There was dead silence. Templin could smell the piny scent of the woods
and feel the warmth of soft sunlight that lanced through the blinds.
Some place far away, there was the faint chatter of kids at play, but
outside of that it was quiet.
Too quiet.
Templin opened his eyes in sudden alarm. "Ted! Don't!" He caught the
gas full in the face and tumbled back on the bed, unconscious.
* * * * *
Eckert opened the hatch to the observation cabin as quietly as he
could. Templin was seated on one of the pneumatic couches, staring
soberly at a small yellow star in the black sky. He didn't look up.
"It's me, Ray," Eckert said.
Templin didn't move.
"I suppose I owe you an apology," Eckert began, "but I had to gas you
to get you to leave. Otherwise you wouldn't have left. And the same
thing would have happened to you that happened to Don Pendleton."
"You're sure of that?" Templin asked bitterly.
"Reasonably. You're a lot like Pendleton, you know. In fact, that's
why you were selected to go--not so much because you knew him as the
fact that psychologically you were a lot like him. We thought that by
studying your response to situations there, we would have a picture of
what Pendleton's must have been."
Templin didn't want to talk about it, Eckert realized, but it had to be
explained to him.
"Do you want to know why Pendleton killed himself?"
Templin shrugged listlessly.
"I suppose we should have seen it right away," Eckert continued.
"Any race that is so happy with their way of life that they show no
curiosity about strangers, the way they live, or what possessions they
have, must have something to be happy about. Tunpesh is something that
might happen only once in a thousand civilizations, maybe less, Ray.
"The environment is perfection and so are the people, or at least as
near to perfection as it's possible to get. An intelligent people who
have as much technology as they desire, living simply with themselves
and each other. A fluke of nature, perhaps. No criminals, no insane,
no neurotics. A perfect cultural pattern. Tunpesh is a paradise. You
didn't want to leave, neither did I, and neither did Pendleton."
Templin turned on him. "So it was paradise. Would it have been criminal
if I had stayed there? Who would it have hurt?"
"It would have hurt you," Eckert said gravely. "Because the Tunpeshans
would never have accepted you. We're too different, Ray. We're too
aggressive, too pushy, too persistent. We're not--perfect. You see, no
matter how long we stayed there, we would never have fit in. We lived
in a harsh society and we bear the scars of it. Our own environment
has conditioned us, and we can't change. Oh, we could try, but it
would crop up in little ways. Because of that, the natives could never
genuinely like us. We'd never belong. Their own cultural pattern
wouldn't allow them to accept us.
"Their cultural pattern is like the Fire and the Sword that were placed
outside the Garden of Eden, after Adam and Eve were driven out, to
keep it sacrosanct. If you're an outsider, you stay outside. You can
never come in."
* * * * *
He paused a moment, waiting for Templin to say something. Templin
didn't.
"The natives have a word for it, _Kava_. It means, I suppose,
_different_--not necessarily inferior, just different. We should have
seen it as time went on. We weren't invited places; they seemed to
avoid us. A natural reaction for them, I guess I have to admit."
Eckert cleared his throat huskily. "You see, what happened to
Pendleton," he continued awkwardly, "is that he fell in love with
paradise, but paradise would have nothing to do with him. By the time
three years were up, he knew that he was an outcast in Eden. And he
couldn't leave, to come back and try to forget. He was stranded in
paradise and had to look forward to spending four more years there as a
pariah. He couldn't do it. And neither could you."
He was quiet for a moment, thinking of the cool, scented air and the
warm sunshine and the happy kids playing on the grassy lanes.
"I suppose it didn't affect you at all, did it?" Templin asked
venomously.
* * * * *
A shadow crossed Eckert's face. "You should know better than that, Ray.
Do you think I'll ever forget it? Do you think I'll ever be satisfied
with my own culture again?"
"What are you going to do about it?"
"It's dangerous to human beings, Ray. Looking at it brutally,
their culture has killed two of our people as surely as if Tunpesh
were populated by murderous savages. We'll probably send a larger
commission, throw it open to commerce, try to change it."
Templin gripped the sides of the couch, his face strained and tense
with anxiety. "What happens to it depends on the report you make,
doesn't it?"
"Yes, it does."
"Then make up something in your report. Say the climate is bad for
Earthmen. Say anything, but don't let them change Tunpesh!"
Eckert looked at him for a long moment, remembering.
"Okay, Ray," he said slowly. "We'll leave paradise alone. Strictly
alone. It'll be put on the quarantine list."
He turned and left.
Behind him, Templin swiveled around in his chair and gazed bleakly at
the tiny mote of yellow fading in the blackness of space.