And on the Eighth Day Read Online Free PDF

rock, the next he was descending into a land green and fat with trees and grass and growing crops. In the basin formed by the circle of hills the soil had been terraced; plow ridges ran along the natural contours of the land. In the twilight’s hush he heard the pleasant sound of water trickling, and when he turned in the direction of the sound he saw a rivulet emerging from underground and obediently following the course laid out for it. Plainly some master hand had directed with love and skill this conversion of the desert, so that no grain of earth, no drop of water, should go to waste.
    And now, far down the slope, he noticed for the first time a settlement. There were enough houses to constitute a village—fifty of them, he estimated, most of them small, a very few larger, and all of the simplest construction. And then an evening breeze came up, and he heard faint voices; and the breeze brought with it a scent of smoke, which he could see rising in slow spirals from the houses.
    It was the odor of burning sagebrush.
    They were halfway down the slope when the sun set abruptly behind the western shoulder of the hill.
    A great shadow fell quickly over the valley of—what had the old man called it?—Quenan.
    Ellery shivered.

II MONDAY
    April 3
    T HE EYE HAD BEEN looking at Ellery unblinking for a long time before he could bring himself to consider it. His attention once directed at it, it ceased to be an eye and became—obviously—a knothole.
    Aye, tear her tattered ensign down —
    “That’s enough of that nonsense!” he said firmly, sitting up. His sudden movement sent the worn clean quilt sliding to the floor—a journey of no great distance, he learned immediately, since he had been sleeping on sheepskins spread over a tick stuffed with hay and corn shucks. The smell of all three was plain. He was not in some primitive motor court after all.
    And with that, he remembered.
    As had happened before and was to happen again, he got up believing he was fully rested; the ache in his bones he attributed to his having slept without a mattress or bedsprings.
    He automatically looked around for a shower but there was none; he saw no sign of plumbing. The crude cottage had three small rooms, sparingly equipped with furniture as primitive and unpainted as the cottage itself. But all the wood glowed with a patina that gave off a definite odor. Ellery sniffed at a chair. Beeswax …
    On one of the tables lay a lump of homemade soap, a length of clean cloth evidently intended as a towel, and a salt-glazed water pitcher and bowl and cup. The pitcher was full. His luggage was neatly stacked in a corner of the room.
    He took a sponge bath, gasping, then got into clean clothes. He brushed his teeth, combed his hair. Shaving … no hot water …
    From the door came the rap of wood on wood. “Come in,” Ellery said. He braced himself.
    The Teacher entered. In one hand was his staff, in the other a basket. “Bless the Wor’d for the blessing of your coming,” the old man said sonorously; and then he smiled. Ellery’s answering smile was partly directed to himself for indulging a conceit: what could the old man’s burden be but the fairy-tale basket of goodies? To his astonishment, that was what it proved to be—napkin covering and all.
    “Commonly I dine alone,” the Teacher said. “And it may be that you will sometimes wish to eat with the community in the dining hall. This first meal, however, I wish us to share, and here.”
    There was a fruit juice strange to Ellery (later he learned that it was a blend of mulberry and cactus pear); its flavor was bland and respectful of a nervous morning stomach. There was a platter of cornmeal pancakes with butter and syrup—probably sorghum or sorgo. Ellery missed his coffee, but the milk (it was ewe’s milk, very rich) was warming and the gourd of herb tea, hot and sweetened with honey, made an interesting substitute.
    Except for the old man’s whispered prayers as he washed his