"But surely self-hypnosis doesn't account for--"
"Surely it doesn't!" Haendl mimicked savagely. "All right. We don't
understand it and we're afraid of it. Kindly do not tell me Translation
is the supreme act of Un-willing, Total Disavowal of Duality, Unison
with the Brahm-Ground or any such slop. You don't know what it is and
neither do we." He started to get up. "All we know is, people vanish.
And we want no part of it, so we don't meditate. None of us--including
you!"
* * * * *
It was foolishness, this close-order drill. Could you defeat the
unreachable Himalayan Pyramid with a squads-right flanking maneuver?
And yet it wasn't all foolishness. Close-order drill and
2500-calorie-a-day diet began to put fat and flesh and muscle on
Tropile's body, and something other than that on his mind. He had not
lost the edge of his acquisitiveness, his drive--his whatever it was
that made the difference between Wolf and sheep.
But he had gained something. Happiness? Well, if "happiness" is a
sense of purpose, and a hope that the purpose can be accomplished, then
happiness. It was a feeling that had never existed in his life before.
Always it had been the glandular compulsion to gain an advantage, and
that was gone, or anyway almost gone, because it was permitted in the
society in which he now lived.
Glenn Tropile sang as he putt-putted in his tractor, plowing the
thawing Jersey fields. Still, a faint doubt remained. Squads right
against the Pyramids?
Stiffly, Tropile stopped the tractor, slowed the diesel to a steady
_thrum_ and got off. It was hot--being midsummer of the five-year
calendar the Pyramids had imposed. It was time for rest and maybe
something to eat.
He sat in the shade of a tree, as farmers always have done, and opened
his sandwiches. He was only a mile or so from Princeton, but he might
as well have been in Limbo; there was no sign of any living human but
himself. The northering sheep didn't come near Princeton--it "happened"
that way, on purpose.
He caught a glimpse of something moving, but when he stood up for a
better look into the woods on the other side of the field, it was
gone. Wolf? _Real_ Wolf, that is? It could have been a bear, for that
matter--there was talk of wolves and bears around Princeton; and
although Tropile knew that much of the talk was assiduously encouraged
by men like Haendl, he also knew that some of it was true.
As long as he was up, he gathered straw from the litter of last
"year's" head-high grass, gathered sticks under the trees, built a
small fire and put water on to boil for coffee. Then he sat back and
ate his sandwiches, thinking.
Maybe it was a promotion, going from the nursery school to labor in
the fields. Or maybe it wasn't. Haendl had promised him a place in the
expedition that would--maybe--discover something new and great and
helpful about the Pyramids. And that might still come to pass, because
the expedition was far from ready to leave.
Tropile munched his sandwiches thoughtfully. Now _why_ was the
expedition so far from ready to leave? It was absolutely essential to
get there in the warmest weather possible--otherwise Mt. Everest was
unclimbable. Generations of alpinists had proved that. That warmest
weather was rapidly going by.
And _why_ were Haendl and the Wolf colony so insistent on building
tanks, arming themselves with rifles, organizing in companies and
squads? The H-bomb hadn't flustered the Pyramid. What lesser weapon
could?
Uneasily, Tropile put a few more sticks on the fire, staring
thoughtfully into the canteen cup of water. It was a satisfyingly hot
fire, he noticed abstractedly. The water was very nearly ready to boil.
* * * * *
Half across the world, the Pyramid in the Himalays felt, or heard, or
tasted--a difference.
Possibly the h-f pulses that had gone endlessly wheep, wheep, wheep
were now going wheep-_beep_, wheep-_beep_. Possibly the electromagnetic
"taste" of lower-than-red was now spiced with a tang of beyond-violet.
Whatever the sign was, the Pyramid recognized it.
A part of the crop it tended was ready to harvest.
The ripening bud had a name, of course, but names didn't matter to the
Pyramid. The man named Tropile didn't know he was ripening, either.
All that Tropile knew was that, for the first time in nearly a year,
he had succeeded in catching each stage of the nine perfect states of
water-coming-to-a-boil in its purest form.
It was like ... like ... well, it was like nothing that anyone but
a Water Watcher could understand. He observed. He appreciated. He
encompassed and absorbed the myriad subtle perfections of time, of
shifting transparency, of sound, of distribution of ebulliency, of the
faint, faint odor of steam.
Complete, Glenn Tropile relaxed all his limbs and let his chin rest on
his breast-bone.
It was, he thought with placid, crystalline perception, a rare and
perfect opportunity for meditation. He thought of Connectivity.
(Overhead, a shifting glassy flaw appeared in the thin, still air.)
There wasn't any thought of Eyes in the erased palimpsest that was
Glenn Tropile's mind. There wasn't any thought of Pyramids or of
Wolves. The plowed field before him didn't exist. Even the water,
merrily bubbling itself dry, was gone from his perception.
He was beginning to meditate.
Time passed--or stood still--for Tropile; there was no difference.
There was no time. He found himself almost on the brink of
Understanding.
Something snapped. An intruding blue-bottle drone, maybe, or a
twitching muscle. Partly, Tropile came back to reality. Almost, he
glanced upward. Almost, he saw the Eye....
It didn't matter. The thing that really mattered, the only thing in the
world, was all within his mind; and he was ready, he knew, to find it.
Once more! Try harder!
He let the mind-clearing unanswerable question drift into his mind:
_If the sound of two hands together is a clapping, what is the sound of
one hand?_
Gently he pawed at the question, the symbol of the futility of
mind--and therefore the gateway to meditation. Unawareness of self was
stealing deliciously over him.
He was Glenn Tropile. He was more than that. He was the water
boiling ... and the boiling water was he. He was the gentle warmth of
the fire, which was--which was, yes, itself the arc of the sky. As each
thing was each other thing; water was fire, and fire air; Tropile was
the first simmering bubble and the full roll of Well-aged Water was
Self, was--more than Self--was--
The answer to the unanswerable question was coming clearer and softer
to him. And then, all at once, but not suddenly, for there was no time,
it was not close--it _was_.
The answer was his, was him. The arc of sky was the answer, and the
answer belonged to sky--to warmth, to all warmths that there are, and
to all waters, and--and the answer was--was--
Tropile vanished. The mild thunderclap that followed made the flames
dance and the column of steam fray; and then the fire was steady again,
and so was the rising steam. But Tropile was gone.