Penfield twirled the stem of his port-glass between thumb and finger.
“I don’t agree,” he said. “It’s nothing but egocentric vanity to
consider our form of life as unique among those on the millions of
worlds that must exist.”
“How do you know they exist?” said Hodge.
“Observation,” said McCall. “The astronomers have proved that other
stars beside our sun have planets.”
“You’re playing into his hands,” observed Penfield, the heavy eyebrows
twitching as he cracked a nut. “The statistical approach is better. Why
doesn’t this glass of port suddenly boil and spout all over the ceiling?
You’ve never seen a glass of port behave that way, but the molecules
that compose it are in constant motion, and any physicist will tell you
that there’s no reason why they can’t all decide to move in the same
direction at once. There’s only an overwhelming possibility that it
won’t happen. To believe that we, on this earth, one of the planets of a
minor star, are the only form of intelligent life, is like expecting the
port to boil any moment.”
“There are a good many possibilities for intelligent life, though,” said
McCall. “Some Swede who wrote in German—I think his name was
Lundmark—has looked into the list. He says, for instance, that a
chlorine-silicon cycle would maintain life quite as well as the
oxygen-carbon system this planet has, and there’s no particular reason
why nature should favor one form more than the other. Oxygen is a very
active element to be floating around free in such quantities as we have
it.”
“All right,” said Hodge, “can’t it be that the cycle you mention is the
normal one, and ours is the eccentricity?”
“Look here,” said Penfield, “what in the world is the point you’re
making? Pass the port, and let’s review the bidding.” He leaned back in
his chair and gazed toward the top of the room, where the carved coats
of arms burned dully at the top of the dark panelling. “I don’t mean
that everything here is reproduced exactly somewhere else in the
universe, with three men named Hodge, McCall and Penfield sitting down
to discuss sophomore philosophy after a sound dinner. The fact that we
are here and under these circumstances is the sum of all the past
history of—”
Hodge laughed. “I find the picture of us three as the crown of human
history an arresting one,” he said.
“You’re confusing two different things. I didn’t say we were elegant
creatures, or even desirable ones. But behind us there are certain
circumstances, each one of which is as unlikely as the boiling port. For
example, the occurrence of such persons as Beethoven, George Washington,
and the man who invented the wheel. They are part of our background. On
one of the other worlds that started approximately as ours did, they
wouldn’t exist, and the world would be altered by that much.”
“It seems to me,” said McCall, “that once you accept the idea of worlds
starting from approximately the same point—that is, another planet
having the same size and chemical makeup, and about the same distance
from its sun—”
“That’s what I find hard to accept,” said Hodge.
“Grant us our folly for a moment,” said McCall. “It leads to something
more interesting than chasing our tails.” He snapped his lighter. “What
I was saying is that if you grant approximately the same start, you’re
going to arrive at approximately the same end, in spite of what Penfield
thinks. We have evidence of that right on this earth. I mean what they
call convergent evolution. When the reptiles were dominant, they
produced vegetable-eaters and carnivores that fed on them. And among the
early mammals there were animals that looked so much like cats and
wolves that the only way to tell them apart is by the skeleton. Why
couldn’t that apply to human evolution, too?”
“You mean,” said Penfield, “that Beethoven and George Washington would
be inevitable?”
“Not that, exactly,” said McCall. “But some kind of musical inventor,
and some sort of high-principled military and political leader. There
might be differences.”
Hodge said: “Wait a minute. If we are the product of human history, so
were Beethoven and Washington. All you’ve got is a determinism, with
nothing really alterable, once the sun decided to cast off its planets.”
“The doctrine of free will—” began McCall.
“I know that one,” said Penfield. “But if you deny free will completely,
you’ll end up with a universe in which every world like ours is
identical—which is as absurd as Hodge’s picture of us is unique, and
rather more repulsive.”
“Well, then,” said Hodge, “What kind of cosmology are you putting out?
If you won’t have either of our pictures, give us yours.”
Penfield sipped port. “I can only suggest a sample,” he said. “Let’s
suppose this world—or one very like it—with one of those improbable
boiling-port accidents left out somewhere along the line. I mentioned
the wheel a moment ago. What would life be like now if it hadn’t been
invented?”
“Ask McCall,” said Hodge. “He’s the technician.”
“Not the wheel, no,” said McCall. “I can’t buy that. It’s too logical a
product of the environment. Happens as soon as a primitive man perceives
that a section of tree-trunk will roll. No. If you’re going to make a
supposition, you’ll have to keep it clean, and think in terms of
something that really might not have happened. For example, music. There
are lots of peoples, right here, who never found the full chromatic
scale, including the classical civilizations. But I suppose that’s not
basic enough for you.”
For a moment or two, the three sipped and smoked in the unspoken
communication of friendship. A log collapsed in the fireplace, throwing
out a spray of sparks. McCall said: “The steam engine is a rather
unlikely invention, when you come to think of it. And most modern
machines and their products are outgrowths of it in one way or another.
But I can think of one more peculiar and more basic than that.
Gunpowder.”
“Oh, come,” said Hodge, “that’s a specialized—”
“No it isn’t,” said Penfield. “He’s perfectly right. Gunpowder destroyed
the feudal system, and produced the atmosphere in which your steam
engine became possible. And remember that all the older civilizations,
even in the East, were subject to periodic setbacks by barbarian
invasions. Gunpowder provided civilized man with a technique no
barbarian could imitate, and helped him over the difficult spots.”
McCall said; “All the metal-working techniques and most of chemistry
depend on the use of explosives—basically. Imagine digging out all the
ores we need by hand.”
“All right, then,” said Hodge, “have your fun. Let’s imagine a world
like this one, in which gunpowder has never been invented. What are you
going to have it look like?”
“I don’t know,” said McCall, “but I think Penfield’s wrong about one
point. About the feudal system, I mean. It was pretty shaky toward the
end, and the cannon that battered down the castles only hurried up the
process. There might be a lot more pieces of the feudal system hanging
around without gunpowder, but the thing would be pretty well shot.”
“Now, look here,” said Hodge. “You’ve overlooked something else. If
you’re going to eliminate gunpowder and everything that came out of it,
you’ll have to replace it with something. After all, a large part of the
time and attention of our so-called civilization have been spent in
working out the results of the gunpowder and steam engine inventions, If
you take those away, you’ll have a vacuum, which I’m told, nature
abhors. There would have to be a corresponding development in some other
field, going ’way beyond where we are.”
Penfield drank and nodded. “That’s fair,” he said. “A development along
some line we’ve neglected because we have been too busy with mechanics.
Why couldn’t it be in the region of ESP, or psychology or
psychiatry—science of the mind?”
“But the psychologists are just operating on the ordinary principles of
physical science,” said McCall. “Observing, verifying from a number of
examples, and then attempting to predict. I don’t see how another race
would have gone farther by being ignorant of these principles or
overlooking them.”
“You’re being insular,” said Penfield. “I don’t mean that in another
world they would have turned psychology into an exact science in our
terms. It might be something altogether different. Your principles of
science are developed along the lines of arithmetic. The reason they
haven’t worked very well in dealing with the human mind may be because
they aren’t applicable at all. There may be quite a different line of
approach. Think it over for a moment. It might even be along the line of
magic, witchcraft.”
“I like that,” said McCall. “You want to make a difference by
substituting something phoney for something real.”
“But it might not be phoney,” insisted Penfield. “Magic and witchcraft
are really pretty late in our world. They began to be talked about at
the same time and on the same terms as alchemy, everything surrounded by
superstition, lying and plain ignorance. In this world we’re imagining,
somebody might have found the key to something as basic in that field as
gunpowder was to the physical sciences. Some people say we almost made
the discovery here. You know the story about this house?”
McCall nodded, but Hodge said: “No. What is it? Another ghost story?”
“Not quite. The old part of the house, the one where the bedrooms are
now, is supposed to have been built by one of the Salem witches. Not one
of those they hanged on false charges, but a perfectly genuine witch,
who got away before she was suspected—as a real witch probably would.
The story is that she came here and set up business among the Indians,
and as they weren’t very expert at carpentry, she helped them build that
part of the house with spells, so it would be eternal. The old beams
haven’t a bit of iron in them; they’re all held together with pegs and
haven’t rotted a bit. There’s also a story that if you make the proper
preparations at night, something beyond the normal will happen. I’ve
never done the right thing myself, apparently.”
“You probably won’t,” said Hodge. “The essence of the whole witchcraft
business is uncertainty. Haven’t you noticed that in all the legends,
the spells never quite come off when they’re needed?”
“That’s probably because there isn’t any science of witchcraft, with
predictable results,” said McCall.
Penfield said: “It may be for another reason, too. Have you ever noticed
that magic is the only form of human activity which is dominated by
women? The really scary creatures are all witches; when a man becomes a
magician, he’s either possessed of a devil or is a glorified juggler.
Our theoretical world would have to start by being a matriarchy.”
“Or contain the relics of one,” said Hodge. “Matriarchies are socially
unstable.”
“So is everything,” said McCall. “Flow and change from one form to
another is a characteristic of life—or maybe a definition of life. That
goes for your witchcraft, too. It would change form, there’d be
resistance to it, and an effort to find something to replace it.”
“Or to remove the disabilities,” said Hodge. “The difficulty with any
power we don’t really know about is not to define the power itself, but
to discover its limitations. If witchcraft were really practical, there
would be some fairly severe penalties going with it, not legally I mean,
but personally, as a result of the practice. Or to put the thing in your
terms, McCall, if there weren’t any drawbacks, being a witch would have
such high selection value that before long every female alive would be a
practicing witch.”
McCall carefully poured more port. “Hodge,” he said, “you’re wonderful,
and I love you. But that’s typical of the way you put things. You cover
up a weak point by following it with one that attracts everyone’s
attention away from the feebleness of your real case. Penalties for
everything? What’s the penalty for having an electric icebox?”
“A pampered digestive system,” said Hodge, readily. “I doubt whether you
could survive the food Queen Elizabeth ate for very long, but she lived
to be well over sixty. If there were witchcraft, or ESP or telepathy
running around in the world, there couldn’t but be defenses against it
and troubles for the practitioners. Had it occurred to you that even a
witch couldn’t spend all her time stirring cauldrons, and might want to
lead a normal life, with a husband and children?”
Penfield got up and stepped to the window, where he stood looking out
and down at the midnight Atlantic, throwing its surges against the
breast of the rocks. “I wonder if it really does exist,” he said.
Hodge laughed; but that night all three men dreamed: and it was as
though a filament ran through the ancient rooms; for each knew that he
dreamed, and dreamed the same dream as the others; and from time to time
tried to cry out to them, but could only see and hear.
1
NETZNEGON CITY: MARCH RAIN
It was raining steadily outside. The older woman’s tears and words fell
in time, drip, drip. Cold, for the tall window at the room’s end would
never quite shut close, bottom and top not nest into the frame
simultaneously. Lalette in her soutane felt goose-pimples and tried to
shut out the sound by thinking of a man with a green hat who would give
her a handful of gold scudi and nothing asked, merely because it was
spring and she put a small spell on him with a smile, but it was not
quite spring, and the voice persisted:
“. . . all my life—I have hoped—hoped and planned for you—even before
you were born—even before you were born—daughter of my own—” (Yes,
thought Lalette, I have heard that before, and it would move me more,
but the night you drank the wine with Dame Carabobo, you told her how I
was the product of a chance union in a carriage between Rushaca and
Zenss) “—daughter—and after I saved and worked so hard—you miss the only
chance—the only chance—don’t know what I’m going to do—and Count
Cleudi’s not like most—”
“You told him what he offered was frightful. I heard you.”
(Sob) “It was. Oh, it was. Oh, Lalette, it isn’t right, you should be
married with a gold coach and six horses—but what can we do?—oh, if your
father had left us anything before the war—all I sacrificed for him—but
that is what all of us must do, make sacrifices, we can’t have anything
real without giving something away . . . Lalette!”
“Madame.”
“You will be able to employ the Art and have everything you want, you
know most of the patterns already, he does not go to the Service
often . . . and after all, it’s something that happens to every woman
one way or another, and with the Art, even if he doesn’t marry you,
he’ll find you a husband you won’t mind, it’s only men like Cleudi who
want to be the first, a man who marries would really prefer a girl to
have a little experience, I know . . . Lalette!”
Lalette did not answer.
“All the young ones come to the ball after the opera, Lalette. Count
Cleudi will present you, and even if you don’t bring—”
(He would have not only a green hat, but southern-made lace at wrist and
throat and a funny-looking man who spoke in a Mayern accent, thick as
cream, and carried the purse because it spoiled the fit—)
“. . . as though he were just one of those . . . so considerate . . .”
(I suppose we cannot control how we come by our parents) “. . . your
father, like an angel out of heaven, and I could have taught you so much
more if he—” (Now she is waist-deep in the past again, I’m going to hear
it all over) “. . . really, for it is more like one step up than a leap
down from a high place, which is always what we think before the first
time . . . Lalette!”
“Yes, mother.”
Someone knocked at the door.
Lalette’s mother hastily daubed at her cheeks, heaved herself heavily
from the chair, looked sidewise, saying; “We could sell the stone.” But
before the girl could reply, the tap again. The older woman waddled
across to the door and opened it a crack; a long jaw and long nose under
a wet turn-down hat poked in.
“I was just saying to my daughter—” began Dame Leonalda.
A pair of thin shoulders pushed past her as though not hearing, the man
stood in the center of the room, sniffed and wiped his nose on his
sleeve. “Listen,” he said, “no more stories. I have heard too many.”
Dame Leonalda gave him a doleful look and bustled back to her seat. “But
I assure you, Ser Ruald—”
“No more stories,” he said again. “I have charges to meet and taxes.”
She put her hands to her face. (Lalette thought: her only device; I hope
I shall not grow like that.) Ruald said; “But I do not wish to be hard,
no, and I know you have no money just now. So I will be fair, and if you
render me a small service, why then, it is not beyond me to forgive the
whole four months’ arrears.”
Dame Leonalda took down her hands again and said; “What is the service?”
(Her voice had something like a tinge of dread.)
Ruald sniffed again, darted a glance at Lalette, another at the door,
and stepped close. “I have heard that you belong to one of the families
of the Blue Star.”
“Who told you that?”
“It does not matter. Is it true?”
The dame’s lips worked. “And what if it is?”
“Why this, dame: it will not peril your soul to place a small witchery—”
“No, no, I couldn’t do such a thing. You have no right to ask me.”
The man’s face sneered. “I have a right to ask you for my money,
though.”
“No, no, I tell you.” Her hands waved the air. “That Dame Sauglitz, they
punished her with five years and stripes.”
“They will punish nobody for this; utterly private between you and
myself. Is not your skill enough so that no suspicion of witchery will
fall on you? Come, I’ll do better. I’ll more than forgive the arrears,
I’ll give you quit-rent for four other months to come.”
“Mother,” said Lalette from the corner.
Dame Leonalda turned around. “This does not concern you,” she said, and
to Ruald; “But how am I to know that having done as you wish, you’ll not
denounce me before the episcopals?”
“Why as for that, might I not want your help another time?” She put up a
protesting hand, but he; “Come, no more stories. I’ll—”
There was another tap at the door. Ruald looked annoyance as Dame
Leonalda crossed the room in another rustle of skirts. Her voice was
almost gay. “Come in, Uncle Bontembi.”
Rain shook shining from his cloak. “Ah, charming Dame Leonalda.” The
paunch hindered his bow. “The greetings of the evening to you, Ser
Ruald. Why, this is a true evening gathering.”
“I was just leaving,” said Ruald, tugging at his jacket. “Well, then,
Dame Leonalda, bear in mind what I have said. I’m sure we’ll reach
accommodation.”
She did not get up as he went. When the door was closed she turned to
Uncle Bontembi. “It is such a problem, dear Uncle,” she said. “Of course
the child is perfectly right in a way, and it would be different if her
father had left her anything at all, but with such a man as Cleudi—”
“The Count is a splendid gentleman,” said the priest. “I have seen him
lose fifty gold scudi on a turn, but never his composure. And he is in
high favor. Is there a problem relative to him? Not that his eye has
fallen on our little Lalette? I would call that a matter for consent and
rejoicing.”
“Ah, Uncle, it is this, if men only behaved as nobly toward women as
they do to each other! He has set his eye on this dear child indeed, but
not his hand, and says he will pay all our debts and give her a hundred
gold scudi besides, if she will only accompany him to the opera and ball
of the spring festival.”
Uncle Bontembi plucked at the button of his chin, and the smile left his
face. “Hm, hm, it is certainly on the face of matters a proposal . . .
You are certain you have not been employing the Art, Dame Leonalda?”
“Oh, no, never, never. And my dear little girl, how could she?”
The priest glanced sly-eye at the girl. “Yes, yes, she has her first
confession to make. Well, well, let us think this out together. I will
say the Count Cleudi is highly held in other circles beside the
political. There was some theological discussion at the Palace Bregatz
lately, and the Episcopal was of the opinion that he had never heard
sounder doctrine or better put than by Cleudi. Wherefore he cannot be
very far from the laws of the good God and right moral, can he? And so
his plan may be of greater benefit than first appears.”
“I do not want such benefits,” said Lalette, (but thought: then I should
have the Art!)
“Oho! Our junior niece resists; this is not the true humility. Come,
Demoiselle Lalette, let us look at it this way: we can only truly serve
good and vanquish the eternal forces of evil through the happiness of
others, for if it is our own happiness we seek, then others doing the
same will make all unhappy, and so give victory to evil.” He signed
himself. “Thus to bring joy to others is the true service of religion
and moral, no matter what the appearance may say. Now in this case there
would be three people given happiness. Yes, yes, the doctrinal point is
somewhat delicate, but I cannot find it in my mind to disapprove. There
is a technical violation of moral law involved, and I am afraid the
Church will have to assess a certain fine against you, but I will make
it as light as possible. Enough to remind that a good action should be
done for moral gain and not material.”
“I do not love him,” said Lalette.
“All the more unselfish, all the more.” The priest turned to Dame
Leonalda. “Have you not made it clear to our niece that the true love
which puts down evil in the name of the major glory of God is something
that rises out of and after union? Why, if she talks so, I will have to
lay church-duty on her for approaching the doctrines of the Prophet.”
“Oh, I have told her, I have told her.” (The mother’s voice began to
cloud toward another rain of tears.) “But she is so romantical and
sensitive, my little daughter, just like those poems by Terquid. When I
was a girl—”
Lalette let her face smooth out (as she thought about the opera ball and
what it would be like), but even that was not much use, their voices
kept picking at her until she went behind the curtain to her bed in the
corner, where it was even colder beneath the blanket at first, so that
she curled up tight. (If I were really married, the Blue Star would
belong to me and my husband, and . . .)