by RICHARD ASHBY
If you enjoyed MICROCOSMIC GOD, here is a story that shows, in a sense, the "other side of the coin." It is a remarkable concept of the unleashed giant: man freed from the traps of his own "civilized" conditioning. I think you'll join me in saying, "Oh, if it could only be true!" And perhaps, soon, it will.
AS HE ENTERED the View Room the lagoon screen showed a coffee-colored girl with blond hair to her hips emerging from the sparkling blue water. In one hand she carried the shaft of an iron-hard pemphis wood spear, in the other was her hair stick.
"Hi," said Ted.
The tech he was relieving started, jerked his attention from the screen. "Oh, Jepson. You scared me. Hello."
"What gives with Nea, there?" Ted nodded at the girl on the telescreen, the girl fifty feet above them and a half mile down the island who tossed the broken spear onto the white sand.
"Nea, huh?" The tech gave a resigned sigh. "They still all look alike to me."
Ted went to the control console. "Wait till you've been here a few years, Mike. You'll know their scars, the number of cavities in each set of choppers." His fingers found the zoomar pot, began to twist up the magnification. "Nea, thirteen years old, daughter of Le and Beto. Oriental and Negroid ancestry, predominately."
Nea's face and shoulders filled the screen. Her strong drip‑ping wet features showed plainly her racial heritage; large, though not unattractive upper lip, arched nostrils, and the incongruous charm of slanted eyes. "And that blond hair?" asked Mike as the girl began to wring water from her long tresses.
"Her paternal grandma's contribution. She mated with one of the Chinese. Her coloring skipped her own kids to show up in Nea."
Mike grunted and began to collect his belongings—jacket, pen, thermos. “There's nothing much new, I guess. Most of the young ones are out on the reef. There's a big octopus washed in. He's too tired to get back out to sea, evidently. Cut up, maybe, but he's got plenty of poop left. I guess Nea broke her spear on him." He scribbled his name on the duty log, wrote 6:04 as his off time. "The mike at point thirteen's gone dead. I noted it down, called maintenance. There's a little ghosting on pickups eight and two. Not really bad enough to mention. Aside from that, nothing new. See you."
" 'Night."
For the next few minutes Ted Jepson was busy loading the sight-sound recorders with fresh tapes, and checking the motors, all the while keeping an eye on the twenty television screens that made a mosaic of the huge wall across the room from the control board. Then he dialed Weather. "Fair and warmer, not much change in temperature. A nice night for romance," said the boy at the other end.
Radar Sweep had little to report. They'd gotten a flicker of metal from something fifteen miles northwest, but the Garbage Men had already taken a sub out after it. Yes, they'd have Garbage call him when they heard anything.
The girl at Transient Desk told him in her soft Texas drawl that there was a vip from U.N. just in. "But he's bein' entuhtained by Public Relations, so he probably won't be sobah too long."
Jepson hoped she was right. If there was anything he detested, it was having politicoes snooping around during his shift. The journalists and visiting scientists were often bad enough, but the U.N. reps with their cold eyes peeled for "useless expenditure," their frequent inability, even, to grasp the great significance of the project, really teed him off.
Sinking into the swivel chair, he turned up the sound level of the lagoon mike and let his worry wash in the sigh and tumble of ocean noises from above. Nea had finished plaiting her hair, and after winding it into a clever bun, secured it with a thrust of her hair stick. Then picking up her broken spear, she trotted up the beach and along the path that led into a dense arbor of Tournefortia trees. As her image faded from the screen, the one next to it picked her up and followed her through the Tacca fields till she dwindled out of sight among the bamboos behind the huts. Another screen caught her as she emerged, and Ted watched her enter the palm-thatched weapons lean-to.
Tapping the mike that was concealed in a nearby outcropping of "stones"—reinforced concrete, actually—he listened as she complained to the custodian of spears, a boy of her own age with a crippled right leg. The youngster answered that while she was quite within her rights to be vexed about the spear's breaking, it was possible that she should not have used a weapon designed for fish on an octopus. A large octopus, added the girl in agreement. They joked about the animal's now having a spear tip to fight back with, and Nea selected another weapon.
The entire conversation had lasted almost three seconds, not counting the laughter.
Routine stuff.
Ted looked idly at the other screens; the pleasant activity of the quiet village, lovers lost to themselves in the bamboo groves and in the caves at the base of the island's highest hill, people gathering trapped lobster from the tidal pools, and children playing some mad racing game amongst the litter of coconut husks beneath the palms.
A routine afternoon in heaven, he mused. Eight square miles of heaven for three hundred and twenty-five people, not one of whom could possibly appreciate it.
"Heaven" was thirty-six years old, and had cost millions and millions of dollars, and thus far had presented the world of science with more headaches and mystery than enlightenment.
As a philologist, Ted Jepson was quite certain the biggest enigma was the strange and splendid language the islanders had already evolved. A flexible, immensely swift communication in which, for example, a noun concept could take on a verb tinge by a slight lilting of the inflection; in which "limited" absolutes and negatives existed. A language of predominately external syntax, with almost no basic structural priority, yet one capable of astonishing refinements and references.
He had many times given up attempting to describe it to such lay observers as journalists or philosophers, for to speak of it one was almost forced to converse in it. Eleven universities on five continents had already acknowledged this, and—somewhat sheepishly, for it was, after all, a "primitive" language—had established special Chairs to teach it.
But specialists in other fields insisted theirs were the puzzles: Psychologists, for example, chose up sides and fought pitched battles in learned journals attempting to reconcile the islanders' tough-minded realism with their extreme altruism. Philosophers grew petulant over the islanders' zero amount of speculation over their own origin. And musicologists took to drink when faced with what they resignedly termed the "sophistication" of their quarter-toned love songs and lullabies.
Sometimes Ted Jepson wondered if Science's bewilderment might not, after all, be an absurdly naive thing. Were they all, himself included, missing the obvious point? Perhaps the islanders simply illustrated a normal development for any group so freed from the weight of a parent culture with its outmoded jumble of mores, language, and legends.
That was, after all, the purpose of the experiment.
In 1978 the Swiss delegate to the United Nations, in a caustic and rather flip vein, had stung the General Assembly with his observation that ". . . Whereas that gaggle of blunderers, the League of Nations, impudently set out to cure man of the disease called War, we of the U.N. have evidently deemed it nicer to turn our backs on the disease and treat its symptoms."
The Western bloc was instantly on its feet, howling for the remark to be retracted. And for the first time in two years, Russia decided to sustain a Western resolution. It was several minutes, in the swirl of high-strung confusion, before the Chair managed to recognize the minister from Australia.
"The criticism, while not without its point, is hardly constructive. What," inquired that man, "does the spokesman for the Alps propose we do?"
It was the sixty-four buck question, and the answer staggered the world.
Take an uninhabited island, suggested the man from Switzerland. Rid it of its rats and flies and disease germs, and plant it with simple foods. Beneath that island construct quarters for a team of scientists, and equip them with means to see and hear everything that goes on above them. Next, stock the island with forty or fifty infants, retire, and ponder the results. Carefully. For only by determining the nature of the patient, man, could a diagnosis be properly prognosticated and the particular therapies developed.
Any questions?
While jaws dropped still further, and eyebrows climbed higher, the Swiss admitted he was speaking as chairman of a group which included Mexico, the Philippines, Sweden, India, Thailand, New Zealand, and Ireland. The engineering details of the proposal had already been worked out, and a certain island in the Marshall group had tentatively been chosen for U.N. consideration.
Five hours later, while the storms of controversy were beginning to build in every world capital, a New York public relations firm began planting their releases. At first they were of the "Well, after all, why not?" tone. A week later they hit the second phase of their campaign, and few people in the civilized world remained in ignorance of such things as how the infants were to be fed until they could forage for themselves. (From the walls of a sterile irradiated cave, maneuverable rubber teats would seek out the tiny mouths. And when they could crawl, they would find food had "dropped" from the bushes and trees that were to overhang a low-walled pen just outside the cave.)
What foods?
Well, milk formulas at first, of course. Then coconuts with their cool sweet fluid, their juicy flesh. The starchy tubers of the Tacca plant—sometimes called Polynesian Arrowroot; very nourishing, tasty, simple to grow. The crunchy golden keys of the native "screwpine." Purslane, an excellent green whether cooked or raw. Clams, lobster, fish of all kinds. A panel of gourmets and dieticians found it profitable to assemble before a C.B.S. camera and discuss the delicacies that would be available. The emphasis was always on when the project "gets under way," not if, and world opinion began to swing into line.
But where would the infants come from?
They were ready for that one, too. On May 10, 1979, the M.C. of Mutual's big "Retire For Life" show announced he had an important surprise. "Whoopercolossal," he phrased it. And near the end of the program, the stage revolved to bring into view thirty couples who stood smiling into the sets of eighty million viewers. They had gathered here from all over the world, America was told, to volunteer their services to the project.
Parents-to-be.
The opposition threw in the sponge.
Contracts were let for the island engineering. Medical teams set about choosing the parents from the volunteering hordes. Psychologists and pediatricians and cement authorities conclaved with electronics men. Russian and American U.N. officials cross-questioned agronomists and radar technicians instead of each other.
And "Heaven" was ready for occupancy in little over two years.
Its designation on standard marine charts had always been "Muritok" in the Marshalls, but this seemed hardly satisfactory. An international contest was held, and a Turkish housewife became rich for having been the first to suggest "Arcadia." The name didn't stick, however, for the world had been calling it "The Island" from the beginning, and was quite happy to go on calling it that.
It was quite a production. Radar patrols kept the sea surrounding the island empty of all craft, save for commuting subs. Grapples could be hoisted from other subs to snatch down any foreign objects floating toward the island. The project's technical complement of fifty men and women, more or less, was housed in spacious, well-lighted, well-ventilated quarters beneath the surface. Television eyes scanned the island from every conceivable hiding place—from within boulders, behind coral walls above and below the water, from "palm stumps" and cliff walls. Except for a few unimportant blind spots, there was no hiding place topside. Nothing dare be sacred. Nothing was.
Forty-five babies were born in a Tokyo hospital within four days of each other, a feat of timing which elicited no small amount of comment, and were flown to the island when the youngest was ten days old.
Twenty boys, twenty-five girls, their parents representative of the finest breeding stock to be found in every major nation. And the world adopted them from the start.
The weekly TV show transmitted from the island, "Project Peace," maintained the highest audience rating ever tabulated. Cautiously edited at first, in deference to the prodigious multiplicity of international taboos, the films showed merely the fat, healthy youngsters cooing and laughing and playing happily in the bright Pacific sunlight. Careful shots, with shadows and branches amended the nakedness, to begin with, but by the time the toddlers were beginning their wide-eyed exploration of the island, people had, for the most part, grown quite accustomed to their undress. Mistakes were made, of course; the hilarious and now famous episode, in which two eight-year-olds —a Caucasian boy and his little Japanese girl companion—discovered the effects of fermented coconut sap, was poorly received in some quarters.
But on the whole, earth widened its moral outlook considerably to make room for its beloved castaways.
And the castaways, as if responding to this generous adoration, thrived and multiplied.
The intercom buzzed and Ted flicked it on. "Jepson," he said.
"Margate," came the nasal reply, "in Transmission. Look, Ted, we're mighty short on next week's show, and I hate to pad it out with any more library stuff. How about getting me a platter of something good?"
"Such as?"
"Oh, you know. Something interesting. New. Some shots of them inventing horses, or biting out doilies with their teeth. You know."
"Yeah. New."
"If you like, I'll go topside and stir them up a little. There's a certain redhead with long brown legs—"
"I'll get you something," Ted interrupted. He clicked off. Did Margate, he wondered sourly, have to be so typical? Every new man seemed to go through the same pattern. First, a detached, "veddy professional" attitude toward the droves of nubile beauties who wandered around topside. Next, with their probationary periods successfully over, they frequently found it necessary to visit the View Room—some of the excuses Jepson had listened to had been dillies. And finally, after becoming more or less blasé about what was so near, yet so far, they began to be obsessed with the temptation to "go topside and stir them up a little," as Margate had put it.
That last stage was what nearly got 'em, Ted knew. Even the graybeards on the project, who certainly realized the experiment was predicated entirely on strict nonintervention, occasionally voiced wistful, half-serious desires to have the islanders find a phonograph and an album of blues records, a flashlight, or an illustrated encyclopedia—anything that would jar them into an interesting reaction.
And there were those others who wanted to go topside once just for the hell of it. Himself, for example. He supposed that's why he'd done it.
Ted decided to get Margate some shots of the octopus kill. Ought to go over well, he figured: Good-looking youngsters; the azure, crystal-clear depths of the lagoon; sun setting into a glory of cerise and golden clouds; and the poor squid providing the element of "danger." He flicked .on two screens from a supplemental bank on the right wall, turned up the corresponding mikes. The room came alive with excited sounds and brilliant color.
After starting a recorder going and setting up the proper circuits, he backed away from the lively scene with a twist of the zoomar pot and turned on the sound track. Then, with ample time allowed for commentary, he panned in to the splashing mob of kids and settled down to alternate takes, first a high-angle shot from the eye concealed in a jutting needle of "coral," then with an almost water-level view from full front. The octopus wasn't visible, but there was plenty of inky discharge in the four feet of water to mark its presence.
With the low-level eye, Ted began getting some fine close-ups of faces as the kids ganged up to rush their quarry. From a lass of twelve or so, with Ireland written all over her freckled features, he got fifteen seconds of that ecstatic blend of joy and fear known only to children. From a tall, magnificently-built Negro boy, a fierce scowl of determination. And in contrast, the face of a quiet girl, whose unbound hair floated like a soft ebony cloud about her shoulders. Ted panned in as she pursed her lips thoughtfully and closed her eyes, a line of concentration furrowing her brow.
The brunette's private reverie wasn't carrying the episode forward, he realized, and with his finger poised above the alternate "take" button, he examined other faces in the group.
They were set in similar expressions.
A chill of astonishment swept him as he gazed at the youngsters. Like dripping statues, like sleepers in a dream, they held their attitudes of rapt, blind attention while ten long seconds came and went.
Fifteen seconds. Then a small blond boy opened his eyes and shuddered as if to free himself from an unpleasant vision. The spear slipped from his fingers as he turned his face slowly up to the darkening sky. "Sarrceoah ay," he stated, as if to himself. Then louder he said the phrase, again and again.
Ted puzzled it out to mean roughly ". . . At this spot, we nine, from this spot away in no more time than it takes me to run from the spring to the shore, for there is heaviness and vast heat, down faster and unlike— Pain, otherwise—" 'While he was speculating over the lad's unwillingness to complete the concept—there had been a definite downward inflection to the root tones that meant refusal to elaborate, rather than inability—the other eight children broke from the spell that had held them.
Abandoning their spears, they turned almost as one, and struck out for the strip of sandy beach a hundred feet away.
And Ted Jepson got his second shock that day. An even nastier one than the first, for the youngsters were not employing their usual frantic dog-paddling. Each swam true and swiftly, with graceful economy of energy: the Australian crawl!
And in the thirty-some seconds it took them to reach the shore, Ted realized his professional career was over. No need, even, for the authorities to get out their scope needles, for the island children had copied his style perfectly—that odd, loose‑legged kick that had helped him place second in the 1992 Olympic fifty-meter event.
A correspondence-school detective could easily sew up the case.
But as the children dragged themselves across the sand and melted away into the thick foliage of the Toumefortia grove, it occurred to Ted to wonder why they had not shown off their new accomplishment before. It was New Year's Eve he had gone topside, swimming out through the submarine locks and up to an isolated strip of beach. And this was September. Why hadn't they been seen practicing the stroke? And why wait to use it? If they had delayed this long, maybe there was a chance they'd not do it again for a while—for long enough for him to build an alibi, plan a defense.
He'd have to hide the disk, of course. As a scientist the realization gave him a few sharp moral twinges, but as Ted Jepson who had to eat, it wasn't so much.
The intercom buzzed as he reached to shut off the recorder. Guiltily, he snatched away his hand and flicked on the box. "Jepson," he said.
"Radar," shouted the other. "Chavez in Radar. Hey, I'm tracking something in at hundreds of miles an hour, maybe thousands. It looks as if—"
With an impact that shocked the little coral island to its last polyp bud, something smacked into the lagoon and began to roar. The view screens showed nothing but clouds of boiling vapor.
Ted found his voice before the other did. "You were saying?"
"Yeah! What was that?" The radar man's words were hardly audible above the thunder from the speakers. Ted turned them down. "I was saying," went on Radar—a noticeable shake in his voice—"that whatever it is, was, might hit the island. Where did it land?"
"In the lagoon. Whatever it was, it was mighty hot. Water's boiling up there. Did you get pictures of it?"
"Hope so. We started filming the second it pipped. Wanna wait till they're here?"
Ted told him he would. Taking off the disk of the incriminating Australian crawl exhibition, he slipped it under the duty log and loaded up the recorder again. With both of them going, he began getting shots and sounds of the excited islanders as they hurried from whatever they'd been doing to line the lagoon shore.
"Still there?" asked Radar.
"Sure."
"Meteorite! Big chunk about the size of a football. Black and kind of knobby. Got some good pictures," he said proudly. "Sell 'em to Life, mebby. 'Bye."
The steam clouds were lifting from the water, and Ted could make out pieces of what he supposed was boiled octopus floating on the surface. It had been quite a day, he mused wryly.
Taking up a pen, he began to brief the incident for the log, but a face detached itself from his memory and floated down over the page. The face of a small blond boy, his gaze upturned to the sky. And he had said something . . . something oddly important.
Ted tapped the pen thoughtfully against his teeth, and the boy's words came drifting back: ". . . Heaviness and vast heat. Down faster . . . pain . . . from this spot we go—"
Hot and heavy and fast: the meteorite! And the lad had spoken of it at least three minutes before it hit!
Ted laid the pen carefully down on the console and wet his lips. Cautiously, and with nice control, he allowed the impossible fact into his familiar scheme of things. Then he entered the picture and studied it for a place in which the new data might fit.
An hour later he discovered it wouldn't fit at all, but that it had managed to twist the familiar scheme into a beauty of a maze. He gave up and began to stride angrily around in his maze.
The stars burned hotly against the velvet midnight sky when he broke surface.
For long minutes he rested, floating, filling his aching lungs again and again with the rich salty air, and letting the ground swells carry him closer to the breaker line. When a comber finally humped itself beneath him, he began swimming it, lashing the luminous plankton into a frail pinkish glow like the one marking the shore. Suddenly he was with it, sliding down the long black slope, then fighting for air in the churning white thunder when the wave broke.
Wearily, Ted dragged himself up from the backrush and onto the narrow shelf of beach. In the bright starlight it looked just as it had that New Year's Eve; three or four-hundred square feet of sand, hounded on three sides by sheer, overhanging rock walls, and on the fourth by the restless Pacific.
A blind spot. Inaccessible except from the ocean, and under water at high tide. Not worth a mike and an eye.
There were five other blind spots on the island.
One of them had to have a lot of answers hidden in it, or Dr. Ted Jepson would rapidly become the world's most unpopular man.
He leaned against the cliff and rested. Water trickled from the pockets of his shorts. It was a forlorn gamble, he supposed, but what else could he do? Such an important discovery as an apparent precognitive ability in those nine island children had to be studied. It was not in him to keep silent about it. But to demonstrate their wild talent would also be to show them swimming like a certain ex-Olympic champ. And he would have to tell of getting drunk at the techs' New Year's brawl, and feeling an almighty desire for a swim; of sneaking out through the submarine tunnel—no mean feat—and up through twenty-five feet of surging ocean to this isolated beach. Scared sober by then and dreading the even more dangerous return trip, he had nevertheless put in an hour of long-wanted exercise.
And he had obviously been observed.
Choosing the least precipitous cliff, Ted began the climb, searching by touch for handholds on the spray-wet rock, pulling himself slowly upward by sheer strength. It took him a quarter of an hour to make the ascent.
With scratched and bleeding fingers, he dragged himself over the lip of the cliff and peered down at the island beyond. The first non-islander on the spot in thirty-six years.
It was a dubious honor, he reflected dourly—like being the first man to paint a goatee on the Mona Lisa.
Shedding himself of his sandals and muddy shorts, he ditched them in some bushes and set off naked down the hill. With his dark lamp-tan and sinewy build there was a fair chance of his being taken for an islander if spotted by some over-alert tech. Knowing the location of the eyes and mikes gave him better odds, he hoped, and the man on night duty in the View Room usually kept on only those screens that showed the village and its nearby paths. Not that he'd be any worse off if spotted.
Of course, he mused dryly, picking his way through a heavy stand of coconut palms, he could always stay topside. It was unlikely that they'd send a posse after him. He could hole up in one of the blind spots and maybe become a sort of god to the islanders.
But he remembered the children in the lagoon who had looked three minutes into the future ...
Punk material for worshipers.
The first blind spot he entered gave him a mild surprise. In what had been thought to be a solid tangle of bamboo and breadfruit trees, Ted found a tiny rectangular lake, made by someone's damming up the leg of a stream. Investigation proved it to be as wide across as he could reach, up to his shoulders in depth, and about twenty paces long.
Quite adequate for practicing the Australian crawl.
But why? Why should the islanders, so enviously free of superstition and legislation, take such pains to hide the activity? Were the kids forbidden by their elders to use such a swimming style, and had they built this spot to outwit the oldsters?
A flimsy supposition at best.
He gave it up and left the thicket. It was brighter now. From the western oceans a half moon had swum above the horizon, and with it came a freshening breeze that bore the scent of wood smoke and jasmine. Ted struck off through the shadows for the second spot on his itinerary, a quarter of a mile away.
Nature had caused this one: The disastrous typhoon of '98 which had killed twenty of the islanders had torn from a hillside one of the "boulders" with its eye and mike setup, and had hurled it into the sea, wires and all. The area it had scanned was consequently lost, of course—a triangular half-acre of grass and rocks, crossed by two paths. Since then, by careful observation, the top brains of the project had deduced that the area was unchanged and as unimportant as ever.
Ted came to an abrupt halt as he entered the rough meadow.
The top brains, he observed, had made an impulsive deduction. Where the paths had once intersected sat a huge sphere of glass and dull metal. Two rods protruded from a band about its middle, and to an opening between them led a flight of four or five steps.
He crept to within ten yards of the thing before its purpose dawned on him. After thinking carefully for a few minutes, surprised at his own calmness, he backed cautiously away.
The tide was in when he reached the cliff so he didn't bother to climb down. He jumped. Five minutes later he was within the island, clinging weakly to a submarine's mooring line. Another five sufficed to see him into Dr. Finley's austere quarters.
Ted began at the beginning, with the confession that the island children had learned the crawl from himself. The graying director of Project Peace reacted about as Ted had imagined: with anger—controlled, but contemptuous. Ted accepted the man's bitter rebuke without reply.
Lean and dignified in his robe and sandals, Dr. Finley paced over to a frosty carafe of water and poured himself a drink. "And I gather, Jepson, from the condition of your clothes, that you've been topside just now."
"Yes, sir."
"Why? Why did you see fit to jeopardize the project again?"
"I went up because the islanders have at least nine children among them capable of precognition. There's a sight-sound record in my quarters proving they knew of the meteorite's coming at least three minutes in advance. Shall I get it for you?"
Finley looked away, sipped his water in silence for a time. "Not now," he said thoughtfully. "I'm inclined to believe you. Something of this sort happened years ago. I was in the View Room and saw a youngster run in panic from beneath a cliff two hours before it gave way and fell." He put down the glass, lighted a slender cigar. "All right, Jepson. What did you expect to find topside? Something to vindicate yourself?"
"That's hard to say, sir. I suppose I hoped to, but I was looking more for something that would answer a lot of questions. I knew it would be my last chance."
Finley's tufted gray eyebrows pulled together quizzically.
"I mean things like their language, sir. Their music. Their impossibly splendid ethics. The air of sophistication and assurance in everything they do." The explanation sounded lame and inadequate even to Ted. Grimly, he continued. "Call it curiosity, maybe, but I was going to have a look in those blind spots."
They eyed each other for long seconds, Finley drawing thin blue smoke from his cigar, and Ted beginning to itch beneath his wet clothing. The director finally spoke, his voice sardonic. "Find anything?"
"I did. In sector twenty-seven, a grove of trees, there is a hidden trough of water. Large enough for the children to have learned to swim in."
Finley frowned, studied the fine ash at the tip of his cigar. "You're certain it wasn't a natural formation?"
"Quite. There was a stone dam."
"Hm-m-m." Finley rolled the cigar carefully between his fingers. "Any ideas about it?"
"No, sir. Not yet." It was petty of him, Ted knew to drag this out so.
"Anything else?"
"Yes."
"Well, dammit?"
"At sector thirty-five, blind since '98. There's a spaceship just inside the zone."
Ash fell from the director's cigar onto the rattan carpeting. "Ridiculous, Jepson. The U.N. hasn't lost any craft. They're either in Arizona, Australia, or trying to get past the moon. And, besides, if one had fallen, Radar would have spotted it. What gave you—"
"Excuse me, Dr. Finley, but this wasn't any ship of ours. It was small, just about fit into this room. It floated six inches off the ground. The grass around it was trodden down, and something that might be a folding chair stood nearby. I say it's a spaceship with some sort of gravity drive. It wasn't built on this planet. And I suggest you get some pictures of it quick."
Dr. Finley set about relighting his cigar as if nothing of importance had been said. From behind a cloud of smoke he shot Ted a swift and hard gaze. "You sober, Jepson?"
"Of course."
"Too bad. Maybe there is something up there." He threw the cigar into a huge pottery tray and stalked angrily about the room.
Ted couldn't figure it. One of the most momentous events in earth's history had occurred, and Finley expressed displeasure. He asked the older man about this.
"Don't you see, son? If you're correct in your assumptions, it spells the end of Project Peace. The islanders have undoubtedly been in contact with this ... this visitor. What good are they to us now as a study of mankind? We're on the eve of discovering how to live with ourselves . . . maybe only two or three generations from it, and suddenly the stars are in our backyards. We're not ready. We're no more ready for space than we were for the printing press, or for atomics. We're savages, trying to discover how the islanders live in peace and in happiness, adjusted to their environment. It's too soon, Jepson. Too soon by at least a couple of hundred years."
"You forget one thing, sir," Ted told him quietly.
"What?"
"The islanders undoubtedly know of him, as you said. And he undoubtedly knows of us. But they're giving no more indication of that knowledge than they gave of knowing how to do the crawl. Why haven't we heard them talking about that great globe? Why aren't they up there gathered around it, squatting on their haunches wondering about it? How long has it been there?"
In silence, old Dr. Finley mulled over what Ted had said. Three minutes later he picked up his phone and called the submarine commander from his bed. "Captain, I'm sending a man down to pick up a pair of swim-fins and a Cousteau lung. He's under my orders. Chap by the name of Jepson. Thanks."
He called Stores. "I want a waterproof transceiver. Sound and sight. A small one, hand size. Technician Jepson will be over in a few minutes to pick it up. Good-by."
He turned to Ted, studied him bleakly. "You realize my position, I suppose. If there's nothing up there . . . I'm sending you because you've already been seen by the islanders. It hasn't made an observable impact on them, aside from the swimming business. So there's no use showing them another man." As he began getting into his clothes, he explained that Ted was to keep the two-way open from the moment he touched land topside. He was not to establish contact with the sphere—that was strictly a U.N. affair—but was to send a close-up of it, then back off up into the hills and hide the transceiver, aiming it to send images till it ran down. "All right, son. Get to it."
An extremely curious group of men were on hand at the sub docks to see him off. They helped him into the swim-lung, assisted him in buckling on the rubber fins over his sandals, and after Ted had clambered awkwardly down into the dark lapping water, handed him the transceiver.
"Bring me back a blonde," shouted one of the sailors from the sub. His words echoed strangely in the stone and water vault. The lung and the fins made it simple going, despite the two-way's drag. Once outside, and surfaced into the pale moonlight, Ted made for a better landing spot than the isolated beach. He had no intention of ever scaling those rock walls again, so he swam a few hundred yards down the coast and put in on a high reef of coral that formed a rough, natural jetty. Pulling himself carefully up over the sharp incrustations, he scrambled ashore and unfastened the lung from his chest. This and his swim-fins he ditched in the profuse undergrowth and turned on the two-way. When Dr. Finley's face and shoulders glowed into the dollar-sized screen, sunk into the set's butt end, Ted told where he was and checked reception.
Then he turned inland, oddly self-conscious as he passed before the hidden eye and mike units, each time resisting the impulse to thumb his nose or grimace into them. Nerves, he guessed. He was pretty highly keyed. He forced himself to take it easier.
Reception, both sight and sound, faded completely away as he neared the blind spot. Ted thought it over, then backed out and checked when the worried-looking Finley reappeared.
"You faded, too," said the director. "Some sort of natural blanket, you suppose?"
Ted didn't think so. "Let me go in closer, sir," he whispered. "Maybe it'll lift closer in. If it's from the ship, it's bound to have a sort of umbrella effect, or his stuff wouldn't work, either." He began to move forward while Finley chewed that over with one of the electronics men. The blanketing could have a central no-zone, he supposed, but there was no telling how close. Thirty feet from the ship? A yard?
He entered the meadow.
It was still there. But now a light burned within it, a soft and faintly greenish glow, like the low flare from an early cathode tube. Something about it served to impress upon Ted the absolute alienness of the ship. His skin prickled uncomfortably as he considered a few of the grimmer possibilities: hard radiations, for one. Should have brought a counter. Extraterrestrial germs. Should have— He ran a hand over his mouth. Should'a stood in bed.
A glance showed the transceiver still dead. He moved in closer, tempted by the craft's great windows and the half-seen objects within.
"Hello," said a mild tenor voice behind him. In English.
Ted whirled, automatically hefting the mass of the two-way. "Peace," continued the voice. "And speak island."
He came forward from the pool of shadow cast by a boulder. A human, Ted saw with relief, clad like himself in shorts and sandals. No, not quite human . . . taller, more slender, and with huge black eyes almost twice the size of Ted's own. But decently humanoid. Thankfully, he put aside all worries of intelligent fungi, frog creatures, and other Sunday supplement spawnings.
"That is yours?" He indicated the alien ship.
"Yes. An old model, but one to which after long years of use I have become attached. It gets me there."
Ted took a long breath and asked the question. "Where?"
"Back and forth. To this planet from others unknown to you. My home is in another star system. One nearer the center of the galaxy." He stepped closer, an effortless grace to his movements that suggested his accustom to greater gravities than earth's. "May I compliment you on your composure?"
Ted made the palm-up island gesture that meant acceptance, acquiescence. The motion caught the other's notice. "I tried to make them quit that. Semantically," he used the English word, "it's too broad. By the way, I am called Eren Tu."
"Jepson." He swallowed with difficulty. "Ted Jepson. You tried to what?"
"I tried to teach the motion away. Gave them nicer variations if they must supplement their conversation with visual signals. Gesturing is a trait of your communication about which we know relatively little. While quite familiar with your printed languages, we found it more difficult to study the meanings of winks, salutes, shrugs, and the like. Your films and earth to moon broadcasts are helping, however."
Weakly, Ted spoke the island word expressing utter bewilderment and requesting immediate explanation.
"I can appreciate your emotions, friend. Suppose we sit over there on the grass and make ourselves comfortable." He led the way. "And if you have been worrying about my communicating a sickness to you, don't. Our races have a common origin and although we have evolved with slight differences, we are basically compatible. Many meetings prior to ours have proven this."
Dazed, Ted sat. "Go slowly for me, Eren Tu. There have been other meetings?"
Many times, he was informed. Eleven hundred earth-years since the first routine reconnaissance and contact, the visitors from space had, on their periodic checks, learned our languages and sat with our finest minds in attempts to comprehend our bewildering culture.
"But why was there no record of such contacts. Surely—"
"Will you be believed, Ted Jepson? Besides, those we sought out were wise enough to recognize the impossibility of earth's being accepted into galactic society." It was a rule, he explained, that races had to measure to certain minimum standards.
"Such as?"
A recognition and acceptance of the literal immortality of individual personality. That was grounds for automatic membership. A peaceful, yet technically advanced people could enter, if their dominant philosophies contained no dynamically dangerous errors. Or if a race possessed certain extraordinary talents, peculiar to themselves, but which could be beneficially used by others, they might be acceptable.
"And earth?"
Eren Tu studied Ted's face a moment before replying. "Earth possesses quite a little of all the eligibilities, but not enough, I fear, to offset its inherent danger to a delicately ordered galactic confederacy. Can you guess what that is?"
Without too much reflection Ted spoke. "Our warlike nature?"
"That is but a manifestation of your illness. You are made frustrated and angry, and driven to your wars because you have such poor tools for thinking and for communicating with each other. That is why we tried. That is why I have been here, off and on, for over ten years. I am a language instructor, one of several who have taught the islanders a simple form of the tongue spoken by everyone in civilized space."
There was a long pause during which Ted noted the other had an extra joint on each thumb. Not that it mattered greatly. He was far more perturbed by what Eren Tu had said. As a philologist and student of semantics he recognized the truth of the other's statement. Humans never had managed to communicate more than fractionally with each other. And, as they thought almost entirely with words, how could their very concepts be worth much? Envy and its inevitable animosity tugged him as he regarded the large-eyed, vaguely sympathetic features of Eren Tu.
"And what if we just came barging into your exclusive society without the invitation?"
The other smiled, a grave wise smile. "That will not happen."
Correct again. Ted thought bitterly of the countless attempts, in the last twenty-five years, to get a ship farther than Mars. Something always went wrong. All electrical equipment would fail; cosmic radiation increased capriciously, dangerously; strange vertigoes assailed the crews. Let them play at voyaging between earth and Mars, but beyond— Discourage them.
"I'm sorry," Eren Tu told him. Stop them like the mad dogs they were.
"In time, perhaps, Ted Jepson," he suggested softly.
Two or three thousand years, maybe, when they'd evolved a language to help them out of kindergarten. A language—
"But the islanders have taught many of us to speak your tongue! It's being taught in several of our universities. If we were told that's all we had to do—learn the language—we'd all do it."
"In time, perhaps," he said again. "You see, it is one of the basics of galactic civilization that we tell no one how to mature. That is something a people must do for themselves."
"But why," Ted asked, "did you come to the island and set up school?"
For the first time, Eren Tu frowned. “We became impatient," he said. There were certain attributes and talents native to earthlings, he explained, which would be valuable. Earth's unique sense of humor and the absurd, for one. It was needed to freshen and revitalize certain other races. To lend its peculiar nutrition to a great stellar group grown somber and static with age.
An infusion of earthlings was also longed for because they alone of the humanlike peoples possessed a great number of latent extrasensory abilities. "To say nothing of your tremendous natural energies and drive," he added. "When word was received that this Project Peace, as you term it, existed, there were certain liberal factions who maintained it would not be a violation of observational codes to teach the subjects, the islanders, our tongue—after first conditioning them not to speak of us within hearing of your microphones. In that way, earth could do what it wished with the language, could mature if it pleased. And while, as you say, thousands of your people arc studying to speak it, there has been no discernible change in their natures. Wars still threaten to involve them. Greed and anger and other suicidal tendencies are increasing, instead of lessening. Even you, Ted Jepson, who can talk with me as well as the islanders, have an aura tainted with violence. Why, I cannot say. It is probably something in your heritage which not even semantic correction can touch."
"But the islanders," put in Ted, puzzled.
"Yes. The islanders have reacted as we had hoped you all would. They are stable and loving and just. But they know no other language, you see. They have always thought in it."
Ted plucked a blade of grass and chewed its tender stem thoughtfully. It was as bitter as his mood. What a perfect vicious circle: We can't get in because we're not invited. We're not invited because we're antisocial. We're antisocial because of our clumsy thought and speech processes, and they'll stay clumsy because we can't get in. "You've wrecked Project Peace, too, you know. Maybe we could have made it without your . . . help."
"You are compensated for our interference. You have the language. A fair trade."
Ted shrugged. "Perhaps. And what about these poor devils? The islanders? What have they got?"
Eren Tu looked for a long moment in the direction of the village. "That is being debated by my superiors. There are some who hold we should wipe out all memory of our visits. Others want them taken from the island and admitted as special wards to our society. Word of their decision should reach me any hour now. An important happening was predicted for tonight, and I don't believe your coming was meant."
"Predicted?"
"Yes, Ted Jepson. I spoke of your race's extrasensory abilities. Apparently certain areas of the islanders' brains were activated by the proper semantic processes. That has happened in nonhuman species. All manner of mental talents have been demonstrated when the thinking has been properly changed. You realize," his tones became self-deprecating, "I'm speaking as a layman. That isn't my field. At any rate, after warning me that the technician who taught them to swim was coming up—"
Something extremely ironic dawned on Ted. "They know of the project?"
"Certainly. They've always known of it."
Ted's laboring mind turned up a wry memory; a scrap of joke about the researcher who bent down to peer in at his laboratory ape, only to find an inquisitive brown eye at the other side of the peephole. "Go on," he said wearily.
"They look only so far into the future. The distance seems to depend not only on the individual but on the nature of the event. It varies—a few hours, at the most. Beyond that they say the pictures are blurred and often inaccurate, colored, I suppose, with imagination." Eren Tu broke off, appeared to be listening intently. Then he sprang to his feet and peered down the grassy slope into the darkness.
Someone was coming. Ted heard them now, too.
The islanders! And they were singing. A soft, happy song, filled with humor and expectation, that was often sung before a celebration. It served to remind Ted of a question. "By the way, I suppose not even their music is theirs?"
Without looking away from the oncoming crowd, Eren Tu admitted that an early visitor had carelessly underestimated the islanders' hearing ability, and had allowed his craft's communication set to play too loudly. "That song they're doing now is based on a melody popular twenty years ago in my star system. It's a distinct improvement on the original, though."
They were closer now, and Ted could see that in keeping with their song, they had bedecked themselves with gay garlands of flowers. Even the vanguard of scampering children wore blossoms of jasmine in their hair. He began to recognize individual members of the party: "old" Emo, with the coral scars about his rugged shoulders. Nea, the girl he had watched when he came on duty. The small blond lad who had given the first warning of the meteorite. Crippled Tumo, the young spear maker. And over three hundred others in a long singing, laughing file that wound down and out of sight into the darkness of the valley.
Quite a turnout for a couple of hours before dawn.
Why?
Doc Finley and the techs on duty in the View Room must be having fits, Ted imagined. Probably think the islanders have come to greet me. Surreptitiously he checked the screen on the two-way. Still dark.
He hoped someone would have guts and presence of mind enough to sneak a cameraman out and up into the hilltop nearby. If the world had proof of Emil Tu's visit—
But then what? A soul-corroding frustration at being left out, unwanted?
The first of the children came up to them now. They formed a ragged ring about the two men; shy, giggling, or wide-eyed, according to their natures. Ted's gaze sought out the little blond youngster who had starred in the lagoon episode. "Hello, son," he smiled. "I'm Ted. I've forgotten your name."
"Lute. What's the matter in your head?"
"Huh?" Ted's hand went to his hair. "In? Or on?"
The child made a disapproving sound. "You sit wrong." Leaving Ted to chew this over, he turned to watch his elders arrive. A tall Latinish man, one of the original "children," Ted recalled, greeted Eren Tu cordially.
"Your happiness is mine," Eren Tu observed, taking in the growing crowd with his eyes. "This is the important happening that was foretold?"
"Yes." The dark islander walked abruptly over to Ted. "We will become good friends," he said. It was not a question, nor a command. Simply a statement. He looked earnestly across at Eren Tu. "He sits in the wrong place, doesn't he."
Ted's head began to ache. "That's the second time it's been mentioned. Explain, please." He pressed his temples.
"Ted Jepson," called the man from the stars excitedly. "They tell me your men from below will be coming out of the hilltop."
"That's right," added the tall islander. "I have seen only a little of it, and I could not tell when it would take place, but Lute and Nea and others of the young ones say it will be very soon. It will be after you have taken up that object"—he pointed at the two-way—"and speak into it."
"But he can't do that," protested Eren Tu. "I have something in my ship that prevents it."
"You will soon turn it off."
"Why?" The alien's gravity and composure was wearing a bit thin.
"Because he—" the islander gestured to Ted—"will soon learn something."
Never had Ted had such a headache. And as with most extremely healthy people, the minor ailment was worrying him. With only part of his attention had he been following the bewildering conversation about him. Most of his concern was centered on the fingers of fire that were darting between his temples. He wondered if it could be a pressure-head from the underwater swim. Or maybe a nasty fungus from the ship, despite its owner's assurances? Through eyes that were beginning to water he made out the boy, Lute, confronting him. "My father," he announced gravely, "wants us to talk."
"Sure, boy." Ted massaged the back of his neck.
"I told him how it was that I saw you sitting wrong, and he said for me to have you sit better. It is part of what will happen, I can see now."
Ted was quiet, baffled, and more than a little frightened. He dimly noticed that late arrivals to the scene were hoisting up their children so that they might not miss anything.
"Maybe I'm beginning to understand." Eren Tu had come over. "They have been telling me you do not think correctly. They say you operate your thoughts from the wrong place. There is an asleep area to your mind that, apparently, they can see. Does it mean anything to you?"
Ted struggled: They knew of the emergency exit that could be blasted open atop the island's highest hill. They were expecting him to make a call to Finley with the two-way. How did that tie in with his headache, with an "asleep" area of his mind?
"Let the boy, Lute, do what he wants," said Eren Tu.
Ted dug at his temples with his knuckles. "All right, kid, it's your show."
"I'm sorry it aches," said the boy. "That's because it was asleep and we all looked at it. But it will be over in a moment." A serious frown of concentration tugged at his brows. He gazed up into Ted's eyes and began giving him certain curious instructions, the very formulation and expression of which were possible only because of the fluidity and precision of the island language. Ted was made to blank his mind partially and to let the sensation of pain settle into a particular area. When it had coalesced and steadied down, Lute gave him what amounted to the form and dimensions of his identity extensions. A corner of his thoughts found time to rebel in admiration: Orthodox mind science would probably have gone on missing the simplicity that was the essence of individual identity for a thousand years.
Ted moved this concept of his identity into the spot designated by the pain. He settled himself there and withdrew utterly from the old seat of operations.
The pain vanished. And with his smile of pleasure came an indescribable mixture of emotions; peace was there, but it was a thrilling and dynamic thing, not placidity. A strength and courage such as he had never before known seemed his now, and a burning desire to use this vigor to live and to experience and to be.
He was in love. With everything.
"Don't you see," he shouted at the bewildered Eren Tu, "I'm whole, I'm well, I'm as I was probably intended to be. I'm like the islanders!" Song broke out around him as he told what had happened. "This is what my planet's religious men have been trying to speak of. But without knowing it for themselves, and without a language to teach it, they made it into a soggy, revolting piety. This is love, and I'm operating from it!"
"Can others of you make the change-over?"
"Why not?" Ted grabbed the grinning blond lad to him and tousled his hair. "Certainly. Anyone that speaks island tongue. There are thousands of us. More every month. Tell him, Lute."
Nea came up and gave him flowers for his hair. A mighty, grinning Chinese put a garland around his neck. Each peered intently at Ted, then nodded reassurance at Eren Tu.
The man from the stars had allowed blossoms to be thrust over each car. His holiday appearance contrasted comically to Ted with his dubious and uncertain air. He shook his head. "Apparently there's only one way of finding out for sure. If they make the change—" He turned for the ship, muttering something about unprecedented procedure.
The sky was lighter now, and the night wind was softening into a fragrant breeze. Ted faced into it and looked up at the morning stars. He was smiling at a particularly bright one when the set came alive.
"Hello, Project," he said. "This is Jepson. Come on up, all of you. There's going to be the damndest sunrise you ever saw."