"No."
"Just remember, Morrison. We're not running away. This is an old Mormon trail. A lot of the old pioneers took it. That marker says that the Williams-Conner Party camped here and was massacred by Indians in 1867. There's an old Indian city at about three thousand feet. I guess we're the first ones to use it for maybe a thousand years. We've got an archeologist up there—Michael Hilliard—who's been going slightly crazy. Anyway, we've got books up there, we raise most of our own food, and we've plenty of time to study and try to figure out where we made the big mistakes. We're really doing very well."
"But what about the old man?" Anna asked.
Bergmann chuckled. "Arch has turned into a regular man of a thousand faces. He works along the Freeways and watches for those who are at the breaking point and can't stay on the road any longer. Some of those condemned to the Freeways are criminals, others are fools or misguided zealots; and we've got to be careful not to wise those birds up by mistake. Arch has an unerring instinct, and sending our people to us is his job."
The three of them started walking up the old pioneer trail.
"We made a lot of mistakes," Bergmann said. "All of us, some more than others. You can't blame people for being afraid, suspicious of us. We did unleash the potentialities for total destruction without ever thinking about the social implications or ever bothering to wonder about how our contributions would be used and controlled.
"So we're off there waiting now. Waiting and studying. Someday they'll need us again. And we'll be ready."
"But who was the old man?" Anna asked.
Bergmann laughed. "Only the greatest physicist of the age. Remember Arch Hoffenstein?"
Stan put his arm over Anna's shoulders and they walked on, and up. He had almost forgotten. But now he never would. Somewhere, Arch Hoffenstein was hitch-hiking along the Freeway with the ghost of Galileo.