A high school reporter climbs a mountain to interview something no human has spoken to in seven thousand years. The Visitor arrived on Earth in ancient times, his ship destroyed, his entire crew dead. Left alone on a mountaintop palace, he has watched humanity grow from scattered tribes into something resembling civilization, guiding us quietly from the shadows. Now Garth is the first to truly listen, and what he hears is a creature exhausted by time itself, mourning everyone he ever knew, carrying knowledge no one else can understand. Their conversation spans the breadth of human history and the depth of one being's unbearable loneliness. In the end, Garth must confront what it means to truly help someone who has outlived all hope... This is contemplative 1950s science fiction at its most poignant: a story less about alien invasion than about the mercy we owe to those who have suffered too long.
