He leaned back and relaxed again while they were getting over the
excitement. Foxx Travis looked at him apprehensively.
"Rushing things, aren't you? What are you going to tell them?"
"Oh, a big pack of lies, I suppose," Edith Shaw said scornfully.
Behind her and Travis, the native noncom interpreter was muttering
something in his own language that translated roughly as: "This better
be good!"
The shoonoon had quieted, now, and were waiting breathlessly.
"But if the Oomphel Secret is given, what will become of the shoonoon?"
he asked. "You, yourselves, say that we Terrans have no need for magic,
because the oomphel works magic for us. This is real. If the People get
the Oomphel Secret, how much need will they have for you shoonoon?"
Evidently that hadn't occurred to them before. There was a brief flurry
of whispered--whooshed, rather--conversation, and then they were silent
again. The eldest shoonoo said:
"We trust you, Mailsh Heelbare. You will do what is best for the People,
and you will not let us be thrown out like broken pots, either."
"No, I will not," he promised. "The Oomphel Secret will be given to you
shoonoon." He thought for a moment of Foxx Travis' joking remark about
the Kwannon Thaumaturgical Society. "You have been jealous of one
another, each keeping his own secrets," he said. "This must be put away.
You will all receive the Oomphel Secret equally, for the good of all the
People. You must all swear brotherhood, one with another, and later if
any other shoonoo comes to you for the secret, you must swear
brotherhood with him and teach it to him. Do you agree to this?"
The eldest shoonoo rose to his feet, begged leave, and then led the
others to the rear of the room, where they went into a huddle. They
didn't stay huddled long; inside of ten minutes they came back and took
their seats.
"We are agreed, Mailsh Heelbare," the spokesman said.
Edith Shaw was impressed, more than by anything else she had seen.
"Well, that was a quick decision!" she whispered.
"You have done well, Grandfathers. You will not be thrown out by the
People like broken pots; you will be greater among them than ever. I
will show you how this will be.
"But first, I must speak around the Oomphel Secret." He groped briefly
for a comprehensible analogy, and thought of a native vegetable, layered
like an onion, with a hard kernel in the middle. "The Oomphel Secret is
like a fooshkoot. There are many lesser secrets around it, each of which
must be peeled off like the skins of a fooshkoot and eaten. Then you
will find the nut in the middle."
"But the nut of the fooshkoot is bitter," somebody said.
He nodded, slowly and solemnly. "The nut of the fooshkoot is bitter," he
agreed.
They looked at one another, disquieted by his words. Before anybody
could comment, he was continuing:
"Before this secret is given, there are things to be learned. You would
not understand it if I gave it to you now. You believe many not-real
things which must be chased out of your minds, otherwise they would
spoil your understanding."
That was verbatim what they told adolescents before giving them the
Manhood Secret. Some of them huffed a little; most of them laughed. Then
one called out: "Speak on, Grandfather of Grandfathers," and they all
laughed. That was fine, it had been about time for teacher to crack his
little joke. Now he became serious again.
"The first of these not-real things you must chase from your mind is
this which you believe about the home of the Terrans. It is not real
that they come from the Dark Place under the World. There is no Dark
Place under the World."
Bedlam for a few seconds; that was a pretty stiff jolt. No Dark Place;
who ever heard of such a thing? The eldest shoonoo rose, cradling his
graven image in his arms, and the noise quieted.
"Mailsh Heelbare, if there is no Dark Place where do the Sky Fire and
the Always-Same go when they are not in the sky?"
"They never leave the sky; the World is round, and there is sky
everywhere around it."
They knew that, or had at least heard it, since the Terrans had come.
They just couldn't believe it. It was against common sense. The oldest
shoonoo said as much, and more:
"These young ones who have gone to the Terran schools have come to the
villages with such tales, but who listens to them? They show disrespect
for the chiefs and the elders, and even for the shoonoon. They mock at
the Grandfather-stories. They say men should do women's work and women
do no work at all. They break taboos, and cause trouble. They are
fools."
"Am I a fool, Grandfather? Do I mock at the old stories, or show
disrespect to elders and shoonoon? Yet I, Mailsh Heelbare, tell you
this. The World is indeed round, and I will show you."
The shoonoo looked contemptuously at the globe. "I have seen those
things," he said. "That is not the World; that is only a make-like." He
held up his phallic wood-carving. "I could say that this is a make-like
of the World, but that would not make it so."
"I will show you for real. We will all go in a ship." He looked at his
watch. "The Sky Fire is about to set. We will follow it all around the
world to the west, and come back here from the east, and the Sky Fire
will still be setting when we return. If I show you that, will you
believe me?"
"If you show us for real, and it is not a trick, we will have to believe
you."
When they emerged from the escalators, Alpha was just touching the
western horizon, and Beta was a little past zenith. The ship was moored
on contragravity beside the landing stage, her gangplank run out. The
shoonoon, who had gone up ahead, had all stopped short and were staring
at her; then they began gabbling among themselves, overcome by the
wonder of being about to board such a monster and ride on her. She was
the biggest ship any of them had ever seen. Maybe a few of them had been
on small freighters; many of them had never been off the ground. They
didn't look or act like cynical charlatans or implacable enemies of
progress and enlightenment. They were more like a lot of schoolboys
whose teacher is taking them on a surprise outing.
"Bet this'll be the biggest day in their lives," Travis said.
"Oh, sure. This'll be a grandfather-story ten generations from now."
"I can't get over the way they made up their minds, down there," Edith
Shaw was saying. "Why, they just went and talked for a few minutes and
came back with a decision."
They hadn't any organization, or any place to maintain on an
organizational pecking-order. Nobody was obliged to attack anybody
else's proposition in order to keep up his own status. He thought of the
Colonial Government taking ten years not to build those storm-shelters.
Foxx Travis was commenting on the ship, now:
"I never saw that ship before; didn't know there was anything like that
on the planet. Why, you could lift a whole regiment, with supplies and
equipment--"
"She's been laid up for the last five years, since the heat and the
native troubles stopped the tourist business here. She's the old
_Hesperus_. Excursion craft. This sun-chasing trip we're going to make
used to be a must for tourists here."
"I thought she was something like that, with all the glassed
observation deck forward. Who's the owner?"
"Kwannon Air Transport, Ltd. I told them what I needed her for, and they
made her available and furnished officers and crew and provisions for
the trip. They were working to put her in commission while we were
fitting up the fourth and fifth floors, downstairs."
"You just asked for that ship, and they just let you have it?" Edith
Shaw was incredulous and shocked. They wouldn't have done that for the
Government.
"They want to see these native troubles stopped, too. Bad for business.
You know; selfish profit-move. That's another social force it's a good
idea to work with instead of against."
The shoonoon were getting aboard, now, shepherded by the K.N.I. officer
and a couple of his men and some of the ship's crew. A couple of sepoys
were lugging the big globe that had been brought up from below after
them. Everybody assembled on the forward top observation deck, and Miles
called for attention and, finally, got it. He pointed out the three
viewscreens mounted below the bridge, amidships. One on the left, was
tuned to a pickup on the top of the Air Terminal tower, where the Terran
city, the military reservation and the spaceport met. It showed the view
to the west, with Alpha on the horizon. The one on the right, from the
same point, gave a view in the opposite direction, to the east. The
middle screen presented a magnified view of the navigational globe on
the bridge.
Viewscreens were no novelty to the shoonoon. They were a very familiar
type of oomphel. He didn't even need to do more than tell them that the
little spot of light on the globe would show the position of the ship.
When he was sure that they understood that they could see what was
happening in Bluelake while they were away, he called the bridge and
ordered Up Ship, telling the officer on duty to hold her at five
thousand feet.
The ship rose slowly, turning toward the setting M-giant. Somebody
called attention that the views in the screens weren't changing.
Somebody else said:
"Of course not. What we see for real changes because the ship is moving.
What we see in the screens is what the oomphel on the big building sees,
and it does not move. That is for real as the oomphel sees it."
"Nice going," Edith said. "Your class has just discovered relativity."
Travis was looking at the eastward viewscreen. He stepped over beside
Miles and lowered his voice.
"Trouble over there to the east of town. Big swarm of combat
contragravity working on something on the ground. And something's on
fire, too."
"I see it."
"That's where those evacuees are camped. Why in blazes they had to bring
them here to Bluelake--"
That had been EETA, too. When the solar tides had gotten high enough to
flood the coastal area, the natives who had been evacuated from the
district had been brought here because the Native Education people
wanted them exposed to urban influences. About half of the shoonoon who
had been rounded up locally had come in from the tide-inundated area.
"Parked right in the middle of the Terran-type food production area,"
Travis was continuing.
That was worrying him. Maybe he wasn't used to planets where the
biochemistry wasn't Terra-type and a Terran would be poisoned or, at
best, starve to death, on the local food; maybe, as a soldier he knew
how fragile even the best logistics system can be. It was something to
worry about. Travis excused himself and went off in the direction of the
bridge. Going to call HQ and find out what was happening.
Excitement among the shoonoon; they had spotted the ship on which they
were riding in the westward screen. They watched it until it had
vanished from "sight of the seeing-oomphel," and by then were over the
upland forests from whence they had been brought to Bluelake. Now and
then one of them would identify his own village, and that would start
more excitement.
Three infantry troop-carriers and a squadron of air cavalry were rushing
past the eastward pickup in the right hand screen; another fire had
started in the trouble area.
The crowd that had gathered around the globe that had been brought
aboard began calling for Mailsh Heelbare to show them how they would go
around the world and what countries they would pass over. Edith
accompanied him and listened while he talked to them. She was bubbling
with happy excitement, now. It had just dawned on her that shoonoon were
fun.
None of them had ever seen the mountains along the western side of the
continent except from a great distance. Now they were passing over them;
the ship had to gain altitude and even then make a detour around one
snow-capped peak. The whole hundred and eighty-four rushed to the
starboard side to watch it as they passed. The ocean, half an hour
later, started a rush forward. The score or so of them from the
Tidewater knew what an ocean was, but none of them had known that there
was another one to the west. Miles' view of the education program of the
EETA, never bright at best, became even dimmer. _The young men who have
gone to the Terran schools ... who listens to them? They are fools._
There were a few islands off the coast; the shoonoon identified them on
the screen globe, and on the one on deck. Some of them wanted to know
why there wasn't a spot of light on this globe, too. It didn't have the
oomphel inside to do that; that was a satisfactory explanation. Edith
started to explain about the orbital beacon-stations off-planet and the
radio beams, and then stopped.
"I'm sorry; I'm not supposed to say anything to them," she apologized.
"Oh, that's all right. I wouldn't go into all that, though. We don't
want to overload them."
She asked permission, a little later, to explain why the triangle tip
of the arctic continent, which had begun to edge into sight on the
screen globe, couldn't be seen from the ship. When he told her to go
ahead, she got a platinum half-sol piece from her purse, held it on the
globe from the classroom and explained about the curvature and told them
they could see nothing farther away than the circle the coin covered. It
was beginning to look as though the psychological-warfare experiment
might show another, unexpected, success.
[Illustration]
There was nothing, after the islands passed, but a lot of empty water.
The shoonoon were getting hungry, but they refused to go below to eat.
They were afraid they might miss something. So their dinner was brought
up on deck for them. Miles and Travis and Edith went to the officers'
dining room back of the bridge. Edith, by now, was even more excited
than the shoonoon.
"They're so anxious to learn!" She was having trouble adjusting to that;
that was dead against EETA doctrine. "But why wouldn't they listen to
the teachers we sent to the villages?"
"You heard old Shatresh--the fellow with the pornographic sculpture and
the yellow robe. These young twerps act like fools, and sensible people
don't pay any attention to fools. What's more, they've been sent out
indoctrinated with the idea that shoonoon are a lot of lying old fakes,
and the shoonoon resent that. You know, they're not lying old fakes.
Within their limitations, they are honest and ethical professional
people."
"Oh, come, now! I know, I think they're sort of wonderful, but let's
don't give them too much credit."
"I'm not. You're doing that."
"_Huh?_" She looked at him in amazement. "Me?"
"Yes, you. You know better than to believe in magic, so you expect them
to know better, too. Well, they don't. You know that under the
macroscopic world-of-the senses there exists a complex of biological,
chemical and physical phenomena down to the subnucleonic level. They
realize that there must be something beyond what they can see and
handle, but they think it's magic. Well, as a race, so did we until only
a few centuries pre-atomic. These people are still lower Neolithic, a
hunting people who have just learned agriculture. Where we were twenty
thousand years ago.
"You think any glib-talking Kwann can hang a lot of rags, bones and old
iron onto himself, go through some impromptu mummery, and set up as
shoonoo? Well, he can't. The shoonoon are a hereditary caste. A shoonoo
father will begin teaching his son as soon as he can walk and talk, and
he keeps on teaching him till he's the age-equivalent of a graduate M.D.
or a science Ph. D."
"Well, what all is there to learn--?"
"The theoretical basis and practical applications of sympathetic magic.
Action-at-a-distance by one object upon another. Homeopathic magic: the
principle that things which resemble one another will interact. For
instance, there's an animal the natives call a shynph. It has an
excrescence of horn on its brow like an arrowhead, and it arches its
back like a bow when it jumps. Therefore, a shynph is equal to a bow and
arrow, and for that reason the Kwanns made their bowstrings out of
shynph-gut. Now they use tensilon because it won't break as easily or
get wet and stretch. So they have to turn the tensilon into shynph-gut.
They used to do that by drawing a picture of a shynph on the spool, and
then the traders began labeling the spools with pictures of shynph. I
think my father was one of the first to do that.
"Then, there's contagious magic. Anything that's been part of anything
else or come in contact with it will interact permanently with it. I
wish I had a sol for every time I've seen a Kwann pull the wad out of a
shot-shell, pick up a pinch of dirt from the footprint of some animal
he's tracking, put it in among the buckshot, and then crimp the wad in
again.
"Everything a Kwann does has some sort of magical implications. It's
the shoonoo's business to know all this; to be able to tell just what
magical influences have to be produced, and what influences must be
avoided. And there are circumstances in which magic simply will not
work, even in theory. The reason is that there is some powerful
counter-influence at work. He has to know when he can't use magic, and
he has to be able to explain why. And when he's theoretically able to do
something by magic, he has to have a plausible explanation why it won't
produce results--just as any highly civilized and ethical Terran M.D.
has to be able to explain his failures to the satisfaction of his late
patient's relatives. Only a shoonoo doesn't get sued for malpractice; he
gets a spear stuck in him. Under those circumstances, a caste of
hereditary magicians is literally bred for quick thinking. These old
gaffers we have aboard are the intellectual top crust among the natives.
Any of them can think rings around your Government school products. As
for preying on the ignorance and credulity of the other natives, they're
only infinitesimally less ignorant and credulous themselves. But they
want to learn--from anybody who can gain their respect by respecting
them."
Edith Shaw didn't say anything in reply. She was thoughtful during the
rest of the meal, and when they were back on the observation deck he
noticed that she seemed to be looking at the shoonoon with new eyes.
In the screen-views of Bluelake, Beta had already set, and the sky was
fading; stars had begun to twinkle. There were more fires--one, close to
the city in the east, a regular conflagration--and fighting had broken
out in the native city itself. He was wishing now, that he hadn't
thought it necessary to use those screens. The shoonoon were noticing
what was going on in them, and talking among themselves. Travis, after
one look at the situation, hurried back to the bridge to make a
screen-call. After a while, he returned, almost crackling with
suppressed excitement.
"Well, it's finally happened! Maith's forced Kovac to declare martial
rule!" he said in an exultant undertone.
"Forced him?" Edith was puzzled. "The Army can't force the Civil
Government--"
"He threatened to do it himself. Intervene and suspend civil rule."
"But I thought only the Navy could do that."
"Any planetary commander of Armed Forces can, in a state of extreme
emergency. I think you'll both agree that this emergency is about as
extreme as they come. Kovac knew that Maith was unwilling to do it--he'd
have to stand court-martial to justify his action--but he also knew that
a governor general who has his Colony taken away from him by the Armed
Forces never gets it back; he's finished. So it was just a case of the
weaker man in the weaker position yielding."
"Where does this put us?"
"We are a civilian scientific project. You are under orders of General
Maith. I am under your orders. I don't know about Edith."
"Can I draft her, or do I have to get you to get General Maith to do
it?"
"Listen, don't do that," Edith protested. "I still have to work for
Government House, and this martial rule won't last forever. They'll all
be prejudiced against me--"
"You can shove your Government job on the air lock," Miles told her.
"You'll have a better one with Planetwide News, at half again as much
pay. And after the shakeup at Government House, about a year from now,
you may be going back as director of EETA. When they find out on Terra
just how badly this Government has been mismanaging things there'll be a
lot of vacancies."
The shoonoon had been watching the fighting in the viewscreens. Then
somebody noticed that the spot of light on the navigational globe was
approaching a coastline, and they all rushed forward for a look.
Travis and Edith slept for a while; when they returned to relieve him,
Alpha was rising to the east of Bluelake, and the fighting in the city
was still going on. The shoonoon were still wakeful and interested;
Kwanns could go without sleep for much longer periods than Terrans. The
lack of any fixed cycle of daylight and darkness on their planet had
left them unconditioned to any regular sleeping-and-waking rhythm.
"I just called in," Travis said. "Things aren't good, at all. Most of
the natives in the evacuee cantonments have gotten into the native city,
now, and they've gotten hold of a lot of firearms somehow. And they're
getting nasty in the west, beyond where Gonzales is occupying, and in
the northeast, and we only have about half enough troops to cope with
everything. The general wants to know how you're making out with the
shoonoon."
"I'll call him before I get in the sack."
He went up on the bridge and made the call. General Maith looked as
sleepy as he felt; they both yawned as they greeted each other. There
wasn't much he could tell the general, and it sounded like the glib
reassurances one gets from a hospital about a friend's condition.
"We'll check in with you as soon as we get back and get our shoonoon put
away. We understand what's motivating these frenzies, now, and in about
twenty-five to thirty hours we'll be able to start doing something about
it."
The general, in the screen, grimaced.
"That's a long time, Mr. Gilbert. Longer than we can afford to take, I'm
afraid. You're not cruising at full speed now, are you?"
"Oh, no, general. We're just trying to keep Alpha level on the horizon."
He thought for a moment. "We don't need to keep down to that. It may
make an even bigger impression if we speed up."
He went back to the observation deck, picked up the PA-phone, and called
for attention.
"You have seen, now, that we can travel around the world, so fast that
we keep up with the Sky Fire and it is not seen to set. Now we will
travel even faster, and I will show you a new wonder. I will show you
the Sky Fire rising in the west; it and the Always-Same will seem to go
backward in the sky. This will not be for real; it will only be seen so
because we will be traveling faster. Watch, now, and see." He called the
bridge for full speed, and then told them to look at the Sky-Fire and
then see in the screens where it stood over Bluelake.
That was even better; now they were racing with the Sky-Fire and
catching up to it. After half an hour he left them still excited and
whooping gleefully over the steady gain. Five hours later, when he came
back after a nap and a hasty breakfast, they were still whooping. Edith
Shaw was excited, too; the shoonoon were trying to estimate how soon
they would be back to Bluelake by comparing the position of the Sky Fire
with its position in the screen.
General Maith received them in his private office at Army HQ; Foxx
Travis mixed drinks for the four of them while the general checked the
microphones to make sure they had privacy.
"I blame myself for not having forced martial rule on them hundreds of
hours ago," he said. "I have three brigades; the one General Gonzales
had here originally, and the two I brought with me when I took over
here. We have to keep at least half a brigade in the south, to keep the
tribes there from starting any more forest fires. I can't hold Bluelake
with anything less than half a brigade. Gonzales has his hands full in
his area. He had a nasty business while you were off on that world
cruise--natives in one village caught the men stationed there off guard
and wiped them out, and then started another frenzy. It spread to two
other villages before he got it stopped. And we need the Third Brigade
in the northeast; there are three quarters of a million natives up
there, inhabiting close to a million square miles. And if anything
really breaks loose here, and what's been going on in the last few days
is nothing even approaching what a real outbreak could be like, we'll
have to pull in troops from everywhere. We must save the Terran-type
crops and the carniculture plants. If we don't, we all starve."
Miles nodded. There wasn't anything he could think of saying to that.
"How soon can you begin to show results with those shoonoon, Mr.
Gilbert?" the general asked. "You said from twenty-five to thirty hours.
Can you cut that any? In twenty-five hours, all hell could be loose all
over the continent."
Miles shook his head. "So far, I haven't accomplished anything
positive," he said. "All I did with this trip around the world was
convince them that I was telling the truth when I told them there was no
Dark Place under the World, where Alpha and Beta go at night." He
hastened, as the general began swearing, to add: "I know, that doesn't
sound like much. But it was necessary. I have to convince them that
there will be no Last Hot Time, and then--"
The shoonoon, on their drum-shaped cushions, stared at him in silence,
aghast. All the happiness over the wonderful trip in the ship, when they
had chased the Sky Fire around the World and caught it over Bluelake,
and even their pleasure in the frozen delicacies they had just eaten,
was gone.
_"No--Last--Hot--Time?"_
"Mailsh Heelbare, this is not real! It cannot be!"
"The Gone Ones--"
"The Always-Cool Time, when there will be no more hunger or hard work or
death; it cannot be real that this will never come!"
He rose, holding up his hands; his action stopped the clamor.
"Why should the Gone Ones want to return to this poor world that they
have gladly left?" he asked. "Have they not a better place in the middle
of the Sky Fire, where it is always cool? And why should you want them
to come back to this world? Will not each one of you pass, sooner or
later, to the middle of the Sky Fire; will you not there be given new
bodies and join the Gone Ones? There is the Always-Cool; there the crops
grow without planting and without the work of women; there the game come
into the villages to be killed in the gathering-places, without hunting.
There you will talk with the other Gone Ones, your fathers and your
fathers' fathers, as I talk with you. Why do you think this must come to
the World of People? Can you not wait to join the Gone Ones in the Sky
Fire?"
Then he sat down and folded his arms. They were looking at him in
amazement; evidently they all saw the logic, but none of them had ever
thought of it before. Now they would have to turn it over in their minds
and accustom themselves to the new viewpoint. They began whooshing among
themselves. At length, old Shatresh, who had seen the Hot Time before,
spoke:
"Mailsh Heelbare, we trust you," he said. "You have told us of wonders,
and you have shown us that they were real. But do you know this for
real?"
"Do you tell me that you do not?" he demanded in surprise. "You have had
fathers, and fathers' fathers. They have gone to join the Gone Ones. Why
should you not, also? And why should the Gone Ones come back and destroy
the World of People? Then your children will have no more children, and
your children's children will never be. It is in the World of People
that the People are born; it is in the World that they grow and gain
wisdom to fit themselves to live in the Place of the Gone Ones when they
are through with the bodies they use in the World. You should be happy
that there will be no Last Hot Time, and that the line of your
begettings will go on and not be cut short."
There were murmurs of agreement with this. Most of them were beginning
to be relieved that there wouldn't be a Last Hot Time, after all. Then
one of the class asked:
"Do the Terrans also go to the Place of the Gone Ones, or have they a
place of their own?"
He was silent for a long time, looking down at the floor. Then he raised
his head.
"I had hoped that I would not have to speak of this," he said. "But,
since you have asked, it is right that I should tell you." He hesitated
again, until the Kwanns in front of him had begun to fidget. Then he
asked old Shatresh: "Speak of the beliefs of the People about how the
World was made."
"The great Spirit made the world." He held up his carven obscenity. "He
made the World out of himself. This is a make-like to show it."
"The Great Spirit made many worlds. The stars which you see in dark-time
are all worlds, each with many smaller worlds around it. The Great
Spirit made them all at one time, and made people on many of them. The
Great Spirit made the World of People, and made the Always-Same and the
Sky Fire, and inside the Sky Fire he made the Place of the Gone Ones.
And when he made the Place of the Gone Ones, he put an Oomphel-Mother
inside it, to bring forth oomphel."
This created a brief sensation. An Oomphel-Mother was something they had
never thought of before, but now they were wondering why they hadn't. Of
course there'd be an Oomphel-Mother; how else would there be oomphel?
"The World of the Terrans is far away from the World of People, as we
have always told you. When the Great Spirit made it He gave it only an
Always-Same, and no Sky Fire. Since there was no Sky Fire, there was no
place to put a Place of the Gone Ones, so the Great Spirit made the
Terrans so that they would not die, but live forever in their own
bodies. The Oomphel-Mother for the World of the Terrans the Great Spirit
hid in a cave under a great mountain.
"The Terrans whom the Great Spirit made lived for a long time, and then,
one day, a man and a woman found a crack in a rock, and went inside, and
they found the cave of the Oomphel-Mother, and the Oomphel-Mother in it.
So they called all the other Terrans, and they brought the
Oomphel-Mother out, and the Oomphel-Mother began to bring forth Oomphel.
The Oomphel-Mother brought forth metal, and cloth, and glass, and
plastic; knives, and axes and guns and clothing--" He went on,
cataloguing the products of human technology, the shoonoon staring more
and more wide-eyed at him. "And oomphel to make oomphel, and oomphel to
teach wisdom," he finished. "They became very wise and very rich.
"Then the Great Spirit saw what the Terrans had done, and became angry,
for it was not meant for the Terrans to do this, and the Great Spirit
cursed the Terrans with a curse of death. It was not death as you know
it. Because the Terrans had sinned by laying hands on the
Oomphel-Mother, not only their bodies must die, but their spirits also.
A Terran has a short life in the body, after that no life."
"This, then, is the Oomphel Secret. The last skin of the fooshkoot has
been peeled away; behold the bitter nut, upon which we Terrans have
chewed for more time than anybody can count. Happy people! When you die
or are slain, you go to the Place of the Gone Ones, to join your fathers
and your fathers' fathers and to await your children and children's
children. When we die or are slain, that is the end of us."
[Illustration]
"But you have brought your oomphel into this world; have you not brought
the curse with it?" somebody asked, frightened.
"No. The People did not sin against the Great Spirit; they have not laid
hands on an Oomphel-Mother as we did. The oomphel we bring you will do
no harm; do you think we would be so wicked as to bring the curse upon
you? It will be good for you to learn about oomphel here; in your Place
of the Gone Ones there is much oomphel."
"Why did your people come to this world, Mailsh Heelbare?" old Shatresh
asked. "Was it to try to hide from the curse?"
"There is no hiding from the curse of the Great Spirit, but we Terrans
are not a people who submit without strife to any fate. From the time of
the Curse of Death on, we have been trying to make spirits for
ourselves."
"But how can you do that?"
"We do not know. The oomphel will not teach us that, though it teaches
everything else. We have only learned many ways in which it cannot be
done. It cannot be done with oomphel, or with anything that is in our
own world. But the Oomphel-Mother made us ships to go to other worlds,
and we have gone to many of them, this one among them, seeking things
from which we try to make spirits. We are trying to make spirits for
ourselves from the crystals that grow in the klooba plants; we may fail
with them, too. But I say this; I may die, and all the other Terrans now
living may die, and be as though they had never been, but someday we
will not fail. Someday our children, or our children's children, will
make spirits for themselves and live forever, as you do."
[Illustration]
"Why were we not told this before, Mailsh Heelbare?"
"We were ashamed to have you know it. We are ashamed to be people
without spirits."
"Can we help you and your people? Maybe our magic might help."
"It well might. It would be worth trying. But first, you must help
yourselves. You and your people are sinning against the Great Spirit as
grievously as did the Terrans of old. Be warned in time, lest you answer
it as grievously."
"What do you mean, Mailsh Heelbare?" Old Shatresh was frightened.
"You are making magic to bring the Sky Fire to the World. Do you know
what will happen? The World of People will pass whole into the place of
the Gone Ones, and both will be destroyed. The World of People is a
world of death; everything that lives on it must die. The Place of the
Gone Ones is a world of life; everything in it lives forever. The two
will strive against each other, and will destroy one another, and there
will be nothing in the Sky Fire or the World but fire. This is wisdom
which our oomphel teaches us. We know this secret, and with it we make
weapons of great destruction." He looked over the seated shoonoon,
picking out those who wore the flame-colored cloaks of the fire-dance.
"You--and you--and you," he said. "You have been making this dreadful
magic, and leading your people in it. And which among the rest of you
have not been guilty?"
"We did not know," one of them said. "Mailsh Heelbare, have we yet time
to keep this from happening?"
"Yes. There is only a little time, but there is time. You have until
the Always-Same passes across the face of the Sky-Fire." That would be
seven hundred and fifty hours. "If this happens, all is safe. If the Sky
Fire blots Out the Always Same, we are all lost together. You must go
among your people and tell them what madness they are doing, and command
them to stop. You must command them to lay down their arms and cease
fighting. And you must tell them of the awful curse that was put upon
the Terrans in the long-ago time, for a lesser sin than they are now
committing."
"If we say that Mailsh Heelbare told us this, the people may not believe
us. He is not known to all, and some would take no Terran's word, not
even his."
"Would anybody tell a secret of this sort, about his own people, if it
were not real?"
"We had better say nothing about Mailsh Heelbare. We will say that the
Gone Ones told us in dreams."
"Let us say that the Great Spirit sent a dream of warning to each of
us," another shoonoo said. "There has been too much talk about dreams
from the Gone Ones already."
"But the Great Spirit has never sent a dream--"
"Nothing like this has ever happened before, either."
He rose, and they were silent. "Go to your living-place, now," he told
them. "Talk of how best you may warn your people." He pointed to the
clock. "You have an oomphel like that in your living-place; when the
shorter spear has moved three places, I will speak with you again, and
then you will be sent in air cars to your people to speak to them."
They went up the escalator and down the hall to Miles' office on the
third floor without talking. Foxx Travis was singing softly, almost
inaudibly:
_"You will eeeeat ... in the sweeeet ... bye-and-bye,
You'll get oooom ... phel in the sky ... when you die!"_
Inside, Edith Shaw slumped dispiritedly in a chair. Foxx Travis went to
the coffee-maker and started it. Miles snapped on the communication
screen and punched the combination of General Maith's headquarters. As
soon as the uniformed girl who appeared in it saw him, her hands moved
quickly; the screen flickered, and the general appeared in it.
"We have it made, general. They're sold; we're ready to start them out
in three hours."
Maith's thin, weary face suddenly lighted. "You mean they are going to
co-operate?"
He shook his head. "They think they're saving the world; they think
we're co-operating with them."
The general laughed. "That's even better! How do you want them sent
out?"
"The ones in the Bluelake area first. Better have some picked K.N.I. in
native costume, with pistols, to go with them. They'll need protection,
till they're able to get a hearing for themselves. After they're all
out, the ones from Gonzales' area can be started." He thought for a
moment. "I'll want four or five of them left here to help me when you
start bringing more shoonoon in from other areas. How soon do you think
you'll have another class for me?"
"Two or three days, if everything goes all right. We have the villages
and plantations in the south under pretty tight control now; we can
start gathering them up right away. As soon as we get things stabilized
here, we can send reinforcements to the north. We'll have transport for
you in three hours."
The general blanked out. He turned from the screen. Travis was laughing
happily.
"Miles, did anybody ever tell you you were a genius?" he asked. "That
last jolt you gave them was perfect. Why didn't you tell us about it in
advance?"
"I didn't know about it in advance; I didn't think of it till I'd
started talking to them. No cream or sugar for me."
"Cream," Edith said, lifelessly. "Why did you do it? Why didn't you just
tell them the truth?"
Travis asked her to define the term. She started to say something bitter
about Jesting Pilate. Miles interrupted.
"In spite of Lord Beacon, Pilate wasn't jesting," he said. "And he
didn't stay for an answer because he knew he'd die of old age waiting
for one. What kind of truth should I have told them?"
"Why, what you started to tell them. That Beta moves in a fixed orbit
and can't get any closer to Alpha--"
"There's been some work done on the question since Pilate's time,"
Travis said. "My semantics prof at Command College had the start of an
answer. He defined truth as a statement having a practical
correspondence with reality on the physical levels of structure and
observation and the verbal order of abstraction under consideration."
"He defined truth as a statement. A statement exists only in the mind of
the person making it, and the mind of the person to whom it is made. If
the person to whom it is made can't understand or accept it, it isn't
the truth."
"They understood when you showed them that the planet is round, and they
understood that tri-dimensional model of the system. Why didn't you let
it go at that?"
"They accepted it intellectually. But when I told them that there wasn't
any chance of Kwannon getting any closer to Alpha, they rebelled
emotionally. It doesn't matter how conclusively you prove anything, if
the person to whom you prove it can't accept your proof emotionally,
it's still false. Not-real."
"They had all their emotional capital invested in this Always-Cool
Time," Travis told her. "They couldn't let Miles wipe that out for them.
So he shifted it from this world to the next, and convinced them that
they were getting a better deal that way. You saw how quickly they
picked it up. And he didn't have the sin of telling children there is no
Easter Bunny on his conscience, either."
"But why did you tell them that story about the Oomphel Mother?" she
insisted. "Now they'll go out and tell all the other natives, and
they'll believe it."
"Would they have believed it if I'd told them about Terran scientific
technology? Your people have been doing that for close to half a
century. You see what impression it's made."
"But you told them--You told them that Terrans have no souls!"
"Can you prove that was a lie?" Travis asked. "Let's see yours.
Draw--_soul_! Inspection--_soul_!"
Naturally. Foxx Travis would expect a soul to be carried in a holster.
"But they'll look down on us, now. They'll say we're just like animals,"
Edith almost wailed.
"Now it comes out," Travis said. "We won't be the lordly Terrans, any
more, helping the poor benighted Kwanns out of the goodness of our
hearts, scattering largess, bearing the Terran's Burden--new model, a
give-away instead of a gun. Now _they'll_ pity _us_; they'll think
_we're_ inferior beings."
"I don't think the natives are inferior beings!" She was almost in
tears.
"If you don't, why did you come all the way to Kwannon to try to make
them more like Terrans?"
"Knock it off, Foxx; stop heckling her." Travis looked faintly
surprised. Maybe he hadn't realized, before, that a boss newsman learns
to talk like a commanding officer. "You remember what Ramón Gonzales was
saying, out at Sanders', about the inferior's hatred for the superior as
superior? It's no wonder these Kwanns resent us. They have a right to;
we've done them all an unforgivable injury. We've let them see us doing
things they can't do. Of course they resent us. But now I've given them
something to feel superior about. When they die, they'll go to the Place
of the Gone Ones, and have oomphel in the sky, and they will live
forever in new bodies, but when we die, we just die, period. So they'll
pity us and politely try to hide their condescension toward us.
"And because they feel superior to us, they'll want to help us. They'll
work hard on the plantations, so that we can have plenty of biocrystals,
and their shoonoon will work magic for us, to help us poor benighted
Terrans to grow souls for ourselves, so that we can almost be like them.
Of course, they'll have a chance to exploit us, and get oomphel from us,
too, but the important thing will be to help the poor Terrans. Maybe
they'll even organize a Spiritual and Magical Assistance Agency."