Eight Keys to Eden Part 27

E = MC!

It took man far. He too began an exploration of the stars!

Failure in their first attempt had brought a wisdom to the sentient fields of force. This time they did not rush in with pyrotechnic displays to show the wondrous power they knew. Observing patiently through the centuries, by now they knew man well. They knew his weakness, yet by making thing react with thing, he'd proved his strength. For here he was among the stars.

Perhaps by now he might communicate? Perhaps, by now, he would not prostrate himself and grovel in the dust, if someone said, "h.e.l.lo!"

But careful, perhaps he would.

There had been a man by name of Galileo, with the first crude telescope he'd made, who first saw the rings of Saturn. But not as rings, but rather in the planet's tilting, he had seen a spot of light on either side. And sometime later, when he looked again, the tilting of the planet back had made the rings edge on, and so they disappeared. He never looked again, nor told of what he'd seen; for legend had it that the G.o.d Saturn periodically devoured his own children, and this phenomenon he'd seen, if it became widely known, would be interpreted as the proof the legend was correct--and do incalculable damage to scientific inquiry. He'd known the temper of his fellow man well enough to take no chances of this kind, to note the experience in his works, perhaps discuss it with a cautious friend or two, but to add no further fuel to the raging fires of superst.i.tion that consumed men's minds and seared out possibility of rational thought.

So walk with care. For superst.i.tion still is paramount, despite the fact that some men know how to reach the stars.

To communicate this time, the fields of force took a sere planet, of 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 a.n.a.lyses; 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 superst.i.tion; 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 s.h.i.+ps, a thousand men, and all to find their s.h.i.+ps, 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 superst.i.tions 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. s.h.i.+eld 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p 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 relations.h.i.+p, connected them.

He was standing outside the entrance arch.

With a hoa.r.s.e 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 s.h.i.+elding 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 relations.h.i.+p to reality, the schematic of forces visualized, the untangling, straightening of thought.

Louie scrambled to his feet, a rueful grin on his face.