A Heritage of Stars by Clifford D. Simak Read Free Book Online Page B

thought it, he remembered something else and knew that he was wrong. He was looking at, he knew, not human skulls but the skulls of long-dead robots, the shining, polished brain cases of robots whose bodies had gone to rust centuries before.
    Wilson had written of such pyramids, he recalled, and had speculated on the mysticism or the symbolism that might be behind the collection and display of them.
    He hunkered close against the ground and felt a shiver growing in him, a shiver that reached forward across the old, gone centuries to fasten icy fingers on him. He paid little attention to the leaping, shouting figures, his attention fastened on the pyramid. It had about it a barbaric aura that left him cold and weak and he began inching back, carefully down the hill, moving as cautiously as he had before, but now driven by a gripping fear.
    Near the foot of the hill he rose and headed south and west, still moving warily, but in a hurry now. Behind him the drumming and the shouting faded until it was no more than a murmur in the distance. But he still drove himself.
    The first paleness of dawn was in the eastern sky when he found a place to hole up for the day. It was what appeared to be an old estate, set above a lake and situated on a piece of ground enclosed by a still-standing metal fence. Glancing eastward across the lake, he tried to pinpoint the spot where the tribe had held its dance, but except for a thin trickle of smoke, he could make out nothing. The house was a stone and brick structure and so thoroughly masked by trees that he did not see it until he had made his way through a broken place in the fence and was almost upon it. Chimneys sprouted from both ends of it and a sagging portico, half collapsed, ran along its front. Behind it stood several small brick buildings, half obscured by trees. Grass grew tall and here and there beds of perennials, some of them in bloom, had persisted through the ages since the last people had occupied the house.
    He scouted the area in the early dawn. There was no evidence that anyone had visited the place in recent days. There were no paths, no trails, broken through the grass. Centuries before, the place must have been looted, and now there would be no reason for anyone to come back here.
    He did not approach the house, contented to view it from the shelter of the trees. Satisfied that it was deserted, he sought a place where he could hide himself, finding it in a thick cluster of lilac trees that had spread over a comparatively wide area. On hands and knees he wormed his way deep into the thicket until he came to a spot near the center where there was room enough to lie down.
    He rose to a sitting position, propping his back against a thick tangle of lilac trunks. He was engulfed in the greenery of the clump. It would be impossible for anyone passing by to know that he was there. He unshipped the quiver and laid it, with the bow, alongside him, then slipped off the backpack and untied the thongs that closed it. From it he took a slab of jerked meat and with his knife belt cut off a piece of it. It was tough to chew and had little flavor, but it was good food for the trail. It was light of weight, would not spoil, and was life sustaining—good solid beef, dried until there was little moisture left. He sat and munched it, feeling the tension draining out of him, draining, it seemed, into the ground on which he sat, leaving him tired and relaxed. Here, he thought, was momentary peace and refuge against the day. The worst was over now. He had crossed the city and was now in its western reaches.
    He had faced the dangers of the city and had come through unscathed. Although, in thinking this, he realized, he was deluding himself. There had never been any actual danger, no threat directed at him. The set trap had been an accident. The intended game, most likely, had been a bear or deer and he had simply blundered into it. It had posed a danger born of his own carelessness. In a