City

The wind sucked up the hollow and paused on its way to flap a loose shingle on the house, came back to flap it once again. A mouse skittered somewhere in the darkened place. From the bed across the loft came the sound of regular breathing – two of the Baxter younger fry slept there.

A man who came and fixed things and didn't wait for thanks. That was what had happened with the gun. That was what had been happening for years to the Baxters' haywire farm machinery. A crazy feller by the name of Joe, who didn't age and had a handy bent at tinkering.

A thought came into Grant's head; he shoved it back, repressed it. There was no need of arousing hope. Snoop around some, ask guarded questions, keep your eyes open, Grant. Don't make your questions too pointed or they'll shut up like a clam.

Funny folk, these ridge runners. People who had no part of progress, who wanted no part of it. People who had turned their backs upon civilization, returning to the unhampered life of soil and forest, sun and rain.

Plenty of room for them here on Earth, lots of room for everyone, for Earth's population had dwindled in the last two hundred years, drained by the pioneers who flocked out to settle other planets, to shape the other worlds of the system to the economy of mankind.

Plenty of room and soil and game.

Maybe it was the best way after all. Grant remembered he had often thought that in the months he had tramped these hills. At times like this, with the comfort of the handmade quilt, the rough efficiency of the cornshuck mattress, the whisper of the wind along the shingled roof. Times like when be sat on the top rail of the fence and looked at the groups of golden pumpkins loafing in the sun.

A rustle came to him across the dark, the rustle of the corn-shuck mattress where the two boys slept. Then the pad of bare feet coming softly across the boards.

"You asleep, mister?" came the whisper.

"Nope. Want to crawl in with me?"

The youngster ducked under the cover, put cold feet against Grant's stomach.

"Grandpappy tell you about Joe?"

Grant nodded in the dark. "Said he hadn't been around, lately."

"Tell you about the ants?"

"Sure did. What do you know about the ants?"

"Me and Bill found them just a little while ago, keeping it a secret. We ain't told anyone but you. But we gotta tell you, I guess. You're from the gov'ment."

"There really was a glasshouse over the hill?"

"Yes, and... and" – the boy's voice gasped with excitement – "and that ain't all. Them ants had carts and there was chimneys coming out of the hill and smoke comin' from the chimneys. And... and-"

"Yes, what else?"

"We didn't wait to see anything else. Bill and me got scared. We ran."

The boy snuggled deeper into the cornshucks. "Gee, ever hear of anything like it? Ants pulling carts!"

***

The ants were pulling carts. And there were chimneys sticking from the hill, chimneys that belched tiny, acrid puffs of smoke that told of smelting ores.

Head throbbing with excitement, Grant squatted beside the nest, staring at the carts that trundled along the roads leading off into the grass-roots land. Empty carts going out, loaded carts coming back-loaded with seeds and here and there dismembered insect bodies. Tiny carts, moving rapidly, bouncing and jouncing behind the harnessed ants!

The glassite shield that once had covered the nest still was there, but it was broken and had fallen into disrepair, almost as if there were no further use of it, as if it had served a purpose that no longer existed.

The glen was wild, broken land that tumbled down towards the river bluffs, studded with boulders, alternating with tiny patches of meadow and clumps of mighty oaks. A hushed peace that one could believe had never heard a voice except to talk of wind in tree-tops and the tiny voices of the wild things that followed secret paths.

A place where ants might live undisturbed by plough or vagrant foot, continuing the millions of years of senseless destiny that dated from a day before there was anything like man – from a day before a single abstract thought had been born on the Earth. A closed and stagnant destiny that had no purpose except that ants might live.

And now someone had uncoiled the angle of that destiny, had set it on another path, had given the ants the secret of the wheel, the secret of working metals – how many other cultural handicaps bad been lifted from this ant hill, breaking the bottleneck of progress?

Hunger pressure, perhaps, would be one cultural handicap that would have been lifted for the ants. Providing of abundant food which gave them leisure for other things beyond the continued search for sustenance.

Another race on the road to greatness, developing along the social basis that had been built in that long gone day before the thing called Man had known the stir of greatness.

Where would it lead? What would the ant be like in another million years? Would ant and Man – could ant and Man find any common denominator as dog and Man would find for working out a co-operative destiny?