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Cal didn't know, couldn't have known, that his efforts to signalMcGinnis not to land were unnecessary. Didn't know, couldn't have known,that he himself was the specimen They had hoped to catch. That havingcaught what They wanted They would naturally close the door to the trapto prevent any possibility of escape, as yet, or any interference withtheir experiment.
From the moment he walked away from the grassy slope where he hadsignaled the outer ship, he moved and thought as someone detached fromordinary existence. As he walked away from the slope, ignoring thefrantic signals from the ship out in space, he felt he was also walkingout of a shell of superficial cerebration and into a deeper sense ofreality. It was as if, in spite of E training, for the first time in hislife, he could commit himself wholly, in all areas of his being, to theconsideration of a problem.
His conviction was complete that the ship could give him nothing heneeded, that all Earth's mechanical science could give him nothing heneeded. That it could not provide the key to unlock the door which ledinto this new area of reality. He must find, must define, some newconcept of man's relation to the universe. He must again travel thatroad, that million-year-long road man had traveled in trying todetermine his position in reality.
He wandered down to the river, climbed to the top of a great boulderthat overhung a pool, and sat down with his feet hanging over the edge.He watched some young colonists wade through the pool to drive fish intothe shallows where they could pin them, with their legs, catch them withtheir hands. In their need for protein, the colonists were finding, asmany Earth peoples had found, raw fish were excellent in flavor andtexture as food.
At the beginning of the road man had traveled first there was awareness,awareness of self as something separate from environment. There wasawareness of self-strength, ability to do certain things to and withthat environment. There was awareness of self always at the center ofthings, and therefore awareness of his importance in the scheme ofthings. But there was awareness of more.
There was awareness of things happening to his environment which he, inall his strength and importance, could not do. Awareness gives rise toreason, reason gives rise to rationalization. If things happened in hisenvironment which he himself could not do, then there must be somethingstronger and more important than he.
To be ascendant at the center of things, to remain ascendant, meant thatall things of lesser importance, outside the center, must be madesubservient to him, else that ascendancy was lost. And if they would notassume positions of subservience, they must be destroyed.
If there were unseen beings, stronger and more important than he, whocould do unexplained things to his environment; then it was plain thathe must assume positions of subservience to those beings, lest hehimself be destroyed.
So man created his gods in his own image, with his own attributesmagnified.
Was this a wrong turning of the road? No-o.... Awareness carries with itits commands and penalties. A problem must have an answer. Conscious andwillful beings beyond his own strength and importance became the onlyanswer open to him at that stage of his mental evolution. And served theimportant need of bringing order to chaos. Let all things he could notdo, and therefore could not understand, be attributed to those higherbeings. Without such an answer, awareness without resolution would havedriven him into madness. Without such an answer, man could not havesurvived to remain aware.
But answers also carry in themselves their commands and their penalties.The penalty being that when one thinks he has the answer he stopslooking for it. The command being that he must conduct himself in accordwith the answer.
The long, long road that led him nowhere. That today still leads untoldmillions nowhere. For the penalty of a wrong answer is failure to solvethe problem. That non-science had failed to provide any answer beyondthe primitive one was self-evident.
To some, then, it became evident that the question must be reopened.Through the long written history of man, here and there, by accidentoften, sometimes by cerebration, the use of the brain with which he wasendowed, man found on occasion he could do things to his environmentthat heretofore had been the province of the gods--and in the doing hadnot become a god! To the courageous, the brave, the daring, thefoolhardy questions then that demanded new answers.
Perhaps the most daring and courageous question of all time was asked byCopernicus: What if man is not at the center of the universe, the reasonfor its creation?
He personally escaped the penalties for asking it. The question was toonew, too revolutionary for the men of his day to grasp, for thenon-science leaders, secure in their ascendancy at the center of things,to see in it the threat to their ascendancy. It was on his followers,those who saw sense in the question, that the wrath of non-sciencedescended. Non-science used the only method it had ever devised toachieve the only result it had ever been able to countenance--tortureand force to make dissidents kneel in subservience.
But the question had been asked! And once asked, it could not beerased!
Still, it was almost an accidental question. For the method of science,as something understood and communicable, as a calculated point of view,had not yet been discovered. The key that would unlock its door had notyet been found.
Cal lay back on the rock to bathe in the warm rays of Ceti, almost todoze, yet with thought running clear and unimpeded. The splashing andthe laughter of the colonists below the rock were no more thanaccompanying music.
The key which opened the door to physical science was not discovereduntil 1646 by a bunch of loafers, ne'er-do-wells, beatniks, who hungaround the coffee shops of London. Later, because non-science alwayspersecutes those who dare ask questions and thereby demonstrate somesubversion to subservience, many had to flee to Oxford which, at thattime, was sanctuary for those who differed from popular thought.
As he lay there drinking in the sun, the peacefulness, he sent hisvision back through the card index of his mind to find the reference,the key that opened the door to physical science, the pregnant point ofview that would give birth to a whole new concept of man's relationshipto the universe. He found the passages in Thomas Sprat's _History of theRoyal Society of London (1667)_.
"... to make faithful records of all the works of nature, or art whichcan come within their reach ... They have stud'd to make it, not only anenterprise of one season, or of some lucky opportunity; but a businessof time; a steddy, a lasting, a popular, an uninterrupted work."
He stirred restlessly and changed his position to lay his head on onearm. Not quite, not yet the key. Ah, here it was, perhaps the mostsignificant sentence ever written by man.
"They have attempted to free it from the artifice, and humors, andpassions of sects; to render it an instrument whereby mankind may obtaina dominion over _Things_, and not only over one another's judgements."
That was it. That was the essence of its difference from non-science,for the only method ever discovered until then was the non-sciencemethod of making its judgments prevail over all others.
Once this answer was discovered, it too could not be erased in spite ofall the efforts of non-science. With that answer, man had come this far.
And now?
Could it be that science, as with non-science, was only a partialanswer? Only another stage? Only a section of the road man must travel?Something as limited in its way as non-science was limited? Somethingtoo narrow to contain the whole of reality? Something also to be leftbehind? A milestone passed, instead of the goal?
What comes after science? What new door must be opened into a stillnewer point of view? What pregnant new concept of his relationship toreality must man now discover before he could continue his journey downthe long road toward total comprehension?
He could ask the question, but it was not the right question; for itcontained no hint of an answer. He felt an irritation in himself, almostas if some teacher in the past had shaken his head in disapproval.
For a moment he welcomed the distracting shout from one of thecolonists, and
sat up. In the shallows of the river one of the men hadcaught a foot long fish and was holding it up in his hands. Delightedly,the others acknowledged his victory, and renewed their efforts. He layback down again, and stretched his cramped muscles.
Too fast! He had come down the long, long road too fast. He had missedsomething, something early. Something man had known in pre-science, andhad forgotten in science.
These colonists. Would they grow in awareness? Now they seemed only tobe a part of their environment, without curiosity, their fears of eventhe day before forgotten. Wiped away, as though it had never been, wastheir memory of a previous existence to this. They were wholly at onewith their environment--unaware.
Were they to begin the long road? To telescope its distance? Would theybe able to continue living without peopling the trees, the streams, theclouds, the winds, with spirits benign and vengeful--created in theirown image? Could they continue to live alone in the universe?
Yes, that was the thing he had missed. Loneliness.
In separating himself from the animals, man had cut off his kinship withthem. And so he found companionship with the gods. And cutting himselfoff from the gods ...
Loneliness.
Was man the only thing aware throughout the universe? What purpose thenhis exploration of it? What might he find that he had not already found?
Already, like a minor thread almost unheard in the symphony of explodingexploration, the questions of the artists were already findingthemselves woven into music, painting, literature.
"Are we alone? In all this glittering, sterile universe, are there noneother than we who are aware?"
The theme would expand as the purposelessness of colonizing still moreand more worlds became wider known. The minor would become major, therecessive dominant. The endless aim of non-science to make all otherssubservient had lost its purpose for those who could still think. Thedominion over things instead of people, the goal of science--was thatalso to lose its purpose for those who could still think? Until man,defeated by purposelessness, sank back in apathy, lost the verywillingness to live--and so died?
What if some other awareness did inhabit the universe, sentient--andlonely? What if, farther along in its explorations, it was feeling thatapathy? Facing that dissolution?
When one is lonely, the sensible thing is to seek companionship! Todiscover in companionship purpose not apparent to the alone--or at leasthope to discover it.
For companionship there must be communication. And yet the exasperation,the futility of trying to communicate with a friend who alwaysinterpreted everything one said and did as meaning something entirelydifferent from the intent.
Some other friend was the normal answer. But what if there were noother? Wouldn't one extra effort, a final attempt to break through thatclosed mind be made?
All right.
Communication, then. That was wanted. He would try. But if Theirframeworks were so different from his that They misinterpreted all hisefforts?
He was interrupted by the soft pad of footsteps, bare feet on grass thatsprang up to leave no sign it had been trod upon. A young colonist andhis wife, hand in hand, laughing gaily, were coming toward him. The manwas carrying a fresh-caught fish. They came to a stop at the base of hisrock and looked up at him, the Ceti light glinting on their smilingfaces.
"We gave Louie a fish because he said it was our duty," the young mansaid. "I don't remember why it is our duty. Perhaps it is our duty togive you one too."
At least they were being impartial.