new, too revolutionary for the men of his day to grasp, for the
non-science leaders, secure in their ascendancy at the center of things,
to see in it the threat to their ascendancy. It was on his followers,
those who saw sense in the question, that the wrath of non-science
descended. Non-science used the only method it had ever devised to
achieve the only result it had ever been able to countenance--torture
and force to make dissidents kneel in subservience.
But the question had been asked! And once asked, it could not be
erased!
Still, it was almost an accidental question. For the method of science,
as something understood and communicable, as a calculated point of view,
had not yet been discovered. The key that would unlock its door had not
yet been found.
Cal lay back on the rock to bathe in the warm rays of Ceti, almost to
doze, yet with thought running clear and unimpeded. The splashing and
the laughter of the colonists below the rock were no more than
accompanying music.
The key which opened the door to physical science was not discovered
until 1646 by a bunch of loafers, ne'er-do-wells, beatniks, who hung
around the coffee shops of London. Later, because non-science always
persecutes those who dare ask questions and thereby demonstrate some
subversion to subservience, many had to flee to Oxford which, at that
time, was sanctuary for those who differed from popular thought.
As he lay there drinking in the sun, the peacefulness, he sent his
vision back through the card index of his mind to find the reference,
the key that opened the door to physical science, the pregnant point of
view that would give birth to a whole new concept of man's relationship
to the universe. He found the passages in Thomas Sprat's _History of the
Royal Society of London (1667)_.
"... to make faithful records of all the works of nature, or art which
can come within their reach ... They have stud'd to make it, not only an
enterprise of one season, or of some lucky opportunity; but a business
of time; a steddy, a lasting, a popular, an uninterrupted work."
He stirred restlessly and changed his position to lay his head on one
arm. Not quite, not yet the key. Ah, here it was, perhaps the most
significant sentence ever written by man.
"They have attempted to free it from the artifice, and humors, and
passions of sects; to render it an instrument whereby mankind may obtain
a dominion over _Things_, and not only over one another's judgements."
That was it. That was the essence of its difference from non-science,
for the only method ever discovered until then was the non-science
method of making its judgments prevail over all others.
Once this answer was discovered, it too could not be erased in spite of
all the efforts of non-science. With that answer, man had come this far.
And now?
Could it be that science, as with non-science, was only a partial
answer? Only another stage? Only a section of the road man must travel?
Something as limited in its way as non-science was limited? Something
too narrow to contain the whole of reality? Something also to be left
behind? A milestone passed, instead of the goal?
What comes after science? What new door must be opened into a still
newer point of view? What pregnant new concept of his relationship to
reality must man now discover before he could continue his journey down
the long road toward total comprehension?
He could ask the question, but it was not the right question; for it
contained no hint of an answer. He felt an irritation in himself, almost
as if some teacher in the past had shaken his head in disapproval.
For a moment he welcomed the distracting shout from one of the
colonists, and sat up. In the shallows of the river one of the men had
caught a foot long fish and was holding it up in his hands. Delightedly,
the others acknowledged his victory, and renewed their efforts. He lay
back down again, and stretched his cramped muscles.
Too fast! He had come down the long, long road too fast. He had missed
something, something early. Something man had known in pre-science, and
had forgotten in science.
These colonists. Would they grow in awareness? Now they seemed only to
be a part of their environment, without curiosity, their fears of even
the day before forgotten. Wiped away, as though it had never been, was
their memory of a previous existence to this. They were wholly at one
with their environment--unaware.
Were they to begin the long road? To telescope its distance? Would they
be able to continue living without peopling the trees, the streams, the
clouds, the winds, with spirits benign and vengeful--created in their
own image? Could they continue to live alone in the universe?
Yes, that was the thing he had missed. Loneliness.
In separating himself from the animals, man had cut off his kinship with
them. And so he found companionship with the gods. And cutting himself
off from the gods ...
Loneliness.
Was man the only thing aware throughout the universe? What purpose then
his exploration of it? What might he find that he had not already found?
Already, like a minor thread almost unheard in the symphony of exploding
exploration, the questions of the artists were already finding
themselves woven into music, painting, literature.
"Are we alone? In all this glittering, sterile universe, are there none
other than we who are aware?"
The theme would expand as the purposelessness of colonizing still more
and more worlds became wider known. The minor would become major, the
recessive dominant. The endless aim of non-science to make all others
subservient had lost its purpose for those who could still think. The
dominion over things instead of people, the goal of science--was that
also to lose its purpose for those who could still think? Until man,
defeated by purposelessness, sank back in apathy, lost the very
willingness to live--and so died?
What if some other awareness did inhabit the universe, sentient--and
lonely? What if, farther along in its explorations, it was feeling that
apathy? Facing that dissolution?
When one is lonely, the sensible thing is to seek companionship! To
discover in companionship purpose not apparent to the alone--or at least
hope to discover it.
For companionship there must be communication. And yet the exasperation,
the futility of trying to communicate with a friend who always
interpreted everything one said and did as meaning something entirely
different from the intent.
Some other friend was the normal answer. But what if there were no
other? Wouldn't one extra effort, a final attempt to break through that
closed mind be made?
All right.
Communication, then. That was wanted. He would try. But if Their
frameworks were so different from his that They misinterpreted all his
efforts?
He was interrupted by the soft pad of footsteps, bare feet on grass that
sprang up to leave no sign it had been trod upon. A young colonist and
his wife, hand in hand, laughing gaily, were coming toward him. The man
was carrying a fresh-caught fish. They came to a stop at the base of his
rock and looked up at him, the Ceti light glinting on their smiling
faces.
"We gave Louie a fish because he said it was our duty," the young man
said. "I don't remember why it is our duty. Perhaps it is our duty to
give you one too."
At least they were being impartial.
22
When he had pulled the scaled skin of the fish away from the flesh, the
flesh away from the bones, and eaten his fill, Cal lay back on the rock
again, to doze, to continue his search for a means of communicating.
He was now sharply aware of Their presence, of Their urgency, of Their
long patience. Awareness! Once man had got over his greedy delight in
occupying more and more of the universe simply because he could, to
protect himself against the cosmic loneliness that must follow, he too
would be searching for awareness.
But he would define it in his own terms, and pass it by if it did not
meet those terms.
That there was some other intelligence which had found man instead, Cal
did not doubt. The experiment of Eden, the manipulation of natural laws,
the denial of physical tools--for what purpose? To clear away the debris
which prevented communication of awareness as They defined it?
There was a trace, a minor trace of awareness in man not dependent upon
the tools and artifacts of physical science--extra-sensory perception,
psi. Underdeveloped, because with physical tools its development had
been made unnecessary? Because having found the answers with physical
tools, man stopped looking for answers other than these?
Was there, then, a science of controlling things, forces, without the
use of physical tools? Was there a road of transition from the crude
manipulation of things and forces through tools to a manipulation
without them? There was precedent in man's science. The elaborate
wirings of the first bulky and crude electronic sets, that gave way to a
printed diagram of such wirings on a card to obtain the same result?
A step farther? The visual picture, the mental image of the diagram to
obtain the same result? But how?
To one whose total orientation is through the use of physical tools (for
the material printed on the card diagram was the physical carrier of the
current) how to cause the current to follow the mental image of that
diagram? With voice and music bathing one's senses simply because one
thought of the diagram of a receiver? How?
He felt like the turkey come up against the obstruction of a fence too
low to justify the effort of flying over it. Instead of flying, he was
walking around and around, looking for an opening, walking in an endless
circle.
Circle?
Excitedly, he climbed down from the rock and headed for a patch of bare
sand at the river's edge.
In every framework of thought which man had ever devised, the circle was
prominent, vital. It played its part in every creed of every race, of
every time. It was as essential to the ancient arts of magic as to the
current methods of science. It played its part in the movement of
planets, the shape of stars, perhaps the essence of the total universe.
Man might be too didactic in requiring that awareness develop a physical
science comparable to his own, but surely awareness, whatever form it
took, would know the circle.
He sank down on his haunches beside the smooth sand, and with the tip of
his finger he quickly drew a circle.
The furrow, scratched in the sand, did not close or smooth out!
He sat back and waited. Nothing happened. It was almost as if the
invisible intelligence were saying, "All right. You are aware of a
circle. That was obvious to us from your artifacts. What else do you
know?"
He leaned forward, and as nearly as he could estimate, he dotted the
center of the circle with a finger, then scratched a radius to the
perimeter. It stayed. To one side he drew another line, approximating
the radius and in parenthesis he drew a small 2. Beside this he wrote
R^2. He drew an equals sign. He scratched the pi sign.
Then he drew another circle and with the palm of his hand he smoothed
all its interior. That should be plain enough. The symbols stayed. They
understood his mathematics, then. The equation seemed undisturbed, yet
there was something wrong with it. He had to look closely at the sand
before he saw what it was.
The = had changed to : !
Why had they changed the meaning by substituting "proportionate to" for
"equals"? He felt a flash of exasperation. Well sure, without tools he
could not draw a perfect circle, nor two of them entirely equal. It was
pedantic of them to split hairs over that? He must practice, without
tools, to draw a perfect circle?
Or was that running around inside his low fence?
He looked down at the sand, and saw the entire scratching was now
smoothed out. Apparently he was on the wrong track. Hadn't got what they
meant.
He wrote again in the sand: "pi = 3.14159265...."
Again = changed to : .
Again he felt his flash of exasperation. It must be obvious by his
string of dots that he knew pi had never been exactly resolved. They
were being too pedantic. He must exactly resolve it? Yet the numbers
could be continued to infinity and never exactly resolved. He looked
down again, and the equation was gone.
Wrong track again.
He sat forward, hugged his knees, and stared into the water.
The equation had never been exactly resolved, yet man used it as a
constant, an absolute. An obvious fallacy. Was the difference between
physical science and psi science based in this insignificant difference
in exactness? Try something else. See what happens. There was an
equation which had proved its effectiveness, upon which the whole
science of atomics was based.
"E = MC^2," he wrote.
Again = changed to : .
What were they saying? That the fallacy lay in using the equals sign?
That the science of psi was one of proportion. But equals was one of the
possible proportions. Had we become walled in our low fence because we
were too dependent upon the exact balance? Been satisfied to find that
answer, and therefore stopped looking for the possibilities inherent in
unbalanced equations?
He looked down at the symbols again half expecting to see them erased.
But they were still there. So he was starting on the right track. But
wait.
Before his eyes he saw the C^2 smooth out, disappear. Only "E : M"
remained. Were they saying that dependence upon constants was the low
fence? That man must learn to do without his firm absolutes? That was
the ultimate in relativity: Energy is proportionate to matter. But so
all-inclusive as to be too vague for use.
For more than three centuries now, controversy had raged over Einstein's
use of C^2 in his expression. Some held that it was a product of his
time, that he was able to make only one step beyond classical physics
where all things must be related to a fixed value. Others held that its
inclusion was a deliberate fallacy; that Einstein, by his other work,
had shown he knew it was a fallacy; that, tongue in cheek, he inserted
it into his equation in full knowledge that his fellow scientists of his
day could not even bear to think of the awesome concept of things
without orientation to an absolute; that he knew they would reject him
entirely, refuse even to consider his thought unless he catered that
much to their superstitions.
The need of the absolute was not mathematical or scientific, but
emotional. Man was still tortured by his determination to be the center
of things, himself the fixed absolute! The need of a familiar, fixed
cave where he might run and hide, close himself in securely when the
chaos of storm outside became too frightening to bear. The need of a
fixed absolute, whether in philosophy or science, a fixed spot that
would not shift.
The science of psi, then, was based in a willingness to shift?
He looked down at the equation, to see if he were still on the track.
It had changed again. Now it read "E{d}M": The form of the function of
energy to matter is variable.
Quickly, another change. "Df(em)": The form of the function and the
independent variable of the function vary together.
Still another: "E = f(M)": There is a general relationship of energy to
matter.
And then: "F(e,m) = 0": There is a general unspecified relationship
between energy and matter.
He slapped his hand down on the sand in frustration.
"All right," he said. "You've made your point. And it means about as
much as if I said to the turkey, 'All you have to do is fly'."
There was a stir behind him. He turned his head and saw Louie. A deep
sigh, almost a sob came from Louie as he stared down at the symbols in
the sand.
"They talked to _you_," Louie said brokenly. "I wanted only to serve
Them, but it was to _you_ They talked."
And all the tragedy of his life was contained therein.
Cal sprang to his feet, and put his arms around the other man's
shoulders. The two of them, the bitter and the sympathetic, looked down
at the sand. The symbols were still changing, and now read "There is an
infinity of relationships between matter and energy, an infinity of
forms to be taken by matter as you control the energy."
The signs were wiped out, and the sense of Their presence was gone. Cal
felt the withdrawal, the sense of a lesson being over. He did not
regret it, he had enough to think about. But first, there was Louie,
racked with broken sobbing.
Here was a man whose life had been a search for certainties, absolutes
that would not shift under the weight of his questioning. No doubt in
his youth he had turned to the religions of the day--and found them a
tissue of rationalizations without contact in reality. Then to
science--and found it, too, constantly shifting in its interpretations,
making new evaluations as evidence discounted the old. The shock of
landing on Eden to drive him back into childhood interpretations
again--at last, the clear evidence that had been denied his belief in
youth.
Wholehearted in his belief of Them, yet it was not to him They had
talked.
"Louie," Cal said slowly. "If you were lonely, very lonely, if you had
searched through the years for companionship, and thought you might have
found it, would it please you to have that companion drop to his knees,
grovel before you? Would this be your idea of companionship?
"What manner of monstrous egotism would require that? What but the
incredible vanity of primitive man, to whom life meant nothing more than
conquering or being conquered, could imagine such conduct would be
pleasing to another intelligence?
"We are men, Louie. If, in our loneliness, we found another
intelligence, wouldn't we want an equal exchange instead of abasement?
The use of that intelligence to know, to understand, instead of a denial
of it?"
Louie twisted out of Cal's embracing arm, and ran stumbling toward the
depths of the forest.
23
For another week, perhaps ten days or more, since time measurement had
lost its meaning, Cal lived among the colonists, watched their complete
retrogression into a state of unawareness. Even the speech which they
had retained seemed now to thin and falter as the simplifying of their
idea-content no longer required its use.
Only Tom and Jed seemed to retain their orientation to the past, the
clarity of awareness. These two spent much time together, seemed always
available when Cal needed them, yet did not intrude upon his thought.
Frank now seemed one with the colonists. Louie lived on the outskirts of
the herd, near the colonists but not of them. He had ceased to exhort,
warn, command, argue. His face was closed, told nothing of what he was
thinking.
And he had ceased to demand his tithe as intercessor. He was gathering
his own food, catching his own fish.
And he seldom let Cal out of his sight.
Tom and Jed helped as best they could by maintaining contact with the
old reality. They spent much of the daytime with the colonists. At night
they turned their faces to the dark sky to watch the ships, now grown to
four, bathed in the light of Ceti like a constellation of bright stars
above them. They read the intermittent flashes of light from McGinnis,
and from the E.H.Q. laboratory. McGinnis told of the police ship's
attempts to break through the barrier surrounding Eden, and its
failure. The laboratory told of Linda's presence on board, and now and
then flashed out a message to Cal from Linda of her love, her nearness,
her faith in him, her desire to be with him, her patience in waiting.
McGinnis told of the arrival of a fifth ship, carrying Gunderson in
person. He had been unable to believe his police captain. Unable to
believe that the ship could not land at will. He had come in person to
take charge, and apparently fumed his frustration in idleness, unable to
do anything with the situation, unwilling to go back to Earth and leave
it alone.
Tom and Jed told Cal the content of these messages, but to Cal the
reports of the police activity seemed noises heard from far away and
unrelated to himself. The messages from Linda seemed the haunting
strains of a song remembered from long ago.
For his mind was wholly enrapt with the problem. He had been given the
key--reality is a matter of proportion, change the concept of proportion
and you change the material form--but he had not found the lock and the
door it would open. He knew it, but he couldn't do it.
Perhaps Tom might help? Tom was well-grounded in math, had to be for his
job as pilot.
"Look, Tom," Cal said one morning after they had given him the night's
messages from the ships. He squatted on the ground and brushed away some
leaves from an area of dirt. "Watch the equals sign." He scratched a
formula in the dirt:
"2 + 2 = 4"
The = changed to : . Then to {d}. Then through the series of variable
relationships.
Tom leaped to his feet from the log where he had been sitting.
"That's crazy," he exclaimed. "It isn't just proportionate, it isn't
variable. It equals."
Jed was looking from one to the other, obviously at a loss.
"Well," Cal said drily, "I'm much more interested in what They have to
say than in trying to convince Them that They're wrong."
"But if everything were only proportionate and variable," Tom argued,
"then you'd have nothing fixed, constant. Why the proportionate
relationship might be dependent solely upon choice. Nothing would be
solid, dependable."
"Not even the footprints under your feet," Cal answered softly. "Not a
house, nor a field of grain, nor a spaceship. Simply alter the choice of
proportion--and they aren't there anymore."
24
Throw a key at the feet of a turkey and it is useless to him. Show him
the lock it fits, and it is still useless without the knowledge of how
to insert the key and turn it. Unlock it for him, and still it is
useless without the knowledge of how to push or pull the door.
This was the essence of why so few mastered the simple steps of physical
science, the essence of why so few were able to get beyond step two of E
science. Anyone could disagree with a statement, but in answer to "What
if it not be true, how then to account for the phenomena?" most bogged
down at that point, unable to demonstrate with evidence the validity of
some other answer.
Everyone knew the equation E = MC^2, but few could implement it to build
an atomic power plant.
Perhaps the reactions of Tom, that taking away the concept of a balanced
equation destroyed all certainty, and therefore was not to be
countenanced, was a reflection of his own reaction, willing though he
might be to consider something else.
In his wanderings about the island, picking fruits and nuts, stems and
leaves, catching fish when he hungered, drinking the clear water of the
stream when he thirsted, yet so enrapt that he was unaware he was taking
care of his body's needs, Cal built up whole structures of alien
philosophies on the nature of the universe, and saw them topple of their
own weight.
Until, at last, he realized the basic flaw in all his reasoning. He was
too well-grounded in the essence of physical science, and all physical
science was built on the balanced equation. Even in trying to consider
the unbalanced equation, he had been attempting to determine the exact
nature of the unbalance, and to supply it as an X factor on the other
side of the equation to restore balance.
To restore balance was to maintain the status quo of physical reality.
To turn the key in the lock, to open the door, he must change the
physical reality to balance the equation, rather than supply the X
factor to keep reality unchanged.
But how to do it still eluded him.
At times, as if seeing partial diagrams, he seemed very close to a
solution. At times it seemed the printed card of an electronic wiring
was necessary only because the human mind could not visualize the whole
without that aid, that music did not come through because in incomplete
visualization some little part was left dangling, unconnected. And the
long history of non-science belief in the magic properties of cabalistic
signs and designs rose up to taunt him, to goad him with the possibility
that perhaps man had once come close to the answer of how to control
physical properties without the use of tools; that the development of a
physical science had taken man down a sidetrack instead of farther along
the direct route toward his goal.
Or that man had once been shown, and never understood, or forgot. Yet
kept alive the memory that physical shifts could be changed if he could
only draw the right design.
Through his wanderings, one fact gradually intruded upon his mind. It
seemed the farther inland he roamed, the closer he came to grasping the
problem; the nearer the seashore, the more it eluded him.