For KAY without whom I'd never have written a line
I
The man came out of the twilight when the greenish yellow of the sun's last light still lingered in the west. He paused at the edge of the patio and called.
"Mr. Adams, is that you?"
The chair creaked as Christopher Adams shifted his weight, startled by the voice. Then he remembered. A new neighbor had moved in across the meadow a day or two ago. Jonathon had told him…and Jonathon knew all the gossip within a hundred miles. Human gossip as well as android and robot gossip.
"Come on in," said Adams. "Glad you dropped around."
And he hoped his voice sounded as hearty and neighborly as he had tried to make it.
For he wasn't glad. He was a little nettled, upset by this sudden shadow that came out of the twilight and walked across the patio.
He passed a mental hand across his brow. This is my hour, he thought. The one hour I give myself. The hour that I forget…forget the thousand problems that have to do with other stars. Forget them and turn back to the green-blackness and the hush and the subtle sunset shadow-show that belong to my own planet.
For here, on this patio, there are no mentophone reports, no robot files, no galactic co-ordination conferences…no psychologic intrigue, no alien reaction charts. Nothing complicated or mysterious…although I may be wrong, for there is mystery here, but a soft, sure mystery that is understood and only remains a mystery because I want it so. The mystery of the nighthawk against a darkening sky, the puzzle of the firefly along the lilac hedge.