8
After lunch at E.H.Q., the colonizing administrator took over thereview.
The precolonizing scientists had not been trapped by the obviouslyfavorable aspects of Eden into neglecting their full duties. No indeedthey had given the full routine of tests and had come up with exactlynothing that might be unfavorable to man, at least not more so than onEarth.
Colonization had followed the usual plan. Fifty professional colonistshad been sent out to Eden. They knew their jobs. They weretemperamentally suited to the work.
As usual, they were to live there for five years, leaning as lightly aspossible on Earth supplement. Their prime purpose was to adapt primitiveecology to human needs, how it could be done. It was not the job of thisfirst colony to explore, to catalogue. They were expected to do onlywhat any pioneer does--endure, exist, and prove it possible.
In honesty the colonizing administrator had to point out there had beenmore than the usual dissatisfaction from this colony. The burden oftheir complaint was that they found living too easy. They wereprofessionals, accustomed to challenge.
They had first recommended, then demanded, that they be transferred andthe planet given over to the second-phase colonists.
They complained they were dying on the vine, that easy living was makingfarmers and storekeepers out of them, that they were getting soft,ruined by disuse of their talents for meeting and coping with hostileconditions. There had even been threats that one of these days theywould all pile into their ship and come back home. So far he had stoppedthem by threats of his own, that he would personally see they never gotanother assignment.
He had resisted their demands. Five years was a short enough time. Someorganisms took longer than that to develop in the human body or mind, tomake their inimical presence known. Some did not show up until thesecond or third generation; which was the reason for the second-phasecolonists, to live there for three generations, before the planet couldbe opened to young John Smith and his wife Mary who dreamed of owning alittle chicken ranch out away from it all. He had argued that boredommight be just the very inimical condition they were having to test.
Cal felt a twinge of disappointment here. Perhaps the dissatisfiedcolonists had merely gone on strike! Unable to get satisfaction fromtheir administrator, they chose not to communicate as a means of drawingattention, getting an investigation of their plight. Drastic, perhaps,but man had been known to do drastic things before when he felt treatedunfairly.
This seemed such a likely solution that for a moment he let hisdisappointment override his interest. Such would be an administrativehassle, nothing to challenge an E at all, not even a Junior.
Still, it might not be the solution. He had better listen to the wholeof the problem.
The colonists had chosen a large island for their first settlement. Inthe center was a small mountain. It had been given the name of CrystalPalace Mountain because it was crested with an outcropping ofamethystine quartz-crystal structures in _natural_ pillars, domes,arches, spires.
Like spokes of a wheel radiating out from the hub, ridges fell awayfrom this mountain, and in between the ridges there lay fertile valleyswatered by perpetual streams.
It was in one of these valleys, about halfway between the mountain andthe sea, that the colonists settled. Some bucolic wit had named thefirst settlement Appletree, because there they would gain knowledge, andeverybody knows that the apple was the Garden of Eden's fruit ofknowledge. No one quite knew when the name Eden was first applied to theplanet. Suddenly, during the first scientific expedition, everyone wasreferring to it that way.
"For exactitude," the administrator said diplomatically. "Of course westill designate it as Ceti II."
As was customary, the colony had communicated multitudes of progresspictures over the space-jump band. Here was the valley before they hadstarted to fell trees. Here it was in progress of clearing. Here theywere converting the trees into lumber for houses. Here were the firsthouses so that some could move out of the living quarters in the ship.Here they were uprooting the stumps, turning the sod, planting Earthseed. These were barns for the cattle and horses sent with them fromEarth.
A collection of community buildings came next in the series ofphotographs, and finally there was the whole village of Appletree, witha collection of small farms surrounding it. The pictures showed it allas ideal for man as a distant view of a rural valley in Ohio.Productive, progressive, and peaceful--from a distance.
But back of the post-card scene, human psychology progressed normallyalso.
The reporting psychologist was most emphatic on this issue. Hisdepartment would have been most alarmed had differences and schisms_not_ developed. _That_ would have been an abnormality calling forinvestigation.
Differences in outlook became apparent in spite of the commontemperament and experience of the group. Little personal enmitiesdeveloped and grew. Sympathizers drew together in little groups, eachgroup considering its stand to be the right one, and therefore all whodisagreed wrong.
The psychologist said he was sure all viewing would remember theclassical picture of primitive Earth man at first awareness. He standsupon a hill and looks about him. There comes the astonishing realizationthat he can see about the same distance in all directions.
"Why," he exclaims to himself, "I must be at the very center ofcreation!"
His awe and wonder was to grow. Wherever he went, he found he was stillat the center of things. There could be only one conclusion.
"Because I am always at the center of things, I must be the mostimportant event in all creation!"
Still later comes another realization.
"Those who are with me, and are therefore a part of me-and-mine, arealso at the center of things and share my importance. Those who are notwith me, and not a part of me-and-mine, are not at the center of things,and are therefore of an inferior nature!"
It could readily be seen--the psychologist was allowing a note ofdryness to enter his comments--that the bulk of man's philosophy,religion, politics, social values, and yes, too often even hisscientific conclusions, was based upon this egocentric notion; thesupreme importance and rightness of me-and-mine ascendant at the centerof things, opposed to those who are not a part of me-and-mine, on theoutside, and therefore inferior.
There must have been a signal from Bill Hayes, for the psychologist leftthe generalities behind and came back to the issue.
The very ease of living on Eden fostered the growth of schisms, forthere was no common enemy to band the group into one solid me-and-mineorganism--the audience would recall that when Earth was divided intonations it had always been imperative to find a common enemy in someother nation; that this was the only cohesive force man had been ableto find to keep the nation from disintegrating.
Another nudge.
Factions took shape on Eden and clashed in town meetings. At last, asexpected, some dissident individuals and family groups could no longertolerate the irritation of living in the same neighborhood with therest. These broke off from the main colony, and migrated across the nearridge to settle in an adjacent valley.
Psychologically, it was a most satisfactory development, playing out inclassical microcosm the massive behavior of total man. For, as everyoneknew, had men ever been able to settle their differences, had man beenable to get along peacefully with himself, he might have developed nocivilization at all.
Man's inability to stand the stench of his own kind was the most potentof all forces in driving him out to the stars.
Bill Hayes, a weary and red-eyed moderator now, apparently decided hecould no longer stand the stench of the psychologist and abruptly cuthim off. He himself took over the summation. It boiled down to a simplestatement.
The colonists had reported everything that happened, of significance ornot. These reports had all been thoroughly sifted in the normal courseof E.H.Q.'s daily work as they were received. They had been collated andextended both by human and machine minds to detect any subtle trendsaway from norm.
> There had been nothing, absolutely nothing. The reports might as wellhave originated somewhere near Eugene, Oregon. They were about asunusual as a Saturday night bath back on the farm.
Then silence. Sudden, inexplicable silence.