barren, blistered rock, and with a concept made it into the garden of
man's dreams. On one island, they set up a crystalline structure, a
thing, this much concession to the mind of man; a tool, to amplify and
clarify their thought to reach the still rudimentary but nevertheless
present centers of man's mind--some certain man who might be ready to
receive that thought.
Placed in man's exploratory path, the waiting was not long until man
found it. They had not led him to it through any intuitive change of
course that he might find suspect. The explorers landed, claimed it for
Earth, and went away. None among them felt any pull from the crystal
tool upon the mountaintop.
The scientists came to make their measurements. Their busy minds were
full of weight and size and the relationship of thing to thing. Perhaps
by now they too were so committed to the use of a thing to act upon
another thing that they could not countenance the thought that thought
could act upon a thing direct. They measured the crystal tool, and
recorded all their measurements, but found no meaning in its arches and
its spires. If any felt the impact of the thinking of the fields of
force, he made no sign nor gave response. Indeed, to preserve his
status and reputation with his fellow scientists he'd not have dared
admit a meaning that could not be measured with his instruments.
Forevermore he'd be outcast, if he but hinted that he thought their
science was insufficient to capture everything of meaning there. And to
scientist most of all, his status with his fellow man means more than
truth. At least to most. But are there some to whom the truth is
paramount?
Yes, for had not scientist after scientist through the years risked and
lost his status through his questioning? And then perhaps today there
are such men.
So walk with care, and wait.
The colonists came, and as the scientists' minds had been filled with
measurements and weights and analyses; the colonists' minds were filled
with cabins, fields, food.
Surely, among men somewhere, there must be those not wholly captured on
the one hand by formless superstition; and on the other hand not bound
within the tightly narrowed circle of weight and measurement! Surely man
must know by now he could not capture the inner meaning of a thing
through a description of its outer surface.
But as long as man got by, and did great things by using physical things
to act upon other physical things, even in considering the universal
energy as a thing, he would look no farther.
All right then, a little nudge in another direction. Change the concept
of the planet slightly, so that one thing cannot act upon another, no
tool be used except this crystal set to act as intermediary. Let that
happen, and out from Earth a man would come, perhaps a dozen men,
perhaps a hundred ships, a thousand men, and all to find their ships,
their tools, were gone. But someday there would come a man with mind
trained in the ability to conceive that there might be a road to truth
outside the useless superstitions that sent man to groveling in the dust
at each small breath that blew, and also one who would not quit because
he had no weather vane to test the direction of that breath.
And they would know when that mind came.
The first man came. Take away his tools and wait. He did not fall to
earth in awe nor freeze in fear. His mind searched curiously. Enough.
The man was here. Shield off the planet from the rest that he be
undisturbed in his thought.
Could he go farther? Conceive the purpose of this lack of tools, that it
was by design? And still not grovel in the dust? They'd made their move.
Could he respond?
He drew a circle in the sand!
Joy! Ecstasy!
This time there might be surcease to the loneliness, and two
intelligences so unlike commune. The very unlikeness of each bringing to
the other thought not yet considered, and together going on to find ...
to find ...
Now let him see the fallacy of such strict measurement. Now let him
think, to realize that measuring the balance of the status quo of things
in only one relationship of an infinity of possibilities, to realize
that he can change his measurements to balance an equation designed to
express the status quo, or with equal truth, at his desire, he can
change the status quo, the shape of things, to fit the equation he
desires.
Let him wander, puzzled, worrying on this. Let him work it out himself,
for experience from long ago had taught them that if man was not ready
to accept an alien thought he could not, would not, accept but in his
own interpreting.
Now, at last, at his readiness to make things fit the equation he
conceives, instead of making the equation fit the things as they are,
bring him closer in the range of the amplifier, the crystal tool, that
communication might be direct.
He holds the key.
He knows the lock.
He finds the door.
Show him the one small step remaining--the diagram, the design, the
movement of the forces of his mind.
To turn the key.
Unlock the lock.
Throw wide the door.
26
As one awakened from a deep sleep, a hypnotic trance, Cal opened his
eyes.
Man's ancient thought filled his being, the subject of man's dreams, of
yearnings, of philosophies. In ancient eidetic memory, the unbroken
thread persisted: If I could only grasp this elusive thing, always just
barely beyond my reach, I would not need the ox, the wagon, the train,
the plane, the spaceship to transport me from here to there.
And now, at last, the thought was in Cal's grasp. Express the things and
forces balanced in equation to describe them as they are; or, equally,
to alter the things and forces instead to fit the equation balance one
had in mind; purely a matter of choice. Each was the use of natural law.
No chaos here, no magic, one as much true science as the other.
How long had he slept, and dreamed? A few minutes? An hour? Or by chance
was he another Rip Van Winkle, doomed to find the colonists aged or
dead?
But why wonder?
A short distance first, just outside the amphitheater, just a small
test. He first rearranged the relative position of himself to the
amphitheater, to be outside instead of in it. He diagrammed the forces
in his mind that would alter the relationship, connected them.
He was standing outside the entrance arch.
With a hoarse cry, Louie, who had been watching all the while through
the open arch, shrank back away from Cal, wavered in uncertainty, then
fell to his knees, then groveled in the dust.
"Forgive me!" he cried. "In my blind, senseless vanity, I did not know
you were a Holy One. I was going to kill you, I confess. Woe! Woe! I saw
you lying there in Their temple, defaming it in blasphemy by your sleep.
But when I tried to enter, I could not. Their will prevented me. Some
shielding force protected you. And then I knew you were a Holy One.
Forgive me. Let me live to expiate my sin."
"Louie, Louie," Cal said sadly.
As if in tangled ball, the thought stream of Louie, twisted and warped
by the false reasonings and interpretations fed to him in childhood,
seemed clearly revealed to Cal. Again a change in concept of
relationship to reality, the schematic of forces visualized, the
untangling, straightening of thought.
Louie scrambled to his feet, a rueful grin on his face.
"Sorry, Cal," he said. "I must have gone nuts there for a while, shock
and all. I'm all right now. Don't worry anymore about me. I'll get on
back to the rest."
"Sure, Louie. See you there," Cal agreed.
A rearrangement of relationships, and Cal walked out from behind a bush
to approach Jed and Tom.
"You must not have gone all the way to the top," Jed said when he looked
up and caught sight of Cal. "It's just barely past noon, I reckon.
Didn't expect to see you back until nightfall."
"I took a short cut," Cal said with a grin. "Little past noon," he
continued, as if musing with a thought. "About the same time of day that
everything happened a couple of weeks ago."
"Yeah, about the same time of day," Jed said, and looked at him
curiously.
Tom had arisen to his feet and was staring at Cal curiously, sensing a
difference in the E. Now Jed felt it too, and looked at Cal with
puzzlement on his face.
"There's something important about it being around this time of day,
Cal?" he asked.
"Not really," Cal said, "but I thought it might be helpful. I could
restore the village, the fields, the escape ship, everything just as it
was; make it feel like a continuation of the same day to the people. It
being the same time of day would help the illusion that no time had
passed, nothing had happened."
Tom's eyes narrowed in speculation.
"You can do that, Cal?" he asked. "You've solved the problem?"
"Yes," Cal said simply. "I'll tell you about it sometime. There's quite
a few loose ends to catch up right now." He turned to Jed. "How about
it, Jed?" he asked. "Think it'll be too much of a shock to put things
back as they were?"
In spite of himself, Jed was trembling. He drew a deep breath, firmed
his jaw. Seemed to set himself as one does in the dentist's chair at the
approach of the drill.
It was a bigger equation, a more complex one, but not different in kind.
The village of Appletree sprang suddenly into being, the hangar with the
metallic gleam of the ship inside, the fields, the pasture fences with
the calves separated from the cows. A few people, clothed, were walking
on the dirt street between the houses. They looked at one another. They
looked up at the sky, at the fields around them, the forests beyond.
They looked back at one another. They shook their heads, and blinked
their eyes, as if suddenly wakened from a sleep, a dream, the craziest
dream.
Later they would compare the dream, and with Jed's help piece together,
and feel the shock, and wonder.
Upon the hill, away from the village, where Jed lay, clothed, in the
hammock swung between two trees, Martha came out of the house, clothed.
"I must have sat down in a chair for a minute and fallen asleep or
something, Jed," she said as she came to stand beside him. "And I had
the funniest dream. You can't imagine. You know how sometimes we'll
dream about being out in front of folks, all naked ..."
"That wasn't any dream, Martha," he answered with a grin. "All the
people in the village are going to start realizing it pretty soon.
They'll need some help. We'd better walk down there. Them people across
the ridge, too. Bet they'll be hightailing it back over here first thing
you know. And something else, there's an E ship here, come to find out
why we didn't communicate."
"Well whatever on Earth are you talkin' about, Jed?" she asked
curiously. "It won't be time to communicate for a couple of days yet.
You ought to know that. Have you been dreaming, too? Or you and the boys
fermenting something? Here, let me smell your breath!"
"Aw, now Martha," he said with a huge grin. He clambered out of the
hammock and stood up, took her in his arms, hugged her tightly.
"Jed!" she scolded. "Right out here in the front yard in front of
everybody." But she didn't struggle away from him.
"Won't matter a bit," he said. "Not after what's been goin' on in front
of everybody right along."
"Whatever has been goin' on can't be half as bad as what I've been
dreamin'," she said.
"Better start gettin' used to the idea that it wasn't a dream, Martha,"
he cautioned.
"Jed!" she scolded again, her face aflame with embarrassment.
27
The communications operator looked up as the supervisor came down the
aisle toward him.
"Communication from the E.H.Q. ship at Eden coming in just fine," he
said enthusiastically. He'd thought it over and decided he'd better
repair some fences. Good job here, no use letting his irritation with
the supervisor's old-maid fussiness make him cut off his nose to spite
his face.
"See that it does," the supervisor answered sharply. He recognized the
overture for what it was, felt relieved that he wouldn't have any more
insubordination, was willing to let bygones be bygones--after a suitable
period of punishment. "What's been happening?" he asked with a curiosity
that got the better of his desire to discipline.
"E Gray has come back out of that quartz outcropping where we lost him.
He's standing there talking to the astronavigator who followed him up
the mountain."
"More of the same, I guess," the supervisor said. "Nothing's happened
for ten days. Nothing likely to happen," he said. He turned and started
back down the aisle toward his own office.
"Wait a minute," the operator called. "Here's something."
Other operator heads raised up all down the aisle.
"Now, now; now, now!" the supervisor quarreled at them. "Get on with
your work, nothing to concern you here, none of your business."
But of course it was everybody's business. Anything different was
everybody's business. All over the world everybody was wondering about
the enigma of Eden, everybody speculating, everybody with a different
answer. Some were gleeful that science had finally got its comeuppance,
and felt no more than a pleasure that the bigdomes had proved they
weren't any smarter than anybody else. Others took an equal pleasure in
crying woe, woe, at this proof there were mysteries beyond man's
knowing, woe, woe, now that man would be punished for trying to know
what he was not meant to know.
The operator took time out, in spite of the supervisor's admonishments,
to listen frankly.
"They've lost sight of the E," the operator exclaimed. "No, wait a
minute. There he is, down in the valley, coming out from behind a bush
to talk to the pilot and the head man of the colony."
"Can't have happened like that," the supervisor grumbled. "Ten or twelve
miles from that mountain top to the valley. The ship has garbled their
reporting. Probably got behind in reporting and then just decided to
skip the journey back, and pick up to make it current. There's going to
be complaints about this."
"Well, you were right here," the operator said. "You were listening. I
didn't skip anything. It wasn't my fault."
"All right, all right."
"Wait a minute," the operator said. "Here, listen in."
The supervisor's eyes grew round.
"Can't be," he exclaimed.
"All the buildings, everything's just like it was before," the operator
said loudly to the room at large. "All of a sudden, the way they report
it."
"They're faking the reports," the supervisor grumbled irritably. "Have
to be."
"Now, no matter how much they fake, you can't rebuild all those
buildings in a couple hours," the operator argued.
"None of our business," the supervisor cautioned. "We just take the
reports. Can't criticize us for whatever the E.H.Q. ship out there's
doing."
"And everybody's got their clothes back on," the operator said loudly.
There was a sigh of regret up and down the aisle.
"Now the E's disappeared again," the operator said, "They're scanning
all over, trying to find him."
The supervisor put down his headset with resolution.
"I'm going to my office to make a report on the sloppy way this
reporting has been done. There's going to be fur flying over these skips
and jumps, and I don't want it to be our fur. Best thing is to make the
complaint first," he said to the room at large. "Now you call me if
there's any more of this bollix," he said to the operator as he left.
An hour passed while the supervisor sat in his office. He wrote
furiously, scratched out, wrote some more, tore up papers and threw them
in the vague direction of the wastebasket, started afresh to write some
more. How to report without stepping on anybody's toes?
His buzzer sounded softly to give him respite, and he looked up from a
virtually blank piece of paper to the board. The Eden operator again.
"Oh, no," he groaned. But he left his desk at once and half trotted up
the aisle.
"Now the captain of the ship says he wants Sector Chief Hayes at once,"
the operator called out. "Something very important."
"Very well," the supervisor said. "Ring him."
But Hayes didn't wait for the ring. He had been listening, red-eyed,
tired, gaunt for lack of sleep.
"Give me connection," he said to the operator as soon as the line
opened.
"Bill Hayes here, Captain," he said, as soon as he received the signal.
"What now?"
"Mrs. Gray, the Junior E's wife, has disappeared from aboard ship," the
Captain said without any preliminaries.
"What do you mean 'disappeared'?" Hayes asked. "How could she disappear
in deep space? Have you looked everywhere? Checked the lifeboats? Maybe
she took one and tried to get down to her husband by herself."
"We've looked everywhere. No lifeboats missing. No port has opened. You
ought to know we wouldn't bother you until we'd checked everything out
first."
"She can't have disappeared into thin air, thin space," Hayes quarreled
back. "She must be on your ship somewhere. When was she last seen?"
"That's--ah--that's mainly why I'm calling you, Bill," the captain said.
"A wild tale, obviously a mistake. One of the crewmen passed her
stateroom about an hour ago. Door was open and he looked in, the way
anybody does. Says he saw her standing inside her cabin embracing a man.
Says he didn't stop to look close, but he was pretty sure it was E Gray.
Says he knows because he's had access to the viewscope and has watched E
Gray on the surface of Eden."
"There's been no report of any ship leaving Eden, joining you, Captain,"
Hayes said accusingly.
"Because there hasn't been any," the captain snapped back. "So it can't
have been E Gray she was embracing. That's why I called you. Looks like
we're going to have some petty scandal mixed up with everything else."
"Looks like it, then," Hayes said with a vast weariness. "Some member of
your crew, or one of the scientists," he said. "Keep looking. Somebody's
hiding her, probably to keep the scandal from breaking. But it seems odd
to me that she was so anxious to get out there near her husband and then
in ten days she'd ..."
"Maybe her real anxiety was to be near somebody already assigned to the
ship," the captain said. "I mean, we've got to consider all the
possibilities. Somebody she knew there at E.H.Q."
"Keep checking, Captain. I'll see if the Board wants to contact E
McGinnis. Maybe he knows what's been going on around here that could
lead us to the guy who's hiding her."
"I'll keep checking, but she's not on board _my_ ship," the captain
said. He sighed. Bill Hayes sighed. They broke connection.
Hayes made contact with the Board chairman. It took only a few minutes
to spin the latest tale of woe. Another minute for the Board to decide
direct intervention.
"Now they want me to make contact with the other ship," the operator
said to the supervisor. "The Wheel himself wants to know if E McGinnis
will talk to him."
"Well, contact it, contact it," the supervisor commanded urgently.
"I'm doing it! I'm doing it!" the operator quarreled back.
The both of them listened in on the conversation, on the grounds that
testing the quality of reception was a necessity. E McGinnis's pilot was
quite explicit.
"E McGinnis left orders that under no circumstances was he to be
disturbed," the pilot said. "He, E Gray and Mrs. Gray are in his cabin,
in conference."
"E Gray! Mrs. Gray!" the chairman exploded. "Impossible. How the devil
did they get into your ship?"
"Don't ask me," the pilot said in a tired voice. "I just work here. I'm
sitting here minding my own business. I see E McGinnis's door open. He
leans out the door and gives me my orders. I look past him and I see E
Gray and Mrs. Gray sitting in the room. Don't ask me how they got in
there. I don't know. But I do know this, I'm going to get myself a nice
quiet milk run to Saturn or someplace, soon as I get back to E.H.Q. If I
ever do get back."
"Now, now," the Board chairman soothed. "I'm sure there's a simple
explanation." Crewmen willing to pilot an E around the universe were
hard to find.
"Yeah? After what I've seen out here, I don't think I'd even want to
hear it," the pilot said, and without apology cut off the
communication.
28
Had the pilot been able, a moment later, to look into the E's stateroom
he would have seen still another visitor, another who had not entered
his ship by any normal means.
Attorney General Gunderson sat in a chair facing the two E's and Linda.
He seemed stunned, frozen into immobility. Only his eyes were alive,
darting here and there, unbelieving. There is limit to the number of
shocks the mind can withstand, and the series had come too fast for him
to adjust to them.
He too had picked up Junior E Gray as soon as he came through the arch
of the quartz outcropping on top of the mountain, the structure that
somehow interfered with their visoscope's ability to penetrate and see
what went on inside. He had been watching when Gray suddenly disappeared
from where he had been talking with the astronavigator. That had been a
shock, immediately followed by a greater one, when the ship's operator
had scanned the valley and found Gray talking with the E's pilot and the
chief of the colonists. There was no way in which the journey could have
been made that rapidly.
He was still watching when the village, the fields, the escape ship, the
E ship all had suddenly materialized before his eyes. And the people
were all clothed. It couldn't be done, but he had seen it. But he kept
his head. E science must be farther along than he'd realized, to
produce a miracle such as this--but it was science. He must hold to
that, otherwise ...
He saw his case begin to melt out from under him, and he made one more
effort to regain some measure of control. He gave his own pilot orders
to land on the surface of Eden. He transmitted orders to the other two
police ships to follow in close formation; the three of them to land and
take custody.
But the barrier still remained, and the ships could not penetrate it.
He told himself that all wasn't lost. Maybe the E was back in control of
Eden, but he, Gunderson, still had a morals case. All those photographs!
Some of the press and commentators might desert him, now that the Junior
had proved adequate to the job. Unless he chose carefully, some stupid
judge might decide the means were justified by the end result. But there
were those photographs, and the world was full of Mrs. Grundy. He might
have to back up a little bit on the incompetence of the Junior E, but
Mrs. Grundy would be behind him a hundred per cent on the morals
issue--when he released some of the photographs, and titillated her
nasty imagination by reference to others too indecent to release.
It was then that the observer ship got a call through to him, and told
him that the photographs, every one of them, had disappeared from the
ship's vault where they had been locked, and the only thing remaining in
the vault was one little slip of paper which read, "Shame on you for
taking feelthy pictures. Naughty, naughty! Calvin Gray."
The case was crumbling, but all was not lost. He still had witnesses. He
thought for a minute and began to wonder about those witnesses. Any
judge, anybody around the courts, anybody connected with the press, and
maybe even some of the public knew that any police officer will swear to
any lie to back up another police officer because he might need the
favor returned tomorrow.
Without concrete evidence ...
He suddenly found himself standing in the cabin of the E ship,
confronted by E McGinnis, Junior E Gray, and Mrs. Gray. He sank down in
a chair and sat frozen, immobile. Only his eyes were alive, darting
frantically here and there as if expecting some hole to open up and
swallow him--perhaps wishing one would.
"I don't know just what to do with you," Cal said a little sadly,
ruefully. "Far as the E's are concerned, you've only been a minor
nuisance, hardly worth noticing, but your intentions were dangerous. As
far back as man's history goes the growth of police powers immediately
preceded and caused the fall and destruction of each culture.
"It is a law of the nature of man that he will resist the ascendancy of
any special me-and-mine group over him; that this resistance will grow
until man will even destroy himself in the attempt to destroy that
ascendancy. In more recent history it was the growth, extension, and
severity of the police in controlling every activity of man that
destroyed both the United States and Russia.
"Now you are attempting to rebuild that same police control in world
government. The result will be the same. Man will destroy himself in
trying to destroy you.
"We in E don't want that to happen. We see no need of it. We have
already warned that the attitude of the police toward the public is the
major cause of crime, that crime will increase with each increase of
police power and severity until the whole structure rots and crumbles.