that life had a special place in the great scheme of existence, that one, no matter how small, how feeble, how insignificant, still did count for something in the vast sweep of space and time.

With creation went responsibility and he was not equipped to assume more than the moral responsibility for the wrong that he had done, and moral responsibility, unless it might be coupled with the ability to bring about some mitigation, was an entirely useless thing.

Thinking, as he read it, how appropriate it was; how there must need be many mansions in which to house all the souls in the galaxy—and of all the other galaxies that stretched, perhaps interminably, through space. Although if there were understanding, one might be enough.

He should do this oftener, Enoch thought, come out here and sit, doing nothing, just looking, seeing the trees and the river to the west and the blue of the Iowa hills across the Mississippi, watching the crows wheeling in the skies and the pigeons strutting on the ridgepole of the barn.

There might come a time when he’d become very jealous of them and when that day came, he could hoard the hours and minutes, even the seconds, in as miserly a fashion as he could manage.

Turning the people back to a mental position where they would not be able to comprehend the mechanical and technological and scientific advances they have made.

The Galaxy's method for "backing down" a civilization from destroying itself, say by nuclear war.

“Several generations,” said Ulysses. “By that time the effect of—what shall we call it? the treatment?—would gradually begin wearing off. The people slowly would shake off their moronic state and begin their intellectual climb again. They’d be given, in effect, a second chance.”

The impact of the Galaxy's method.

In the space of a few hours’ time the human race would be stranded in a world where distance once again had come to be a factor.

It had been in that moment that he had realized the insanity of war, the futile gesture that in time became all but meaningless, the unreasoning rage that must be nursed long beyond the memory of the incident that had caused the rage, the sheer illogic that one man, by death of misery, might prove a right or uphold a principle.

He had been an observer only, an intensely interested observer who had not been content with observance only, but who had made an effort to dig into what he had observed, but still basically and essentially an observer who was not vitally nor personally involved in what had gone on about him.

Talisman

It is not the machine, itself, you understand, that reaches out and taps the spiritual force. It is the living creature’s mind, aided by the mechanism, that brings the force to us.”

That was the way with Man; it had always been that way. He had carried terror with him. And the thing he was afraid of had always been himself.

Here lies one from a distant star, but the soil is not alien to him, for in death he belongs to the universe.

Inscription on the Hazer's grave.

ken.

vocabulary. One's range of knowledge.

He raised the rifle and held it for a moment motionless and then he threw it out and watched it fall, spinning end for end, the moonlight glinting off the barrel, saw the tiny splash it made as it struck the water. And far below, he heard the smug, contented gurgling of the water as it flowed past this cliff and went on, to the further ends of Earth.

Until no man ran howling, wild with fear (any kind of fear), would there be actual peace. Until the last man threw away his weapon (any sort of weapon), the tribe of Man could not be at peace.

Many years ago it had been a home and nothing more and then it had become a way station to the galaxy. But now, although way station still, it was home again.

the Babel of the galaxy,

It was the fixation agent that banished all illusion, that made a fairyland for real.

She nodded gravely. “I, the same as you. You can’t love the doll you made or I the toymaker. But each of us thought we did; each of us still think we should and are guilty and miserable when we find we can’t.”

Why the Shadow Woman wouldn't hook up with Enoch,

the voice of a century of living seemed to speak to him in a silent language. All things are hard, it said. There is nothing easy.