by Jerry Sohl
“Then why?”
“Do you really want to know?” Klell looked at her seriously. “Very well. We’ve had enough humor, now let us proceed to the real reasons. In the beginning there was equilibrium among all living things on this planet. There was no reason for the worms and other early living organisms to change.
“Take the lowly sandworm, for there were sandworms on Earth then as there are now. They had even then subsisted for millions of years, these sandworms. Then one day a sandworm was born which was just a little less adapted than the others. That was the best sandworm. Why? It had to change in order to adapt itself. It was, shall I say, not so perfect as a worm, but more perfect in that it led the way for others to follow.”
Klell’s eyes looked far away. The people at the table were silent.
“You have come a long way, Sandworm Enders. Only you’re a sandworm no longer. Now you have intelligence. An intelligence created and sustained by our thought reinforcer.
“You’re a blind man to us, Mr. Enders. Among us you move as a blind man would move among your own kind, tapping your white cane. As you help the blind, so we’ve helped you, only you’ve insisted on going in wrong directions. Let us say you have endeavored as a civilization, but you have struggled in the quagmire of your own stupidity all along the way. You see, to us you are but a struggling subpersonality. Why should we take on the task of transforming a single such unworthy creature?”
Klell’s statements made Martin feel microscopically small. Of course the human race was nowhere near the Capellan, but why did he have to rub it in?
“If you please,” Martin said. “I wasn’t begging—”
“Your conception of the universe,” Klell swept on, “is founded on your inadequate senses. Why, you are not aware of the merest fraction of all the vibrations surrounding you. What part of the spectrum can you see? There are radiations visible to us which go through your brain without leaving a trace in your consciousness. Why should we make you any better than you are?
“And what, after all, do you know of life? Can you tell us what makes a group of molecules suddenly surge with power and come alive? Do you have any idea of what gravitation is? Of course not.
“You are still that lurking, skulking anthropoid found by the first two Capellans when they landed on this planet. Oh, you have intelligence now, but you won’t have it when we remove the crutch you have used since we first arrived.”
Klell stood proudly, his head high, looking down disdainfully at Martin as if daring him to say something.
“I suppose you think it’s unanswerable, all this you’ve said.”
Martin snapped. “You forget the intelligence you have given us has also given us shame, a moral sense and a sense of remorse. These are indicative of evolutionary progress.”
“Progress? You have retrogressed, Mr. Enders. Your sight isn’t as good as it once was. Your sense of smell has become so impaired and your hearing has so declined that neither is adequate for survival. When we leave, other animals will make short work of you. It would be interesting to know which species will win.
“As for that intelligence, what have you done with it? Great men among you have tried to lead you upward. What have you done with them? You’ve killed them. You don’t even trust each other, so you kill your own kind. And when you’re not killing each other, you’re killing yourselves in the machines you’ve invented. It is amusing how easy it has been for us to take advantage of your inhumanity to each other—even to yourselves!”
There was a ripple of applause along the table and Klell bowed to the right, then to the left.
“Friend Capellans, we have convened here to consider Capellan Penn’s request for transformation for this man. I ask you, is this the kind of man we want to take along with us? A man whose genes contain the lust for blood, the greed, the latent savagery that could ripen and flower at any time? Do we want a human among us who could regress? Do you all share my feeling that Capellan Penn has wasted our time I with this demand for a hearing?”
The faces at the table were thoughtful.
Martin could stand no more of it. He rose.
“I have listened to your indictment of the human race,” he said levelly. “I want—”
“Of course you have,” Klell said. “You were meant to hear it. But it so happens you are not the judge in this matter.”
“I insist that I be heard!”
“Mr. Enders,” Klell said. “We are quite aware of what moves you. We’ve heard enough from you. Now if you will sit down, please, we will conduct the vote.”
“I will not sit down,” Martin said firmly. “Is this Capellan justice? Can no man say something in his own behalf?”
“Let him speak,” someone said.
There were other voices in agreement.
“Very well.” Klell sat down.
Virginia looked at Martin. There was admiration and hope in her eyes.
“You assume every one of us has a lust for blood, that everyone on Earth is greedy and that, in the breast of every man, there is a smoldering fire of latent savagery. How wrong you are! How little you have come to know men! There are many of us trying to free a world from its fetters of a primitive inheritance. Many of us devote and dedicate our lives to it.
“There are other words in our vocabulary besides the foul ones you mentioned, Mr. Klell. We have such words as generosity, kindness and brotherly love. Are these unfamiliar to you? Or have you forgotten words you might have once known, Mr. Klell? Is there by any chance a word for justice in Capellan speech?”
The Capellans were fidgeting, Martin noticed with satisfaction.
“Now you are going to leave us,” Martin hurried on before anyone could interrupt. “Well, someday we would have emerged from our moral lethargy and we would have built a better world had you left us the seed to make this possible. But you are even denying us that, for you must remember it is you people who are at fault for making us move too fast for your own selfish gains. Yes, you are the selfish ones, pushing us this way and that, letting us suffer, rushing us along technologically without helping us along sociologically.
“And one more thing. Such a meeting as this would never be necessary in the United States where I come from. And another thing: There a man has a right to be heard.”
“You were given permission to speak,” Klell said hotly.
“Only because I demanded it.”
“Yours is a very unusual case.”
“All the more reason to weigh what I have said more carefully,” Martin replied.
“Your speech is all very pretty,” Klell said. “But we have been wasting time. We will take a vote now.”
Martin stood very straight. He drew in his breath, let it out very slowly.
“There is no need to take a vote,” he said. “I have made the decision for you. I am not going with you.”
Virginia uttered a cry, clutched at his arm.
“I have received enough Capellan beneficence,” Martin said. “If the rest of humanity were to stand here beside me, I’m sure they would all feel the same way. You see, we have a little something called pride—we’ll even admit we wouldn’t have that if it hadn’t been for you. But for your plans to take me along with you, I want none of it. I want to go back to the people I came from. I want to go back where I feel at home. I want to be stripped of my thinking and sent back along jungle paths, for I would rather be a primitive animal than take any more of your charity. You have used us long enough; now let us alone to grow the way we were supposed to in the first place.”
“No!” It was Virginia who uttered the cry and she was beside him now, eyes welling with tears. She embraced him, held him.
Martin only stood defiant before the committee.
Suddenly they were gone.
Chapter 18
Martin had supposed that he would be returned to his apartment on Michigan Avenue and that that would be the last he would ever see of the Capellans. Already, as the people vanished, he was condit
ioning himself for the shock of returning to his normal environment, trying to justify his actions.
He could not have been a true Capellan, he knew. He might have been one of them in spirit and in body, but he would also have been an Earth-man who had been transformed into a Capellan. What physiological and mental changes that might have meant he could only imagine. If he should have existed with them on Capella Four for all eternity, there would surely have come a time when it would have made a difference. And there might have come a time, too, when Virginia would have tired of him and would turn to one of her own kind. What of Martin Enders then?
He thought of the impending destruction of men’s minds on Earth, the snuffing out of all they had learned—as if a blackboard filled with the facts of human history since the beginning of reason were to be erased. He also thought of his survival on a far distant world possessing the greater intelligence the Capellans would have implanted within him and he knew it was not the right thing to do. He had to admit it was an alluring and exciting prospect, but he had also to examine his own conscience. It was his conscience that stopped him. Now that the decision had been made, he was suddenly at peace with himself.
Earth is where I belong, he said to himself, fancying that he would materialize inside his apartment at any instant. It is where I was born and it is where I ought to die. I am of Earth and shall die of Earth.
Knowing he could be hurt no more, he turned his attention to the world in which he found himself. It was a beautiful, though chaotic, one. Apparently weightless and formless, he drifted through space as a dust mote would, rising, falling, caught by an eddy now and then and swinging around. Wherever he went there were blues, reds, purples, some harsh, others soft. There were colored giant cubes and spheres which changed into varied-hued rectangular solids of light as he swung into them; they were different on the inside: there were likely to be skies of brilliant stars or long vistas of velvet that disintegrated into dazzling streaks of light as he broke into them.
Some of the forms and shapes moved, others did not. It reminded him of the colors that sometimes swirled before his eyes when he was going to sleep. Though it was all weird, there was a pattern in it that soothed him. There was something he found in this kaleidoscopic world that put him at ease; there was force there, a force that seemed to be examining him, turning him this way and that.
Suddenly she was there. At his side. He could sense her but he could not see her.
“Why did you do it?” she asked in anguish. “Why won’t you go along?”
“I love you, Virginia,” he said. “But I could not go with you. I would always be an outsider. I see that now and I would see it in every eye.”
“I know, darling, but I will always be an outsider, too. I have loved an Earth-man. Do you think they will ever forget that?”
“I suppose I have ruined your life,” he said. “But you will forget me. You’ll find someone else. You must not come with me.”
“I’ll never love anyone else and I can’t come to live the final days with you now after all that’s happened,” she said sadly. “You might have gone with us.”
“I’m sorry.” It saddened him to know for certain she would not come. He had hoped she might. But he had spurned her people’s offer, even before the vote. She was right; how could she pridefully throw away her life with her own people for a man who spoke as he did of them?
“Where am I now?” he asked. “Aren’t they sending me back?”
“Yes,” she said. “They are sending you back.”
There was silence as he floated through worlds of color and design.
“If I am going back, why is it taking so long?”
“Perhaps they are waiting until just before we leave.”
“How are you going to leave Earth? Do you have space ships?”
“It is only a step to Capella Four from here. In this dimension you are not hampered by distances as you are in yours.”
“But what are these colors I see?”
“You are among Capellans. This is how they look to you on the plane you happen to be at the moment. They are all around you but they are paying you no attention and they are shunning me. I’m afraid I am a black sheep among them now.”
Suddenly there was a crackling sound, the colors moved violently and Virginia uttered a hoarse cry.
Martin felt as if an elevator had dropped from beneath him. This must be it... Good-bye, Virginia.
“Martin Enders!”
It was a louder voice than he had ever heard before, yet it was not in the audible realm. It exploded inside his head in a brilliant show of colors.
There was a gasp. Virginia was still there.
The colors ceased their movement, then coalesced. His motion stopped. He had weight again and Virginia was at his side. They were in an enormous room lighted by glowing orbs set in the high ceiling and at the far end of the room a man sat, unmoving, in a large high-backed chair.
“Walk forward.”
The voice was gentle, deep and resonant. There could be no thought of denying the command. As they walked toward the speaker, their steps echoed from the far walls, from the distant ceiling.
When they had reached a point twenty feet before him, the man held up his hand. They stopped.
The man was deceptively young in body, for behind the shining black pupils of his eyes there lurked the memory of centuries. His brown hair was coarse and fell back from his forehead in waves; his lean face was oval and his manner was firm.
“I am Myza, Mr. Enders. My wife and I were the first Capellans on Earth. She and I and our son, Prator, are what is called the Triumvirate. We are in charge of this Capellan colony.
“Although many of my people have, I have not lived on your Earth and taken human form through birth or even through the simple expedient of projecting myself since the original years. That has been the job of so many others of us—Virginia, for example, and other members of her family. In order to create the civilization necessary for a successful cultivation of our own kind, it was necessary to mingle with the Earth creatures and assume their shapes. This was done most unobtrusively through the birth process, as you probably know.
“I have taken this shape only because I presume this is what I would look like if you could see me through Capellan eyes. I was interested in your decision not to go with us to Capella Four, now that our mission here has been successfully completed.
“I understand why. It was intended that you feel that way, for whether you guessed it or not, you could not have come along with us under any circumstances. We have no power to take anyone with us. The drama in which you took part was merely to teach you and Virginia how impossible it would be for you to live among our people, the doubts that would assail you and the doubts that would assail them.
“It had been our intention that, following this, Virginia would accompany us to Capella Four. But we have been thinking and we believe it would be better if she were to stay here with you.”
Martin looked at Virginia and her face mirrored the surprise in his. In a moment she was in his arms and he kissed her. Then they turned to Myza, who had spoken again.
“By your behavior, Virginia, you have proved to be something less than a Capellan. It seems you have always been something less than one of us. For some reason you exhibit some of the primitive traits of the Earth people. Perhaps that is why no male Capellan has interested you. Because you have found an Earth-man who you believe is just a trifle superior to Earth-men, you think you have found someone compatible.”
Myza paused, then said gravely, “Since you feel this way, the Triumvirate has decided that you shall become an Earthwoman. That way, when we withdraw our support, you both will go down the primitive path Martin Enders has spoken of so eloquently.”
“I—I am to be punished.” Virginia looked at him uncertainly. “Is that it?”
“As a Capellan, you have violated rules no other has. Should there be an exception for you? As I have said, we thought all along
we must take you with us and we have worked to that end. Now of course you will surrender your Capellan identity by remaining... That is, if you still wish to stay with him.”
“I still have a choice?”
“Yes.”
She looked at Martin.
“I will stay,” she said slowly.
Myza shrugged. “As you wish. We have given you every opportunity, but we could not take you along to remind us what we had done without having let you make that decision yourself.”
“One moment,” Martin said.
“Yes?”
“You are going to leave and take this thing you call a thought reinforcer with you?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t you think you owe the human race something?”
Myza considered that. “No. I can’t say that we do. It may interest you to know my wife and I were born on Electra Three, a planet of Seventeen Tauri. When our colony left that planet, the people there were much further advanced than you are. They were sent back to the primitive ways they had known several hundred thousand years before our kind went there. We have no way of telling, and of course we don’t care, what happened to them since. Perhaps the form we made dominant there had succumbed to some other species. If so, it is unfortunate, but of course it can’t be helped. The same thing will no doubt occur here.”
“How does it feel to play God?” Martin asked. “How does it feel to go in and take a helpless animal and impregnate it with intelligence and watch it grow and then suck its intelligence like a leech to get this thought force of yours?”
“Don’t get emotional, Mr. Enders,” Myza said quietly. “We realize all that will happen. If there were some reason to perpetuate your race, we’d do it, of course. But you’re asking that a civilization such as yours be granted a special dispensation so that it can destroy itself with its new inventions, so that the people can leap at each other’s throats without our firm hand to see that they don’t annihilate themselves. What useful purpose would the continual warfare your people are famous for serve?” he asked.
“As I told Mr. Klell,” Martin said, “all of us are not like that. I, for one, don’t want that. I don’t want bloodshed.”
