 CHAPTER XVIII of 8 KEYS TO EDEN by Mark Clifton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Dale Grossman. All the rest of that day and throughout the following, Cal and Tom worked with Jed in trying to round up the colonists, get them living together again. By agreement, Ahmed and Dirk stayed with the small band of colonists that had overcome their fears enough to mingle together again. Louis frankly deserted his shipmates and spent all his time with the colonists. Frank, as if reverting to his childhood farming days, occupied himself with trying to round up the stock. He tried to keep the cows separated from their calves, so the colonists would have milk to drink, but without ropes or corrals it was hopeless. He finally gave up his attempt to husband the stock, and he too seemed content to mingle with the colonists. The marked change in Louis could not be ignored, for he was not idling away his time in lazy feeding and sleeping. He had dropped his lifelong pose of superficial complaint that the fates always gave him the dirty end of the stick, and now he spent his time preaching to the little band of colonists, or wandering through the forest and undergrowth calling, praying, comforting. Cal felt no condemnation for him. He was not the first man seemingly dedicated to science, who, confronted with mysteries beyond his power to comprehend, reverted to child-like superstitious awe for an explanation. In the face of mystery or catastrophe it takes a faith beyond the capacity of most to continue believing that the universe has a rational order to its laws that can be comprehended if man persists. It is temptingly easy for man to revert back to the irresponsibility of childhood, assuming that the control of phenomena is in the hands of those stronger, wiser than he. It takes a strength in the face of this temptation to go on believing that man can know that which is not morally wrong for him to know. No blame then for Louis. Tom was torn in his loyalties. He frequently remembered that, away from the EHQ, the crew became the E's attendants, and that their first duty was always to the E. But separation from the other two men of his crew was like the loss of a part of himself. To those, also, he had a duty. He tried to solve his problem by alternating his time, spending part of it with Cal and the remainder with his crew. Cal and Jed made a trip the following morning across the ridge, and found the dissident group huddling themselves in abject terror. They had seen the ship coming down through the atmosphere, and, all together, they had climbed the ridge where one of their scouts had recently gone to watch the ship's landing, and its disappearance. Once they were found it took a little persuasion to convince them that they should return to the other colonists, that differences of opinion meant nothing now as against the need of human beings to cling together in the face of catastrophe. But they, too, were having trouble thinking in a straight line, and even though they first appeared eager to join the other colonists, it took some doing to keep them all together and moving forward to cross the ridge, to come down the other side, to assemble again at the side of the village with the others. And yet within minutes neither band seemed to remember that they had ever been separated. By the time they had returned it was apparent that Louis was succeeding where Jed had failed in finding the colonists. In the few hours that had elapsed the nucleus had tripled in size. Louis, wandering through the brush, calling, pleading with them to follow him, promising there was no danger if they would allow him to watch over them, intercede for them with those who had caused all this, had indeed coaxed them from their hiding-places, calmed their fears. And still through the day he toiled, finding them, bringing them back into the fold, one and two and three at a time, until at last by Jed's count all were there, no more missing. And yet in spite of his success there was a kind of hurt and disappointment in Louis's eyes, for once back they not only forgot their fears, they seemed also to forget him. They coalesced into a placid herd without memory of their panic, without memory of the shepherd who had found the lost sheep and returned them to the fold. They wandered among the trees and bushes, picking fruit and nuts, eating leaves and stems, and flowers of plants. They wandered down to the river to lie prone on the sand, dip their faces into the clear cold water to drink. During the heat of the day they bathed in the river, and as they lay on the white sand, or grassy slopes to dry, they slept contently. The phenomenon was not a startling to Cal, as it might have seemed to the others. On earth gradually learned through trial and error experimental colonists were not picked for their jobs because of flexible, inclusive, or brilliant minds. Quite the contrary, the basic test of a successful colonist was endurance, the endurance of hardship, privation, the stoic indifference to conditions of discomfort, monotony, pain, uncleanness, immodesty, conditions which would have sent a more imaginative or sensitive temperament into a downward spiraling syndrome of failure. They were the kind of men and women who, on earth in earlier time, had been able to endure the harshness of the sea, of arctic cold, jungle disease, desert heat, to make those first steps in taming a hostile environment so that men with less endurance but with more delicately poised and sensitive minds following them might then endure. It was characteristic for such men and women, even under earth conditions, that they seldom questioned their reasons for these things. They simply went on, and endured, and tamed. Even on earth, when the taming had been done, they moved on. This was the stuff of experimental colonists. Now, here, that temperament still persisted. They had fled in panic, but now they had returned to their original purpose, to endure. It was enough. Louis was to learn, in disappointment, that failure to be curious about scientific reasoning was usually accompanied by an equal failure to be curious about philosophical implications. They listened idly to his exhortations, but their eyes did not light with fire nor cloud with doubt. They simply wandered away after a time, and ate or slept. In the evening of the second day, Cal sat with Tom and Jed down by the bank of the river where the sky was clear and the stars beginning to shine. They were talking quietly of home, of Eden, of the colonists who, more and more, seemed to take on the character of a contented herd of animals. So far there had been no attempt of the old males to drive the young ones out of the herd, destroy them. But that might come in time, as surely as the old males on earth, by tacit agreement on both sides, were always able to work up a war for the purpose of weeding out and destroying lusty young male competition. They were talking of the curious fact that all three of them seemed to be able to continue thinking in a straight line, hold their minds to a subject, while all the rest grew more vague, less retentive, more content to live from moment to moment, without concern for past or future. But Louis, he too seemed to be able to hold his thinking in a straight line, one tangential to theirs. He seemed, in these hours, to have turned wholly mystical to a stronger belief that they were being watched and cared for by some higher power, and that this was for a purpose. Yet not so tangential, for Cal had come to the same conclusion, although his interpretation differed. I can't doubt that there is an intelligent direction to this particular coordinate system, he said to Tom and Jed. But I must doubt it is supernatural in the way Louis interprets. Anything appears to be magic when we don't understand how it happens, and become science when we do. He paused and looked at his companion's faces in the starshine. They were quiet, reposed, listening. Ever since man got up off the bottom of his ocean of air, he said, and out into space, we've been prepared to run into some form of intelligence which doesn't behave the way we do. Not prepared to do anything about it, you understand, he said with a shrug. Just theoretically prepared that it might happen. It was a possibility. Now it does seem to have happened. E. McGinnis asked me before I left earth if I thought Eden was an alluring trap, especially baited, to catch some human beings. It begins to appear that it is. I have caught many a wild animal in my day, Jed said slowly, thoughtfully. I have pinned them up in cages, watched how they behave. I guess scientists do that all the time. Don't want to hurt them, fact make them as comfortable as they can. Just want to know about them. Sometimes after I've watched them for a while, I'd turn them aloof and watch them scoot back to their natural world. That could happen to us. Sometimes they'd die and I wouldn't know why. That could happen. Some animals won't bear young in captivity. We can't because of an operation. Maybe whatever's holding us don't know that and might turn us aloof when after a time we don't bear any young. He paused and looked even more thoughtful. Sometimes, he added slowly, after I've studied them, found out how they would behave no matter what. I had to kill them because they was too dangerous to let run around among humans. That could happen. I haven't done much trapping, Tom said. But in zoos, I've watched animals in cages. The thought always came to me that if they could think the way we do, they could just open their cages and walk away. Now you take turkeys, Jet answered. Pin them up with a high fence. They'll back up, take off, and fly over it. But pin them with a low fence and they won't. Seems like they know they have to fly over a high obstruction, but don't figure on it for a low one. Sometimes they flutter up against it or try to push it over. But most of the time they just walk around and around the yard looking for an opening. Natural survival pattern, Cal commented. In the woods in their natural state, when they came up against a fallen log, it took more effort to lift their heavy bodies in flight over it than it took to walk around the log. It became a fixed pattern of behavior to walk around it. That's what they do with a low fence, then, Jet said. They just keep trying to walk around the obstruction. Not enough sense to treat it like a high fence because it ain't high, see? No use trying to tell them it's high because they know it ain't. So they can't solve it. Seems awful stupid, somehow, a little low fence, all that blue sky above them, and they can't figure it out. I suspect that's what's happening to us, Cal said. We've always argued that wherever there is matter and energy in the universe, certain natural laws will prevail. We've learned ways to take advantage of those natural laws, to do certain things that will make them work for us instead of against us. We've always argued that for any kind of intelligence to arise in the universe, it, too, would have to become aware of these natural laws. That it, too, would have to do these same certain things to take advantage of those laws. That because the laws and what to do about them would always be similar, man would have a lot in common with that other intelligence and a means of communicating because of that similarity. We'd argued that whatever its evolutionary physical shape, this wasn't so important as its mental evolution because that mental evolution would follow the same course as ours. They wouldn't be truly alien because science would be the common denominator. It now appears we could be wrong. Maybe our concept of science is too narrow. Maybe we're like the turkey. We've become so fixed in our pattern of solving a problem we can't change. Can't back off and take another look. See the problem, not as it appears, but as it really is. But isn't that the science of E, Tom asked curiously, to be able to extrapolate any coordinate system? I'm not criticizing, he added hastily, just asking. I suspect even our means of extrapolation are too limited, too based on the relationship of things and forces to each other. Too said in the notion that only physical tools can affect physical things. We may be looking at a low fence, calling it a log, and therefore not able to understand why we can't walk around the obstruction in the usual manner. He stopped and added with a shrug. Stupid, maybe. Or like the turkey, the yard is so big that he never gets a picture of it as a whole enclosure. By the time he's wandered down this side of the fence, he's forgotten what he found on the other side. Never can put the whole thing together in his mind. That's my trouble anyhow. So far I'm not able to put the whole thing together, see it all as one piece. When I do, if I do, then maybe like the caged animal, I'll see how to unlock the opening or maybe realize the only way out is to fly. There, beside the softly flowing river where water was obeying natural laws without any trouble, the three men broke off their discussion when they saw a bright flash high in the sky above them. All three knew what it meant. Another e-ship had arrived. No doubt the ship would expect light signals from the colonists in acknowledgement of their space flare. If the ship had come while this portion of the planet was still in daylight, they would have seen there was no village, no ship, no equipment for direct communication. They might even have reasoned there was no means of signaling with artificial light, but there was nothing to tell them that those on Eden could not build a fire. As if they were present on the ship themselves, the three men could anticipate what must be happening there. Right now they would be anxiously waiting for signal flares to light up, to spring up like signal fires on a lonely island where a maroon man has, at last, sighted a ship on the horizon. The colonists were no longer hiding, but were freely wandering in open spaces. If the ship had arrived before dusk, they would have seen men and women in the view scopes. If, after dusk, they might still have spotted them in the infrared viewers, which picked up the heat differentials and gave a fair approximation of shapes. The men on the ship would be waiting and looking at their watches. How long they would be asking, does it take those colonists, that E, down there, to get a signal fire going? About five minutes passed and another flare lighted the heavens. Get off the dime down there, it seemed to say. Acknowledge us. Cal took the chance that they might have an infrared view scope directly on him and he waved his arms above his head, but apparently they had not spotted him for there was no answering flare. At intervals of five minutes at first, then later cut to 15 minutes, throughout the long night, the flares continued to light the sky. Talk to us, the flares begged. Surely you were expecting us. Surely you would not all be sleeping so soundly that our light could not rouse you. Several times the three men stood up and waved their arms, but it brought no answer from the ship. In the darkness, perhaps the equipment wasn't good enough. Perhaps in the night breeze, bushes and trees also swayed with movement. Once there was a rustle in the brush and in the starlight, they recognized the figure of Louie approaching them. "'This has got to stop,' he said worriedly as he came up to them. "'That light is an unnatural thing. It will anger them. It is not meant for the peace of Eden to be disturbed by an artificial thing. And if they should turn, they're wrath upon us. Whoa, whoa!' His face was strickened in the light of the new flare, and as suddenly as he had come to object, he left, plunged back under the trees to seek his people, be beside them, comfort them when disaster struck down. After a time the three men gave up trying to wave their acknowledgement of the flares in darkness. They watched for an hour or so and then tried to sleep. The periodic flares continued to come throughout the long night, as if now no longer pleading for acknowledgement, but rather reassuring men in such deep distress that they could not answer. Reassuring them that help was at hand, and mourning would come. They tried to sleep, and although fitfully disturbed by the continuing flares, they did sleep. But at the first hint of dawn Cal awoke and aroused his two companions, and by the time there was enough light for the ship to see clear detail upon the ground, the three men were ready for a better attempt at answering the ship's signal. They went up to the village site where the colonists were sleeping in the way a herd is bedded down together. They awoke Frank and Martha, Ahmed and Dirk, and told them of their plan. Louis, too, awoke and heard the plan and tried to warn them against it. Any attempt, he said, to communicate with those not on Eden would surely increase the wrath of those who wanted only the natural state here, a wrath still withheld because of superhuman mercy, but which must not be tried too far. In spite of his warnings, Cal and those cooperating with him got together enough colonists to carry out his plan. Good-naturedly the colonists did as they were told, but with the attitude that it was something amusing, that there was nothing they'd rather be doing at the moment. Any sense of urgency about communicating with home seemed to have been washed from their minds. In a clear space on the soft grass, Cal got the colonists to sit or lie in certain positions. Checked against Tom's knowledge of ancient signal patterns, those certain positions took the shape of space-navy patterns. Three men lay in a triangle. Next to that six men sat in a circle. And last three more men lay in another triangle. Cal hoped someone on the ship would be able to read the ancient message. Keep clear of me, I am maneuvering with difficulty. The signal had no more than formed when there was a flash from the ship so bright that it could be seen in the morning sky. They had read his signal, and now they began a series of flashes, of questions. What's going on down there was the essence of their questioning. It was well that the ship had caught the first signal for the colonists lost all interest in the game, which had no point. They simply stood up and wandered away in search of their breakfasts from the trees and bushes. Louis, who had stood to one side glowering, now took charge of them again and shepherded them to a grove of trees where the fruit seemed especially large and succulent. But now that the ship had spotted him, Cal could signal alone. He lay down on the ground himself to move his arms in semaphore positions. But even as he lay back, he became conscious that he too could hardly care less. With a detached interest that amounted to amusement of such childish, primitive things, he watched his arms spell out one more message. Keep off, no mechanical science allowed in this coordinate system. He stood up then and made a farewell gesture toward the ship. At that instant, he felt strangely that he had passed into another stage of growth, completed a task, cut himself off from an environment that held him back. What the ship did in response to his warnings no longer mattered. If it landed, its personnel too would join the colonists. If it obeyed the request of an E, it might circle there indefinitely. Indefinitely watching the turkeys circle inside their low fence, unable to aid them, release them. He did not particularly care what they did. They could go on spluttering out their signals, trying to question him. He didn't even try to read their messages. It didn't matter. Their science had nothing to do with him, nothing to offer him. Through it, he could not reach a solution. Somehow he knew that already. And of Chapter 18 of Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton, read by Dale Grossman. Chapter 19 of Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Dale Grossman. This time the communication supervisor said with all the firmness he could muster, this time there must not be any interference with communications. There just absolutely must not be. Well, it wasn't my fault the operator retorted with an exasperation that blanketed prudent restraint. You heard what E. McGinnis said, that they could identify E. Gray and the ship's crew and many of the colonists, but that there was no sign of the ship that took them there. If there wasn't any ship, there couldn't be any communication. It's not my fault. I can't receive something that wasn't sent. I know, I know, the supervisor said. And then, worried that he may have given the appearance of backing down, commanded savagely, just watch it, that's all. He chewed violently at his knuckle and glared at the operator. Just watch it, the operator mumble bitterly. Just watch it, the man says. And what will I watch if the message stops coming? Now, now, now, now, now, the supervisor nagged, we'll have no insubordination, if you please. And upstairs, this time, more than Bill Hayes, sector chief, were monitoring the message. The top administrative brass of EHQ were assembled in their big plush conference room used for arriving at major policy decisions that sometimes affected the whole course of man's progress and the direction in occupying the universe. They sat in worried silence as E. McGinnis reported the two messages he had received from Junior E. Gray. First, keep clear of me. I am maneuvering with difficulty. Then, keep off, no mechanical science allowed in this coordinate system. They looked at one another under beatled brows. They wondered, at first privately, and then openly, if that Junior E had blown his stack. They had looked at many a problem finally solved by the ease, but never before had such a ridiculous situation come up. And right at the time, too, when the civil government had decided to place a curb on EHQ's freedom of movement, its control over the experimental phases of planet development, the injunction to halt a Junior E from taking over the Eden problem, fooled none of them. They knew that Gundersen wasn't concerned for those colonists out there, that he was merely using the public furor to advance his own personal power. They knew that the police worked unremittingly, unceasingly, always and ever to bring each phase of human activity under their control. They knew it was a centuries-old tactic to wait for the right situation to arise so that the lawmakers could be stampeded into passing some law which seemed to apply only to this given condition, but in actuality broaden police powers over a wide area of man's action. Yes, there was far more at stake here than the fate of 50 colonists. In a sense, EHQ itself was at stake. The whole science of E was at stake, and E. McGinnis had played right into Gundersen's hands. It was he who had been the E influence in deciding to allow a Junior to handle the problem in the first place. It was he who was standing off from the planet, not landing and taking over things as he should. There was obviously no danger. By his own report, the people of Eden were in good health and from their apparent actions, not even distress. This message about no mechanical science being allowed, for example. Did the Junior mean the colonists wouldn't allow it? Must mean that. What else could prevent it? But when an E, a real E, took charge in an experimental colony, the colonists had nothing further to say about the matter. True, when the five-year experimental period was over and the three-generation colonists took over the planet, then it came under more civil control and EHQ largely withdrew with the provision that it could step back in at any time the problem seemed not to have been solved after all. But while under the five-year test, the E was the final word, or should be, the colonists knew it, the E knew it, or should know it, obviously then it was a weakness on the part of the Junior if he allowed the colonists to dictate that there would be no mechanical science, proof of his inability to handle the job. A perfect setup for Gunderson. They decided they were forced to take a strong hand with McGinnis. Ordinarily, the E was the final word, not only with the colonists, but with the administration at EHQ. But maybe there were times when he shouldn't be. Yes, definitely they should take a hand. After all, Gray was still a junior, hardly more than a boy. Was it right for a mere boy to stop investigation by anyone except himself? Would it kill Earth with all its power and might, what to do? Definitely there was a time when an exception to general E policy should be made. Definitely this was that time. If nothing else, they must take a strong hand to prevent Gunderson from moving in with his police powers, protect the E science from Gunderson, or at least salvage what they might. Their conference over, they asked for a connection with McGinnis. We assume you will land and take charge, E. McGinnis, the board chairman asked. Certainly not, McGinnis snapped back, and E has forbidden it. Well now the chairman argued and sweat began to come out on his forehead. He's only a junior. We have decided his judgment isn't mature enough for this problem. I have every confidence in junior E. Gray, McGinnis said acidly, and every E in the system will back me. It makes no difference what you have decided. Either the science of E means something or it doesn't. Either we have complete freedom to handle a problem or we don't. Let me remind you gentlemen, this isn't the first time that laymen have decided the E is a fool and tried to take matters into their own hands. Do you want to repeat past disasters? If we don't land a ship, E. McGinnis, the chairman was all but pleading now. Gundersen's police will. We feel we must land a ship to take a firm control over the situation. Public sentiment demands it. Policy demands it. Perhaps the whole future of E demands it. A new voice cut into the communications hookup, a feminine voice. Gentlemen, she said, this is Linda Gray. I requested that I be cut in on any communications concerning my husband and E. McGinnis made it an order before he left. If another ship does land, I must be on it. I want to be with my husband. I will not be landing on Eden, Linda, E. McGinnis said firmly, and E has forbidden it. That is enough for any other E in the universe. No other E will land. Your husband is all right. He is in good health and apparently mentally sound. At least sound enough to warn us against landing. He must have a reason. We don't know yet what it is. Now he has stopped communicating. We don't know why. He must have a reason for that too. It's probably a sound reason. E science has been drilled into him until it is part of his every mind cell, perhaps even every body cell. I assume he is not communicating because we can't help him because communicating with us distracts him from solving the problem. If EHQ decides to send out a ship on its own and risk landing in an unknown coordinate system against the orders of two E's, which will become the combined orders of all E's in the universe, that is their decision. If you wish to be on it, that is your decision. I am cutting off now. It will be no accident that EHQ cannot connect with me. I'm cutting out because I don't want to be distracted any further. I'm trying to think. The acid rebuff of the old E left the administrative board hanging in a vacuum of indecision, frustration, angry determination to do something, anything. They were caught between the intransigence of the E fraternity it was their duty to serve and from whom they should be able to expect help and the obvious determination of Gunderson to use this incident as his means of regaining control over the E's and EHQ for civil authority. Didn't the stupid E see the danger? Wasn't it the same danger that men of science had always faced, the same mistake they had always made? Leaving out the human element in a problem? The eternal blind spot in men of science. The average man doesn't give a tinker's damn for progress or knowledge, not really. He wants only that he and his shall be ascended at the center of things, the inevitable, the only possible goal of the non-scientific mind. Surely the history of science versus non-science should have made this evident long ago. Surely there had been enough incidents in history. Very well it was up to them to help the E in spite of himself. If he refused to see the clear danger to his whole structure and their own ascended position at the center of it, it was their clear duty to protect him nonetheless. They would send out another ship, a large one, a floating laboratory, a miniature EHQ, at least to be there on the scene, to help in any way they could, perhaps to counter the moves Gunderson's police might make, at least to stand by. At least in the face of all this public clamor about Eden to show their concern. The chairman of the board rationalized it masterfully, without once mentioning that their real concern was to remain ascended at the center of things, at all costs, and thereby maintain the tradition of all non-science endeavors. Gentlemen, he said in summary, we have a grave responsibility, not only to the E structure, but to all mankind as well. In every system, in every rule, there must be provision for the exception. Gray is only a junior E. Herein lies the weakness of our position. Herein lies Gunderson's strength, his weapon for swaying the sentiment of the people. A junior E is not mature enough to make the decisions affecting the life or death of 50 people. More than that, perhaps the future progress of mankind. May I point out, gentlemen, that in a showdown, if it should become necessary for us to land a ship, to rescue those colonists, in spite of the junior E's demand that we stay clear of the planet, we will not be overriding the decision of an E, but of a boy who has not yet proven his capacity to merit an E. We have to draw the line somewhere. I am forced to agree with Gunderson on that. If we must honor the command of the junior E, then why not an associate E? Why not the student E? Why not the apprentice student E? Why not any kid in the universe who thinks he is extra smart? The line of demarcation, the point at which civil control over the individual gives way to immunity from civil control has never been clearly drawn. We may regret that the issue has arisen at all, but it has arisen. Gunderson's purpose is clear. He intends to bring the E structure back under civil control. We must salvage what we can. Perhaps if we concede his control over the juniors on down, we can maintain the immunity of the senior E. We must work to save at least that much. The floating laboratory, which might have to become a rescue ship, left six hours later. Linda was on it. End of chapter 19 of Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton, read by Dale Grossman. Chapter 20 of Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Dale Grossman. There was no frustration, no uncertainty in Gunderson's mind. His course was now clear. His observership had also read the messages spelled out by the placement of naked bodies on the grass and in the semaphore wavings of the junior E's arms. The photographs taken were all the evidence he needed to prove the morals charges he intended to bring. It might not be wise to allow the total photographs to show in the newspapers, on television, for there were ex-navy men here and there who might interpret the code. But enlarged pictures of the individuals separated from the total, disporting themselves in lewd, naked positions would do the job. Clearly the police must put a stop to this. He would have every organization in the universe dedicated to dictating the morals of others on his side. No politician would have the guts to stand up in opposition. There remained only one thing to do. Go out and get that junior E, place him under arrest, bring him back for trial. Perhaps it might be wise to let the colonists off easy. He could easily show that it was the influence of the junior that had made this disgusting orgy develop there on Eden. Nevermind that they were naked before the junior arrived, the public could always be razzledazzled about the nature of the evidence, its order and meaning. It was an old police prosecution and political trick to separate a few items from the total context, but still a good one, for the public never bothered to know the whole context of anything. An old trick to fasten on phrases and slogans to fix an attitude in the public mind for a phrase or a slogan was about all the public was able to master. Anyone who had ever served on a jury, observed its deliberations, knew that out of all the welter of evidence only certain isolated statements or facts, often minor and insignificant, penetrated the juror's mind and around these bits he formed his conclusions. Any smart lawyer knew that and tried to set up his case accordingly. His own course was clear. His orders to the selected captain of his police ship were equally clear. One, proceed at once to Eden, the scene of the crime. Two, ignore any protests from the e-ship already out there or any other ship EHQ might have sent. Three, ignore any signals from the junior E on the planet. Four, land on the planet at the site of Appletree, the main site of the lewd and obscene crime. Five, place junior E Calvin Gray under arrest. Six, place the crew of the junior E's ship, Thomas Linwood, Franklin Norton, Louis LeBeau under arrest. Seven, place any colonists who opposed the police under arrest. Eight, place the remainder of the colonists in detention under protective custody. Nine, place E McGinnis under arrest if he interfered in any way with the police in carrying out the foregoing orders. The police captain raised his eyebrows when he read the final order. Place a senior E under arrest. Certainly a senior E. It was one thing to allow these birds to wander around free as air to do as they pleased. It was one thing to let them get away with making such statements as the police attitude toward the people is the major cause of crime. It was something else and time the E's found it out for them to make any overt move to interfere with the police and the performance of their duty. Personally he hoped the old E would be full enough to resist, it would strengthen his case. The police captain obeyed the first of the orders without a hitch. He proceeded to the scene of the crime. He obeyed the second order. He ignored the command of E McGinnis received over the ship's communicator when they arrived at the scene of the crime to stand clear of the planet. What policeman moving in to make an arrest for an illegal act and certainly running around stark naked posing in lewd and indecent postures in the full view of the public was an illegal act would pay any attention to the request of an onlooker which amounted to, ah, let him alone copper. There was no communication at all from the junior E on the planet's surface so the third order did not apply. It was in trying to execute the fourth order that he ran into trouble. He passed outside the orbits of the three other ships now circling the planet. The police observer ship, the E McGinnis ship, the EHQ floating laboratory. He gave orders to lower his ship into Eden's atmosphere. The proper buttons were pushed, the proper levers pulled and nothing happened. It was as if some invisible shield held him back. He could not lower the ship into the atmosphere gently taking the normal precautions against crashing. Very well then, not so gently, full power and nothing happened. They lowered not another inch. A thrust, a thrust at tangent to the surface. Once past whatever the barrier was, they could skim the surface and come back to land on the proper site. They backed the ship further out into space. They made their thrust with full speed and momentum. There was no sensation when they hit the barrier but they did not penetrate it. It was as if a flat stone had been skipped across slick ice and they shot back out into space again. The tangent penetration would not do. Very well then, a direct thrust, full power, straight down. Be prepared to put breaking forces into immediate power lest they crash the ship at full power against the surface. And again, no sensation. Against all natural laws of inertia they came to a full stop at the given level outside the atmosphere without any feeling of jar or opposing pressure at all. What now, Mr. Gunderson, sir? Reluctantly, Gunderson ordered the police captain to contact E. McGinnis. E. Science apparently had some kind of shield that they'd kept secret from the people. And wouldn't there be a stink over that one was he released the information. Contact E. McGinnis and find out. Why, sure, E. McGinnis crackled with derisive laughter. Sure, there's a shield. I didn't make it. I wouldn't know how. No, I don't know what's causing it. But I can tell you what I think. I think they've caught the specimen they wanted. There's an E down there. So naturally the trapdoor is closed. The end of chapter 20 of Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton. Read by Dale Grossman. Chapter 21 of Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Dale Grossman. Cal didn't know, couldn't have known, that his efforts to signal McGinnis not to land were unnecessary. Didn't know, couldn't have known that he himself was the specimen they had hoped to catch. That having caught what they wanted, they would naturally close the door to the trap to prevent any possibility of escape, as yet, or any interference with their experiment. From the moment he walked away from the grassy slope where he had signaled the outer ship, he moved and thought as someone detached from ordinary existence. As he walked away from the slope, ignoring the frantic signals from the ship out in space, he felt he was also walking away from a shell of superficial celebration and into a deeper sense of reality. It was as if, in spite of e-training, for the first time in his life, he could commit himself wholly in all areas of his being to the consideration of a problem. His conviction was complete that the ship could give him nothing he needed, that all Earth's mechanical science would give him nothing he needed. That it would not provide the key to unlock the door which led into this new area of reality. He must find, must define, some new concept of man's relation to the universe. He must again travel that road. That million-year-long road man had traveled in trying to determine his position in reality. He wandered down to the river, climbed to the top of a great boulder that 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 into the shallows where they could pin them with their legs, catch them with their hands. In their need for protein the colonists were finding, as many Earth people had found, raw fish were excellent in flavor and texture as food. At the beginning of the road man had traveled first there was awareness, awareness of self as something separate from the environment. There was also awareness of self-strength, ability to do certain things to and with that environment. There was awareness of self always at the center of things, and therefore awareness of his importance in the scheme of things. But there was awareness of more. There was awareness of things happening to his environment which he in all his strength and importance could not do. Awareness gives rise to reason, reason gives rise to rationalization. If things happened in his environment which he himself could not do, then there must be something stronger and more important than he. To be ascended at the center of things, to remain ascended meant that all things of lesser importance outside the center must be made subservient to him. Else that ascendancy was lost. And if they would not assume positions of subservience they must be destroyed. If there were unseen beings stronger and more important than he who could do unexplained things to his environment, then it was plain that he must assume positions of subservience to those beings lest he himself be destroyed. So man created his gods in his own image with his own attributes magnified. Was this a wrong turning in the road? No. Awareness carried with it its commands and penalties. A problem must have an answer. Conscious and willful beings beyond his own strength and importance became the only answer open to him at that stage of his mental evolution and serving the important needs of beings ordered to chaos. Let all things he could not do and therefore could not understand be attributed to those higher beings. Without such an answer, awareness without resolution would have driven him into madness. Without such an answer, man could not have survived to remain aware. But answers also carry within themselves their commands and their penalties. The penalty being that when one thinks he has the answer he stops looking for it. The command being that he must conduct himself in accord with the answer. The long, long road that led him nowhere that today still leads untold millions nowhere. For the penalty for a wrong answer is failure to solve the problem. That non-science had failed to provide any answer beyond the 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 accident often, sometimes by celebration, the use of the brain with which he was endowed, man found that on occasion he could do things to his environment that hitherto for had been the province of the gods and in the doing had not become a god. To the courageous, the brave, the daring, the foolhardy, questions then that demanded new answers. Perhaps the most daring and courageous question of all time was asked by Copernicus. What if man is not the center of the universe? The reason for its creation. He personally escaped the penalty for asking it. The question was too new, too revolutionary for the men of his day to grasp. For non-scientific leaders secure in their ascendancy at the center of things to see that it was a threat to their ascendancy. It was to his followers, those who saw sense in the question that the wrath of non-science descended. Non-science used the only method it had ever devised to achieve the only result it had ever been able to contend. Torture and force to make dissidents kneel in subservience. But the question had been asked and once asked it could not be erased. 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 not yet been found. Cal lay back on the rock to bathe in the warm rays of setting, almost to doze, yet with thought running clear and unimpeded. The splashing and the laughter of the colonists below the rock were no more than accompanying music. The key, which opened the door to physical science, was not discovered until 1646 by a bunch of loafers, naredowells, beatniks, who hung around the coffee shops of London. Later, because non-science always persecutes those who dare ask questions and thereby demonstrate some subversion to subservience, many had to flee to Oxford, which at that time was a sanctuary for those who differed from the popular thought. As he lay there drinking in the sun, the peacefulness, he sent his vision back through the card index of his mind to find the reference, the key that opened the door to physical science, the pregnant point of view that would give birth to a whole new concept of man's relationship to the universe. He found the passages in Thomas Spratt's History of the Royal Society of London, 1667. To make faithful records of all the works of nature, or art which can come within their reach, they have studied to make it not only an enterprise of one season or of some lucky opportunity, but a business of time, a steadied, a lasting, a popular, an uninterrupted work. He stirred restlessly and changed his position to lay his head on one arm. Not quite, not yet the key. Ah, here it was, perhaps the most significant sentence ever written by man. They have attempted to free it from the artifice, the humors, and passions of sex, to render it an instrument whereby mankind may obtain a domination over things, and not only over one another's judgments. That was it, that was the essence of its difference from non-science, for the only method ever discovered until then was the non-science method of making its judgments prevail over all others. Once this answer was discovered, it too could not be erased in spite of all 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 partial answer? Only another stage? Only a section of the road man must travel. Something as limited in its way as non-science was limited? Something too narrow to contain the whole of reality? Something also to be left behind? A milestone passed instead of the goal? What comes after science? What new door must be opened into a still newer point of view? What pregnant new concept of his relationship to reality must man now discover before he continue his journey down the long road toward total comprehension? He could answer the question, but it was not the right question, for it contained no hint of the answer. He felt an irritation in himself, almost as if some teacher in the past had shaken his head in disapproval. For a moment he welcomed the distracting shout of one of the colonists and sat up. In the shallows of the river, one of the men had caught a foot-long fish and was holding it up in his hands. Delightedly the others acknowledged his victory and renewed their efforts. He lay back down again and stretched his cramped muscles. Too fast, he had come down the long, long road too fast. He had missed something, something early, something man had known in pre-science and had forgotten in science. These colonists, would they grow in awareness? Now that they seem to be a part of their environment without curiosity, their fears of even the day before forgotten. Wiped away as though it had never been was their memory of a previous existence to this. They were wholly at one with their environment, unaware. Were they to begin the long road to telescope its distance? Would they be able to continue living without peopling the trees, the streams, the clouds, the winds, with spirits benign and vengeful created in their own 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 with them. And so he found companionship with the gods and cutting himself off from the gods, loneliness. Was man the only aware thing throughout the universe? What purpose then his exploration of it? What might he find that he had not already found? Already like a minor thread, almost unheard in the symphony of exploding exploration, the questions of the artists were already finding themselves woven into music, painting, literature. Are we alone? In all this glittering, sterile universe, are there none other than we who are aware? The theme would expand as the purposelessness of colonizing still more and more worlds became wider known. The minor would become the major, the recessive dominant. The endless aim of non-science to make all other subservient had lost its purpose for those who could still think. The dominion over things instead of people, the goal of science. Was that also to lose its purpose for those who could still think? Until man, defeated by purposelessness, sank back in apathy, lost the very willingness to live. And so died? What if some other awareness did inhabit the universe, sentient and lonely? What if, further along in its exploration, it was feeling that apathy, facing that dissolution? When one is lonely, the sensible thing is to seek companionship, to discover in companionship purpose not apparent to the alone, or at least hope to discover it. For companionship there must be communication, and yet the exasperation, the futility of trying to communicate with a friend who always interpreted everything one said and did as meaning something entirely different from the intent. Some other friend was the normal answer, but what if there were no other? Wouldn't one extra effort, a final attempt to break through that closed mind be made? All right, communication then. That was wanted, he would try. But if their frameworks were so different from his that they misinterpreted all his efforts? He was interrupted by a soft pad of footsteps, bare feet on grass that sprang up to leave no sign that it had been trodden upon. A young colonist and his wife, hand in hand, laughing gaily, were coming toward him. The man was carrying a fresh-caught fish. They came to a stop at the base of his rock and looked up at him, the setting sun glinting on their smiling faces. We gave Louis a fish because he said it was our duty, the young man said. I don't remember why it was our duty. Perhaps it is our duty to give you one too. At least they were being impartial. The end of Chapter 21 of Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton, read by Dale Grothman. When he had pulled the scaled skin of the fish away from the flesh and the flesh away from the bone and eaten his fill, Cal lay back on the rock again to doze, to continue his search for a means of communicating. He was now sharply aware of their presence. He was now sharply aware of their presence. He was now sharply aware of their presence. He was now sharply aware of their presence, of their urgency, of their long patience, awareness. Once man had got over his greedy delight in occupying more and more of the universe simply because he could. To protect himself against the cosmic loneliness that must follow, he too would be searching for awareness. But he would define it in his own terms and pass it by if it did not meet those terms. That there was some other intelligence which had found man instead, Cal did not doubt. The experiment of Eden, the manipulation of natural laws, the denial of physical tools, for what purpose? To clear away the debris which prevented communication of awareness as they defined it? There was a trace, a minor trace of awareness in man not dependent upon the tools and artifacts of physical science, extra sensory perception, PSI. Underdeveloped because with physical tools, its development had been made unnecessary? Because having found the answers with physical tools, man stopped looking for the answers other than these? Was there then a science of controlling things, forces, without the use of physical tools? Was there a road of transition from the crude manipulation of things and forces through tools to the manipulation without them? There was precedent in man's science. The elaborate wirings of the first bulky and crude electronic sets that gave way to a printed diagram of such wirings on a card to obtain the same results? A step further? The visual picture, the mental image of the diagram to obtain the same results? But how? To one whose total orientation is through the use of physical tools, or the material printed on the card diagram was the physical carrier of the current. How to cause the current to follow the mental image of that diagram? With voice and music bathing one's senses simply because one thought of the diagram of a receiver? How? He felt like the turkey coming up against the obstruction of the fence too low to justify the effort of flying over it. Instead of flying, he was walking around and around, looking for an opening, walking in an endless circle. Circle? Excitedly he climbed down from the rock and headed for a patch of bare sand at the river's edge. In every framework of thought which man had ever devised, the circle was prominent, vital. It played its part in every creed of every race of every time. It was as essential to the ancient arts of magic as to the current methods of science. It played its part in the movement of planets, the shape of stars, perhaps the essence of the total universe. Man might be too didactic in requiring that awareness develop in the physical science comparable to his own. But surely awareness, whatever form it took, would know the circle. He sank down on his haunches beside the smooth sand and with the tip of his finger he quickly drew a circle. The furrow scratched in the sand did not close or smooth out. He sat back and waited. Nothing happened. It was almost as if the invisible intelligence were saying, all right, you are aware of a circle. That was obvious to us from your artifacts. What else do you know? He leaned forward and as nearly as he could estimate, he dotted the center of the circle with a finger, then scratched a radius to the perimeter. It stayed. To one side he drew another line, approximately the radius, and in parenthesis he drew a small two. Beside this he wrote r squared. He drew an equal sign. He scratched the pi sign. Then he drew another circle and with the palm of his hand he smoothed all its interior. That should be plain enough. The symbol stayed. They understood his mathematics then. The equation seemed undisturbed, yet there was something wrong with it. He had looked too closely at the sand before he saw what it was. The equals had changed to proportionate. Why had they changed the meaning by substituting proportionate to or equals? He felt a flash of exasperation. Well, sure, without tools he could not draw a perfect circle, nor two of them exactly equal. It was pedantic of them to split hairs over that. He must practice without tools to draw a perfect circle. Or was that running around the inside of his low fence? He looked out at the sand and saw the entire scratching was now smoothed out. Apparently he was on the wrong track. Hadn't gotten what they meant. He wrote again in the sand. Pi equals 3.14159265. Again equals changed to proportionate. Again he felt his flash of exasperation. It must be obvious by his string of dots that he knew Pi had never been exactly resolved. They were being too pedantic. He must exactly resolve it? Yet the numbers could be continued to infinity and never exactly resolved. He looked down again. The equation was gone. Wrong track again. He sat forward hugging his knees and stared into the water. The equation had never been exactly resolved, yet man used it as a constant, an absolute, an obvious fallacy. Was the difference between physical science and psi science based in this insignificant difference in exactness? Try something else. See what happens. There was an equation which had proved its effectiveness upon which the whole science of atomics was based. E equals MC squared, he wrote. Again equals changed to approximates. What are they saying? That the fallacy lay in using the equal sign? That the science of Pi was one of proportion? But equals is one of the possible proportions. Had we become walled in our low fence because we were too dependent upon the exact balance? Been satisfied to find that answer and therefore stopped looking for the possibilities inherent in the unbalanced equations? He looked down at the symbols again, half expecting to see them erased, but they were still there. So he was starting on the right track, but wait. Before his eyes he saw the C square smooth out, disappear. Only E proportional M remained. Were they saying that dependence upon constants was a low fence? That man must learn to do without his firm absolutes? That was the ultimate in relativity. Energy is proportionate to matter, but so all inclusive as to be too vague for use. For more than three centuries now, controversy had raged over Einstein's use of C squared in his expression. Some held that it was a product of his time, that he was able to make only one step beyond classical physics, where all things must be related to a fixed value. Others held that its inclusion was a deliberate fallacy, that Einstein by his other work had shown he knew it was a fallacy, that, tongue in cheek, he inserted it into his equation in full knowledge that his fellow scientists of his day could not even bear to think of the awesome concept of things without orientation to an absolute, that he knew they would reject him entirely, refuse even to consider his thought unless he catered that much to their superstitions. The need for an absolute was not mathematical or scientific but emotional. Man was still tortured by his determination to be the center of things, himself, the fixed absolute. The need of a familiar fixed cave where he might run and hide, close himself in securely when the chaos of storm outside became too frightening to bear. The need of a fixed absolute, whether in philosophy or science, a fixed spot that would not shift. The science of Psi then was based in a willingness to shift. He looked down at the equation to see if he were still on the right track. It had changed again. It now read E capital Delta M, the form of the function of energy to matter is variable. Quickly, another change. D F parenze M, the form of the function and the independent variable of the function vary together. Still another, E equals F parenze M. There is a general relationship of energy to matter. And then F parenze M and parenze equals zero. There is a general unspecified relationship between energy and matter. He slapped his hand down on the sand in frustration. All right, he said, you've made your point. And it means about as much as if I said to the turkey, all you have to do is fly. There was a stir behind him. He turned his head and saw Louis. A deep sigh, almost a sob came from Louis as he stared down at the symbols in the sand. They're talking to you, Louis said brokenly. I wanted only to serve them, but it was to you they talked. And all the tragedy of his life was contained therein. Cal sprang to his feet and put his arms around the other man's shoulders. The two of them, the bitter and the sympathetic, looked down at the sand. The symbols were still changing and now read, there is an infinity of relationships between matter and energy. An infinity of forms to be taken by matter as you control the energy. The signs were wiped out and the sense of their presence was gone. Cal felt the withdrawal, the sense of a lesson being over. He did not regard it. He had enough to think about. But first there was Louis, wracked with broken sobbing. Here was a man whose life had been a search for certainties, absolutes that would not shift under the weight of his questioning. No doubt in his youth, he had turned to the religions of the day and found them a tissue of rationalizations without content in reality. Then to science and found it too, constantly shifting in its interpretations, making new evaluations as evidence discounted the old. The shock of landing on Eden to drive him back into childhood interpretations again. At last the clear evidence that had been denied his belief in youth. Wholehearted was his belief in them, yet it was not to him they had talked. Louis, Cal said slowly, if you were lonely, very lonely, if you had searched through the years for companionship and thought you might have found it, would it please you to have the companion drop to his knees, grovel before you? Would this be your idea of companionship? What manner of monstrous egotism would require that? What but the incredible vanity of primitive man to whom life meant nothing more than conquering or being conquered could imagine such conduct would be pleasing to another intelligence? We are a man, Louis, if in our loneliness we found another intelligence, wouldn't we want an equal exchange instead of a basement? The use of that intelligence to know, to understand, instead of the denial of it. Louis twisted out of Cal's embracing arms and ran stumbling toward the depths of the forest. And of Chapter 22 of Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton, read by Dale Grothman. For another week, perhaps ten days or more, since time measurement had lost its meaning, Cal lived among the colonists, watched their complete retroaggression into a state of unawareness. Even the speech which they had retained seemed now to thin and falter as the simplifying of their idea-concepts. And in the same way, Cal lived among the colonists, and in the same way, Cal lived among the colonists, as the simplifying of their idea-content no longer required its use. Only Tom and Jed seemed to retain their orientation to the past, the clarity of awareness. These two spent much time together, seemed always available when Cal needed them, yet did not intrude upon his thought. Frank now seemed one with the colonists. Louis lived on the outskirts of the herd, near the colonists, but not of them. He had ceased to extort, warn, command, argue. His face was closed, told nothing of what he was thinking. And he had ceased to demand his tithe as intercessor. He was gathering his own food, catching his own fish. And he seldom let Cal out of his sight. Tom and Jed helped as best they could by maintaining contact with the old reality. They spent much of the daytime with the colonists. At night they turned their faces to the dark sky to watch the ships, now grown to four, bathed in the light of SETI like a constellation of bright stars above them. They read the intermittent flashes of light from McGinnis and from the EHQ laboratory. McGinnis told of the police ship's attempt to break through the barrier surrounding Eden, and its failure. The laboratory told of Linda's presence on board, and now and then flashed out a message to Cal from Linda, of her love, her nearness, her faith in him, her desire to be with him, her patience in waiting. McGinnis told of the arrival of a fifth ship carrying Gunderson in person. He had been unable to believe his police captain, unable to believe that a ship could not land at will. He had come in person to take charge, and apparently fumed his frustration in idleness, unable to do anything with the situation, unwilling to go back to Earth and leave it alone. Tom and Jed told Cal the contents of these messages, but to Cal the reports of the police activity seemed noise heard from far away and unrelated to himself. The messages from Linda seemed the haunting strains of a song remembered from long ago. For his mind was wholly unwrapped with the problem. He had been given the key. Reality is a matter of proportion. Change the concept of proportion, you change the material form. But he had not found the lock and the door it would open. He knew it, but he couldn't do it. Perhaps Tom might help? Tom was well grounded in math, had to be for his job as pilot. Look, Tom, Cal said one morning after they had given him the night's messages from the ships. He squatted on the ground and brushed away some leaves from the area of dirt. Watch the equal sign. He scratched a formula in the dirt. Two plus two equals four. The equal changed to colon, then to variable, then through a series of variable relationships. Tom leapt to his feet from the log where he had been sitting. That's crazy, Tom explained. It isn't just proportionate. It isn't variable, it equals. Jed looked from one to the other, obviously at a loss. Well, Cal said dryly, I'm much more interested in what they have to say than in trying to convince them that they're wrong. But if everything were only proportionate and variable, Tom argued, then you'd have nothing fixed, constant. Why, the proportionate relationship might depend solely upon choice. Nothing would be solid, dependable. Not even the footprints under your feet, Cal answered softly, not a house, not a field of grain, nor a spaceship. Simply alter the choice of proportion and they aren't there anymore. The end of chapter 23 of Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton, read by Dale Grothman. Chapter 24 of Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton, this LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Dale Grothman. Throw a key at the feet of a turkey and it is useless to him. Show him the lock it fits and it is still useless without the knowledge of how to insert the key and turn it. Unlock it for him and still it is useless without the knowledge of how to push or pull the door. This is the essence of why so few mastered the simple steps of physical science. The essence of why so few were able to get beyond step two of e-science. Anyone could disagree with a statement, but in answer to, what if it not be true, how then to account for the phenomenon? Most bogged down at that point, unable to demonstrate with evidence the validity of some other answer. Everyone knew the equation e equals mc squared, but few could implement it to build an atomic power plant. Perhaps the reactions of Tom that taking away the concept of a balanced equation destroyed all certainty and therefore was not to be countenanced was a reflection of his own reaction, willing though he might be to consider something else. In his wanderings about the island, picking fruits and nuts, stems and leaves, catching fish when he hungered, drinking the clear water of the stream when he thirsted. Yet so enwrapped that he was unaware he was taking care of his body's needs, Cal built up a whole structure of alien philosophies on the nature of the universe and saw them topple of their own weight. Until at last he realized the basic flaw in all his reasoning. He was too well grounded in the essence of physical science and all physical science was built on the balanced equation. Even in trying to consider the unbalanced equation, he had been attempting to determine the exact nature of the unbalance and to supply an X factor on the other side of the equation to restore balance. To restore balance was to maintain the status quo of physical reality. To turn the key in the lock, to open the door, he must change the physical reality to balance the equation rather than supply an X factor to keep reality unchanged. But how to do it still eluded him. At times, as if seeing partial diagrams, he seemed very close to a solution. At times it seemed the printed card of the electronic wiring was necessary only because the human mind could not visualize the whole without that aid. That music did not come through because in incomplete visualization some little part was left dangling, unconnected. And the long history of non-science belief in the magic properties of Kabbalistic signs and designs rose up to taunt him. To goad him with the possibility that perhaps man had once come close to the answer of how to control physical properties without the use of tools. That the development of a physical science had taken man down a sidetrack instead of further along the direct route toward his goal. Or that man had once been shown and never understood or forgot, yet kept alive the memory that physical shifts could be changed if he could only draw the right diagram. Through his wanderings one fact gradually intruded upon his mind. It seemed that the further inland he roamed, the closer he came to grasping the problem, the nearer the seashore, the more it eluded him. One morning he looked up at the glittering heights of Crystal Palace Mountain and suddenly he resolved to climb it. Perhaps the winds of the mountain being stronger, the fuzziness of his thoughts would be blown away. Perhaps the arrangement of the crystal and structures, the arches and spires, might catch his brain waves, modulate them, transform them, strengthen them, feed them back, himself a part of the design instead of outside it. In the framework of physical science, a nonsense notion, but what harm to try? He sought out Tom and Jed, the two who would miss him and the two who would care. There ain't no water up there as far as I know, Jed said, and you can't carry none now. Me and a party scouted the mountain once. It's mighty pretty, but useless. The quartz ain't valuable enough to cover its shipping cost back to earth. The ground is too rocky to farm, not much in the way of food growing there, so we never went back. The scientists surveyed it when the planet was first discovered, Cal said. One of the first places they went because it was so outstanding, but they found nothing interesting and useful either. Still, I think I'll go. Well, Jed said with a shrug, you can't get lost if you should lose your bearings, just walk downhill and you'll come to food and water. Follow the shoreline until you get back, either direction. And I reckon the way things go now, you ain't gonna hurt yourself. We won't worry about you none. We're all getting along all right, so you needn't worry about us either. You want me to come with you, Cal? Tom asked. No, Cal answered. I think it's better if I'm alone. He left them then and went past some colonists who were picking berries and eating them and on up the valley that ran between the two ridges. It was only a few miles to the foothills, a gradual rise of the valley floor, a gradual shallowing and narrowing of the stream, a gradual drawing in of the spoke-like ridges until the valley at last became a ravine. The morning air was clear and still, the scent of flowers and ripening fruit was sweet. Before he left the ravine and began his climb, he ate some of the fruit and washed the lingering sweet taste from his mouth with a long, cool drink of water from one of the many springs that fed this dream. He looked up at the mountain above him and his eyes picked out the most likely approach to its summit. It was not a high mountain, not in terms of those tremendous, tortured skinfolds of other planets, hardly more than a high hill in terms of those, nor as far as he could see, would the climb be difficult or hazardous? The fanciful thought of Mount Olympus on earth came into his mind, although this one was not so inaccessible, so parched and barren. The gods of Greece would have found this a pleasanter place, although they might not have lived so long in the minds of men, since the mountain was more easily climbed and therefore man would have been the more easily convinced after repeated explorations that no gods live there after all. Would the Greeks, as with later religions, have placed the sight of heaven further and further away, retreating reluctantly as man explored the earlier site and found no heaven there? Retreat after retreat until at last the whole idea was patently ridiculous? Dead are the gods, forever dead, and yet to what may man now turn in rapture? In ecstasy, in communion? What, in all physical science, filled the deep human need of these expressions? The climb of the first slope up to the crest of the ridge he intended to follow was quickly done. He turned there and looked behind him at the valley of the colonists below and far down where the valley merged into the sea and far on out at the hazy purple line of another island. As he started to turn back again to resume his climb, his eyes caught a flash of something moving in the ravine below him, sunlight on brown bare skin. He waited until he caught another glimpse through the trees. As he had suspected it was Louis still trying to keep him always in sight. His first impulse was to call out to wait for Louis, ask him to join in the climb. He discarded the impulse. His need was to get away from all others. And sympathetic and compassionate, though he may be, the confusion in Louis' mind seemed to intrude upon his own. Nor had his earlier attempts to comfort Louis met success. Let Louis follow if he willed. Perhaps the clean air would clear his mind as well. He feared no physical harm, even if Louis' tortured mind intended it. There were no tools to strike at him from a distance. Even a boulder pushed from a height above him would not strike, for that would be the physical use of a tool to gain an end. He feared no bodily attack from ambush, for his own strength and knowledge were dependable. He began his climb again, followed the crest of the ridge where it swept upward to buttress the side of the mountain. The going was not difficult. The trees and shrubs grew thinner here and provided clear spaces for him to wind among them. The stones, at first a problem to his bare feet, bothered him less and less until he forgot them. He felt no physical discomfort, neither from tiredness nor thirst, nor from the branches scraping his bare skin, nor anything to drag his mind into trivialities. Nor tortured theories such as had plagued him in trying to reason out the new concepts of a proportionate, variable reality. Instead, there was a sense of well-being, anticipated completeness, a merging of the often quite separate areas of thought, intuition and appreciation. Although at no great height, now the trees no longer grew so tall that they obscured his vision of the heights above. As he climbed, they were replaced by shrubs shoulder high, then waist high, then merely low creeping growths that his feet avoided without mental direction. A curve of the ridge brought him to the first outcropping of the crystallized quartz. On them he saw no signs of the scar left by geologists hammer, no imperfections where the nodes may have been broken away. They were complete, singularly unweathered. There was no path nor hint of one, nor sign that either scientist or colonist had ever passed this way. The ridge swung back into line and still he climbed effortlessly and without consciousness of passing time. Time and space and matter seem to have receded far into the background of consciousness. Man's star-strewn civilization was no more than a dream. It was as if he, alone and complete, occupied the whole of the universe, encompassed it as he was encompassed by it. Yet, not alone, their presence, which seemed so evanescent on the valley floor, was closer now, more clearly sensed. Almost as if, at any instant, the veil of blindness would be dispelled and they would stand revealed. Now, up the final slope of the mountain, he threaded his way through higher outcroppings of more perfectly formed quartz with deeper, amethyst hue scintillating in SETI's sunlight, diffracting not only the purples but into the greens and reds and blues. As he came around the base of one of these, there, towering above, he caught his first full view of the great spires, pinnacles, buttresses, and arches of the mountain's crest. It was the crystal palace. The climb had been steep, steeper than it had appeared from below. Yet his breathing was not labored, his mouth was not dry from thirst, nor were his muscles protesting the effort. He did not need to stop and rest to gather his energy for the last, steep assault upon the peak. Far below him, he saw Louis toiling up a slope, then dropping with every appearance of exhaustion when he came to each level place. Still, he would rest no more than a minute and always his head was turned to keep sight of Cal above him. He would push himself to his knees, then to his feet, and slowly, step by step, began his climb again. As if from far away, Cal felt a pity at the uselessness of this self-torture, the senseless need of a man to punish himself for the guilt of imagined wrongs, and felt a wonder if the strangely developed moral sense of man had not, after all, done more harm than good. For in the ordered universe, where everything fitted into the whole, what could be either good or bad, right or wrong, except as a reflection of man's inadequacies in his imaginings? Rightness and good, wrongness and evil, these could not possibly be other than assessments of furtherance or threat to the ascendancy of me and mine at the center of things, and had no more meaning beyond that context. He turned from watching Louis, pitying him, and made the last sharp climb with no more effort than the whole had been. Now he drew near the towering structures of the crest. Now he was beside them. Now he walked beneath and through an arch, which seemed almost a gothic entrance, and stood transfixed in ecstasy. Magnificent the dreams of man that took form in steel and stone and glass, yet none matched the lightness, the grace, the intricacy, the sublime simplicity of those interwoven crystal structures, where light from the noonday sun separated prismatically until it filled the air with a myriad of living, darting, colored sparks of fire above him. Where the breeze that blew through the vibrating spires made blended sounds the ear could barely endure in rapture. As once in childhood he had stood in a grove of giant trees that laced their limbs in gothic splendor above him. Now again he stood, lost in time and space and being, lost in vision and in music, which neither had nor needed form nor beginning nor end, and knew it was a simple tool, their concession to the mind of man to bridge the gap between their minds and his. Without wondering more he sank down upon the mossy turf of the floor and lay supine to gaze upward to follow line to blended line until they seemed mirrored into infinity. The darting lights above him whirled, spiraled up and then down, clockwise then counterclockwise, reminding him, reminding him, the internal structure of crystals, the end of chapter 24 of Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton, read by Dale Grossman.