Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton (book club reads TXT) 📖

human beings. It begins to appear that it is."

"I've caught many a wild animal in my day," Jed said slowly, thoughtfully. "I've pinned 'em up in cages, watched how they behaved. I guess scientists do that all the time. Don't want to hurt 'em, fact make 'em as comfortable as they can—just want to know about 'em. Sometimes, after I watched them awhile I'd turn 'em aloose and watch 'em 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 holdin' us don't know that, and might turn us aloose when, after a time, we don't bear any young."

He paused and looked even more thoughtful.

"Sometimes," he added slowly, "after I studied 'em, found out how they would behave no matter what, I had to kill 'em, 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[121] 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," Jed answered. "Pin 'em up with a high fence, they'll back up, take off and fly over it. But pin 'em with a low fence, and they won't. Seems like they know they have to fly over a high obstruction, but don't figger 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 in the yard lookin' 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," Jed said. "They just keep tryin' to walk around the obstruction. Not enough sense to treat it like a high fence, because it ain't high, see? No use tryin' to tell 'em 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 'em, and they can't figger 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 argue that whatever its evolutionary physical shape, this wasn't so important as its mental evolution—because that mental[122] evolution would follow the same course as ours. They wouldn't be truly alien, because science would be a common denominator.

"Now it 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 co-ordinate 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 set 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 forgot 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 a caged animal I'll see how to unlock an opening, or maybe realize the only way out is to fly."

There beside the softly flowing river, where water was obeying natural law 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 acknowledgment 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,[123] no equipment for direct communication. They may 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 marooned 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 the men and women in the viewscopes. If after dusk, they still might 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 viewscope 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 fifteen 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[124] 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 any artificial thing. And if They should turn Their wrath upon us—woe, woe!"

His face was stricken in the light of a 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, comforting them when disaster struck down.

After a time the three men gave up trying to wave their acknowledgment 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 acknowledgment, but rather reassuring men in such deep distress that they could not answer. Reassuring them that help was at hand and morning 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. Louie, too, awoke, 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.[125]

In spite of his warnings, Cal, and those co-operating 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 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.

Louie, 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 at such childish, primitive things, he watched his arms spell out one more message.

"Keep off! No mechanical science allowed in this co-ordinate system."[126]

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 had 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.

[127]

19

"This time," the communications supervisor said with all the firmness he could muster, "this time there must not be any interference with communication. 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 be giving the appearance of backing down, commanded savagely, "just watch it, that's