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live upon this planet, if need be, if they wished, with no discomfort and no artificial aids.
    Our horizons are so far, he thought, and we see so little of them. Even now, with flaming rockets striving from Canaveral to break the ancient bonds, we dream so little of them.
    The ache was there, the ache that had been growing, the ache to tell all mankind those things that he had learned. Not so much the specific things, although there were some of them that mankind well could use, but the general things, the unspecific central fact that there was intelligence throughout the universe, that Man was not alone, that if he only found the way he need never be alone again.
    He went down across the field and through the strip of woods and came out on the great outthrust of rock that stood atop the cliff that faced the river. He stood there, as he had stood on thousands of other mornings, and stared out at the river, sweeping in majestic blue-and-silverness through the wooded bottom land.
    Old, ancient water, he said, talking silently to the river, you have seen it happen-the mile-high faces of the glaciers that came and stayed and left, creeping back toward the pole inch by stubborn inch, carrying the melting water from those very glaciers in a flood that filled this valley with a tide such as now is never known; the mastodon and the sabertooth and the bear-sized beaver that ranged these olden hills and made the night clamorous with trumpeting and screaming; the silent little bands of men who file:///F|/rah/Clifford%20D.Simak/Clifford%20Simak%20-%20Waystation.txt (16 of 103) [1/19/03 4:01:51 PM]
     
    file:///F|/rah/Clifford%20D.Simak/Clifford%20Simak%20-%20Waystation.txt trotted in the woods or clambered up the cliffs or papled on your surface, woods-wise and water-wise, weak in body, strong in purpose, and persistent in a way no other thing ever was persistent, and just a little time ago that other breed of men who carried dreams within their skulls and cruelty in their hands and the awful sureness of an even greater purpose in their hearts. And before that, for this is ancient country beyond what is often found, the other kinds of life and the many turns of climate and the changes that came upon the Earth itself. 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 Man might have some of the answers had he lived for several million years-as he might have the answers several million years from this very summer morning if be still should be around.
    I could help, thought Enoch. I could not give the answers but I could help Man in his scramble after them. I could give him faith and hope and I
    could give purpose such as he has not had before.
    But he knew he dare not do it.
    Far below a hawk swung in lazy circles above the highway of the river.
    The air was so clear that Enoch imagined, if he strained his eyes a little, he could see every feather in those outspread wings.
    There was almost a fairy quality to this place, he thought. The far look and the clear air and the feeling of detachment that touched almost on greatness of the spirit. 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.
    He stood upon the rock and stared out across the river, watching the lazy hawk and the sweep of water and the green carpeting of trees, and his mind went up and out to those other places until his mind was dizzy with the thought of it. And then he called it home.
    He turned slowly and went back down the rock and moved off among the trees, following the path he’d beaten through the years.
    He considered going down the hill a way to look in on the patch of pink lady’s-slippers, to see how they might be coming, to