"I will not be a god."
6
Mijok released the hands of his deity and sat back on his haunches,
foggy-eyed. Wright stroked the great furry head, troubled and amazed.
"It won't do," Wright said. "We'll have no gods on this planet. Unless
human nature can make itself a little godlike. And no final
Armageddon--for that's within too, and always was. Well, he'll learn
language fast. As he does, the first thing he must discover is that
we're all one flesh." But Mijok was gazing up in adoration at the
sound of the voice, trembling, not in fear, smiling when he saw Wright
smile. "I believe he never had a god before--hadn't reached the stage
of personalizing the forces of nature. They're just forces, and
himself a bundle of perception, not even realizing that he's more
knowing and sensitive than other animals. Not arrogant yet, not
sophisticated enough to be cruel, or mean, or even ambitious...."
Dorothy pushed her fists into her cheeks, brown eyes upturned to study
the old man: a way she had, carrying Paul back eleven years to the day
he had come aboard the ship and seen her for the first time and loved
the woman who was, even then, manifest in the leggy, awkward child.
"Doc, why did you do that, out there in the meadow?"
"Why, Dorothy, we must make contact with those pygmies too. They
are--advanced. It'll be more difficult. They'll have traditions--maybe
some very ancient ones. But we must make contact."
"Mijok hates them though. If they come here--"
Wright grinned. "Temporary advantage of being little tin deities. I
think Mijok will do whatever we indicate--until we're able to teach
him independence."
Paul said, "Don't think for a minute I'm not with you. But Doc, with
the others helpless we're only three--"
"Four."
"Yes, four. There's our own survival to think of. It's a big planet.
Seems to me you're taking it on all at once."
Wright slouched, loose-limbed, at the barrier, where he could watch
the meadow, and Mijok stayed close to him. "I think we must, Paul. If
we start right perhaps we can go on right. A mistake at this point
could go on burning for a thousand years.... Why do you think he broke
out into worship when he did? Our superior achievements--lifeboat,
guns, the rescue from that reptile? The fact that I wasn't afraid of a
poor pygmy's bones? All that, sure, but something else. Ed would say I
was daydreaming--but I think Mijok's heart knows what his brain can't
yet interpret. Sears would agree, I think--his own heart's bigger than
Lucifer. Mijok hasn't the least conscious idea why I invited those
pygmies to come and get their dead. Down deeper, in the part of him
that made him bring the moss and the meat and take care of us, I think
he knows very well."
"You're proposing," Dorothy said, "to take a chance on love?"
Wright was tranquil, watching the meadow. "Whenever men put their
chips on the other thing they always lost, didn't they? Repeatedly,
for twenty or thirty thousand years? Did they ever create anything
good except in a milieu of co-operation, friendship, forbearance? One
of the oldest of commonplaces--the teachers all knew it.
Lao-tse--Buddha--or stated negatively: 'He who lives by the sword....'
And so on. Good is not the mere absence of evil, but the most positive
of human forces. The instruments of good are charity, patience,
courage, effort and self-knowledge, each unavailing without the
others; remember that. And that's all the basic ethics I know. The
rest is detail, solution of immediate problems as they arise. Even on
Earth the good tended to win out in the long run: at least it did
until the mechanical toys got out of hand. Then there was a century of
living under a question mark. There was also the Collectivist Party.
Yes, as a prime example of a part of my own philosophy totally
perverted, I give you the Collectivist Party." Wright was talking to
himself again, the bitterness of Earth's history goading him into
soft-spoken monotone, drawling and dark, on a planet nearly five
light-years distant from the ancient confusions. "The Collectivist
Party, which turns 'co-operation' into the same sort of word fetish
that 'democracy' was less than a hundred years ago--co-operation
_without_ charity, without patience, without courage and always,
always, without self-knowledge."
Dorothy still watched him with sober upturned eyes. "Ed told me once
his father was a pilot in the Collectivist Army during the Civil War."
"I know." Wright smiled at her in bashful half apology. "Some of the
old wounds still bleed too, I guess. I generally manage to keep my
political mouth shut when he's listening, if I can. Not that Ed could
be accused of still fighting the war that ended before he was born....
Relax: I think they're coming."
Paul joined Wright and the giant at the barrier, but Dorothy stayed a
moment with the sick, feeling their wrists, murmuring something close
to Ann's ear, although the girl could not respond. "Past the fever
stage, I believe," she said. "They're all breathing well. No chance
they'll be out of it before night, I suppose...."
The pygmies were still some distance away, slipping along the edge of
the woods in plain sight. There were only three--the two women and one
bowman; perhaps the others were paralleling their course inside the
forest--perhaps a hundred others were. Wright whispered, "Have we
anything that would make a respectable gift?"
Mijok was rumbling in misery and fright. Dorothy came over holding a
locket. "This--you remember, Doc--a matron at the Orphanage gave it to
me. I used to imagine it could be a portrait of my mother--"
"But my dear--"
The brown girl shook her head. "This ship-metal wedding ring Paul
hammered out for me--that's the only Earth jewelry I want to keep.
This face that might be like my mother's--Oh, Doc, I'm getting to be a
big girl now. Besides, Lucifer will have plenty of pretties for us
later on. And Doc--let me do this, will you? They've got a woman
leading 'em, so--wouldn't she be less afraid of another woman? I'll
uncover, so she--" Dorothy shrugged out of her jacket. "Please, Doc?
I'm scared, but--"