Destiny Doll by Clifford D. Simak Page A

millions of wings beating out of nowhere into nowhere. They—whatever they could have been that had the beating wings—were not merely circling in that space above our heads. They were flying with a steady, almost frantic, purpose, and for a moment of that flight they crossed those few thousand feet of emptiness that loomed above us and then were gone while others took their place, a steady stream of others, so that the rush of wings was never broken. I strained my eyes to see them, but there was nothing to be seen. They were too high to see or they were invisible or, I thought, they might not be even there. But the sound was there, a sound that in some other time or place might not be remarkable, but that here was remarkable and, unaccountably, had the freezing impact of the great unknowable. Then, as suddenly as they had come, the beating wings were gone; the migration ended, and we stood in a silence that was so thick it thundered.
    Hoot let down his two pointing tentacles "Here they were not," he said 'They were otherwhere".
    Immediately as he said it, I knew he had been feeling the same thing I'd been sensing, but had not really realized. Those wings—the sound of those wings—had not been in that space where we had heard them, but in some other space, and we had only heard them through some strange spatio-temporal echo. I don't know why I thought that; there was no reason to.
    "Let's get back," I said to Hoot. "All of us must be hungry. It's been a long time since we've eaten. Or had any sleep. How about you, Hoot? I never thought to ask. Can you eat the stuff we have?"
    "I in my second self," he said. And I recalled what he had said before. In his second self (whatever that might be) he had no need of food.
    We went back to the front of the building. The hobbies were standing in a circle, with their heads all pointing inward. The packs had been taken off their backs and were stacked against the wall, close behind the doors. Alongside them sat Smith, still slumped, still happy, still out of the world, like an inflated doll that had been tossed against a wall, and beside him was propped the body of Roscoe, the brainless robot. The two of them were ghastly things to see, sitting there together.
    The sun had set and outside the doors lay a dusk that was not quite so thick as the dusk inside the building. The ratlike creatures still were pouring out the door and pouring back again, harvesting the seeds.
    "The firing has slacked off," said Sara, "but it picks up again as soon as you stick out your head."
    "I suppose you did," I said.
    She nodded. "There wasn't any danger. I ducked back in again, real fast. I'm a terrible coward when it comes to things like that. But the tree can see us. I am sure it can."
    I dumped my armload of wood. Tuck had unpacked some pots and pans and a coffee pot stood ready.
    "Just about here?" I asked. "Close to the door so the smoke has a chance of getting out"
    Sara nodded. "I'm beat out, captain," she said. "Fire and food will be good for all of us. What about Hoot? Can he . . ."
    "He isn't doing any eating or any drinking," I explained. "He's in his second state, but let's not talk about it."
    She caught my meaning and nodded.
    Tuck came up beside me and squatted down. "That looks to be good wood," he said. "Where did you find it?"
    "There's a heap of junk back there. All sorts of stuff."
    I squatted down and took out my knife. Picking up one of the smaller sticks, I began to whittle off some shavings. I pushed them in a pile, then reached for the piece of wood that had the fiber tied to it. I was about to rip some of the fiber loose when Tuck put out a hand to stop me.
    "Just a second, captain."
    He took the piece of wood out of my hands and turned it so that it caught some of the feeble light still coming from the doorway. And now, for the first time, I saw what it was that I had picked up. Until that moment it had been nothing more than a stick of wood with some straw or grass tied to it.