Highway of Eternity by Clifford D. Simak Page A

Boone.
    I am robbed of all my senses. I cannot see and I cannot hear. All I can perceive is what you say to me and so far all that you have said has been most unkindly. I am nothing. I am a nothingness wrapped in nothingness. And yet I am aware of self. I could go on like this for uncounted millennia, knowing I am nothing, unable to reach out. You are my only hope. If you do not have mercy on me, I shall exist this way forever, buried by sand and dust with no other being aware that I am here. I shall be the living dead.
    â€œYou are eloquent,” said Boone.
    Is that all you have to say?
    â€œI can think of nothing further.”
    Dig me out, the monster pleaded. Dig me out of the wreckage that I am and keep me with you. Take me when you go. Anything, just so I am not alone.
    â€œYou want me to rescue you?”
    Yes, please rescue me.
    â€œThat might be only a temporary solution to your problem,” Boone told the monster. “By your own act, I may be sentenced to stay here in this wilderness, as you term it. I may die here and you will be left alone again, facing the same fate that you face now.”
    Even so, for a time we would be together. We would not be alone.
    â€œI think,” said Boone, “I’d prefer being alone.”
    But there is always hope. Something could happen that would save us both.
    Boone did not answer.
    You do not answer, said the monster.
    â€œThere is nothing more to say. I’ll have none of you. You understand that? I’ll have none of you.”
    To have mercy on an ordinary enemy—yes, that would be nobly human. But this was no ordinary enemy. Trying to figure out, for his own peace of mind, what kind of enemy it was, he found he could put no name to it.
    It could all be a trap, he told himself, and felt the better once he had thought of that. Out there, somewhere in that tangled mass of wreckage that had been the monster in its totality, lay one small component that could be the monster’s brain or a fantastically complex computer that was the monster’s essence. Should he paw among the wreckage to find and retrieve the essence, he well could become the victim of the monster, seized by a still-operative component that would make an end of him.
    No, thank you very much, he said to himself; I am right, I’ll have none of it.
    The wolves had finished with their more voracious eating. Several of them had stretched out on the ground, looking uncommonly satisfied, while others still worried at the meat, but with no great urgency. The vultures were much lower in the sky. The sun had moved a considerable distance down the west.
    Boone picked up his rifle and walked toward the kill. The wolves watched his advance with interest; when he moved up close, they moved away, then took a stand, doing a little growling at him. He waved the rifle gently at them, and they moved off a little further. Some of them sat down to watch.
    Reaching the bull, he leaned the rifle against it and opened his jackknife. It seemed a feeble tool. The gut cavity of the bull had been ripped open, and some of the skin had been torn free of one of the hams. The flesh on the ham, Boone knew, would be tough meat. But there was little possibility that the knife blade would cut through the bull’s tough hide to reach the better cuts. He’d have to take what he could.
    He seized the torn hide with both hands and jerked with all his strength. The hide peeled back reluctantly. He set his feet and jerked again. It peeled off farther this time. The knife, to his amazement, did a better cutting job than he had thought it would. He sliced off a large cut of meat, laid it to one side, and then cut off another—far more than he could eat at one sitting, but this probably would be the only chance he had. Other wolves would drift in, drawn by the scent of blood, and vultures would drop down. By morning’s light, there would be little left.
    A huge wolf, bigger than any of the others,