Highway of Eternity by Clifford D. Simak Page A

something. A rather small thing. No larger than an ordinary dog. But I did not see it well. All I knew was that there was something there.”
    I know not what the snifflers are, said Henry. But in our situation we must be at least marginally concerned with anything that transpires beyond the ordinary.
    â€œHow are things going at the house?” Corcoran asked Boone.
    â€œWhen I left they were talking. Not shouting at one another. Horace and Enid were off to one side, arguing about where they would bury Gahan. But the rest were talking, discussing things.”
    â€œI think it was wise for both of us to leave,” said Corcoran. “Give them a chance to talk among themselves without outsiders being present.”
    Boone agreed. “This is their show. It should be up to them to make their own decisions.”
    â€œBack there, when you jumped up on the table, you damn well made it your show.”
    â€œIt wasn’t that,” said Boone. “I wasn’t trying to horn in. But they weren’t getting anywhere. They were yelling at one another, that was all. They could have kept it up all day. They needed someone to knock some common sense into them.”
    You think ill of them because of their bad behavior, said Henry. I readily admit that it is bad, but you must understand the stake they have in all of this. They fled the future a century and a half or so of your years ago. They fled for their lives, of course, but they also fled so that men and women might not live as bodiless abstractions, so that the race might be more than theoretical or hypothetical thought processes. Look upon me. I was halfway to being the nothing that all humans would be if the Infinites had their way. With me it did not take. The procedure stuttered and I was spat out and was free; in my present form, I can not be snared again. I am beyond everything except, perhaps, some extraordinary harm of which I am not yet aware. And having escaped, I came back to the family, and with them I fled. By reason of my unorthodox form, I was able to be of some assistance to them. And out of their recognition of me as still a member of the family, the family flies to my defense when Horace, whose only family association is that he cowed and persuaded my sister Emma to marry him, pays me less respect than is due a member.
    â€œYour tale is fascinating,” said Corcoran, “and adds to our comprehension of the situation that we find here. You must be aware how difficult it is for us to grasp all the nuances of what has happened a million years beyond our time.”
    Indeed I do, said Henry, and I must admit I am amazed at how well and solidly you have accepted what you have learned of us in the last few hours. You have not been bowled over by our revelations.
    â€œIt is because we are too numb to be bowled over,” said Boone.
    I think it is not that at all. You have betrayed no numbness. Your reactions have led me to believe that basically our race is far more rational than we might have expected to find so deep in our ancestral roots.
    â€œI’m curious,” said Corcoran, “how you could have performed significant services for your family in their flight.”
    I acted as a scout, said Henry. I am admirably fitted to act as such. Who would suspect a flittering moonbeam or a slight glitter in the sunlight? Even seeing this, any reasonable man would lay it to a momentary aberration of his visual faculty. So I went into the past, all by myself. Unlike the others, I need no traveler; space and time are open roads to me. I went as an advance agent, a feeler-outer. The others made arrangements and waited on my word. But before I could get back, they were forced to flee precipitously, with no direction and no plan. I finally found them in the depths of the so-called Dark Ages, when large areas of Europe were deserted, dank and desolate. A perfect place to hide, perhaps, but most disagreeable.
    â€œIt was you, then,