A Theory of Gravity

by Wycroft Taylor

  They saw films of rocket ships having the octagonal shapes of the creatures flying through space.

  They saw creatures sitting at consoles and operating three-dimensional keyboards like those their teacher operated.

  They saw pictures of planets changing in size as they got nearer.

  They saw weird surfaces and, drawing ever closer to those surfaces, saw weird vegetation and weird life forms.

  They saw seas raging. They saw volcanoes erupting. They saw huge fields of ice and mountain ranges and red and orange and blue and black deserts.

  Sometimes, while they watched these films, they would also hear a voice that explained some of what was going on. But usually there were no captions. Instead, they were just given glimpses of faraway worlds and of the life that sometimes existed on such worlds.

  Chapter 48: Poems & Other Matters

  At a certain time of the day (Peter eventually was able to read the time on the clock mounted to the wall as well as Sylvia did), the bells would ring marking the end of the days’ lessons. Then the creatures assigned to wait on them removed the nozzles to which they had been attached since morning. They got up, bowed first to the teacher and then to their caretakers, and were escorted to the dining room and the tureen of steaming soup and the bowls and spoons.

  Before taking a taste of the soup, one or the other of them would recite a poem. Because they did not have a supply of books of poems and other writings in English, they had to make something up which was often a pastiche of things they remembered or thought they remembered reading or hearing when back on Earth. (Frequently, one or the other of them talked about how nice it would be to have access to books in English once they returned home.)

  Once Sylvia recited something that occurred to her the night before and that so interested her that she got up off her bed (this happened during the one night each week when they slept apart) and jotted down the words in her notebook. When her turn came to recite a poem prior to the drinking of the soup, she simply pulled the notebook out of her pocket, found the correct page, and read from what she had written the night before. This is what she read:

  So you, not knowing what else or more to do,

  Reach out a hand, reach out farther and farther

  Until finally you touch a wall.

  And, just at the moment that your

  Fingers reach the wall, you wonder.

  You wonder, for instance, who if anyone built this wall.

  And, if someone built it, you wonder

  Why they went to the trouble of building it.

  You wonder: did they build it to hold something inside

  Of the wall or to protect something (perhaps themselves)

  Already inside & afraid that something outside might get in.

  You wonder if the builders of the wall were

  Just doing something because they felt they should

  Keep busy (perhaps someone was watching them;

  Perhaps they were just bored).

  Was someone (not one of them) watching them?

  Were they doing what they were told they must do?

  If so, who was this other one? Were there many other ones?

  Were there rewards and punishments involved or, in that

  Time and at that place, did the ones doing the building

  Simply obey without question what the ones who did

  The ordering order them to do?

  Did they consider the wall beautiful? Was pride of

  Workmanship involved? Was there a feeling that such

  A wall might someday function as a memorial of

  Those that built it?

  And you wonder, of course, how old the wall was & what the

  World was like when it was built—what creatures lived then, What the weather was like then, what people wore then &

  What language they spoke then. And, almost as an

  Afterthought, you wonder: What is on the other side?

  After listening to the poem, Peter commented: “That sounds as if you had a flashback to those days and nights of terror on that ramp of yours.” “Maybe so,” Sylvia said, “and maybe not. There are a lot of walls and a lot of ways of looking at them. Wherever there is intelligent life capable also of curiosity, there wall will always be.”

  Peter said, “The history of science is the history of coming up against walls like the one in your poem and sometimes being able to get a glimpse of some of what is on the other side and sometimes being able to climb over, knock down, or burrow under one wall and thus see what is on the other side up to, that is, the new wall one finds standing just a little beyond the wall just crossed.”

  “You have just created another poem,” Sylvia said.

  On another night, Peter recited a poem he remembered memorizing when he was in high school. While a lot of time had passed since he memorized this poem and while he may not have gotten it exactly right, he felt he had come close. This is the poem he recited:

  I saw Eternity the other night,

  Like a great ring of pure and endless light,

  All calm, as it was bright; and round beneath it, time

  In hours, days, and years, and

  Driven by the spheres

  Like a vast shadow moved;

  In which the world and all her train

  Were hurled.

  After a pause, Sylvia whispered, “That was beautiful. Is that one of yours or did someone else write that?” “Someone else,” Peter said, “I memorized that poem or a poem very much like what I just recited in high school.”

  “Who wrote it?” Sylvia asked. Peter answered, “I can’t remember. The author’s name seems to be sitting right at the tip of my tongue, but I can’t quite retrieve it. I wish I could.”

  “Well, if the author’s name ever slips off the tip of your tongue, please remember to tell me. If you remember, then I can look his or her name up when I get back to Earth. Maybe he or she wrote other things as beautiful in sentiment and thought and expression as that.” “Maybe so,” Peter commented.

  On another night, Sylvia remembered a poem that was a particular favorite of hers when she was in middle school. She felt her memory was not far off the mark and that what she recited was exactly the same or, if not, very close to what the poet wrote. She thought of this poem one night while asleep beside Peter and looked forward all the next day to reciting it.

  When the time came for her to recite the poem, she hesitated to say the words because, saying them, meant not being able to say them again as part of their evening dinner ritual. It occurred to her that there was no reason not to say them again since, by their rules, each person could recite whatever they wished to say (as long as it was put in poetic form). If so, she realized, there was nothing wrong with reciting a poem as many times as one felt like reciting it—every other night for weeks or months if one so desired. That thought made her feel much better and so she recited the poem for what she thought would be the first of many times. It went like this:

  A noiseless patient spider,

  I mark’d where on a little promontory

  It stood isolated and mark’d how to explore

  The vacant vast surrounding,

  It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself.

  Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

  And you O my soul where you stand,

  Surrounded, detached,

  In measureless oceans of space,

  Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,

  Seeking the spheres to connect them.

  Till the bridge you will need be form’d,

  Till the ductile anchor hold,

  Till the gossamer thread you fling

  Catch somewhere, O my soul.

  When Peter asked her who wrote that poem, she said, “Walt Whitman.” “As lovely as the poem was, even lovelier was your way of reciting it.” Peter mused, “I wonder how the creatures of this place would feel about this and the other poems we’ve made up or memorize
d. Does something within them resonate with sentiments like these?”

  Sylvia said, “Keep in mind that humans vary a lot. While some, like us, are moved by poems like these, others are indifferent or even contemptuous. I wonder if these creatures vary as much. In any case, I am convinced that some at least are enough like us with regard to what Whitman called “the soul” that the poems would indeed resonate with them. I am convinced of it based on what I’ve seen and heard.”

  “I am too, Peter said. “How else can we explain the inscriptions we’ve so far been able to translate?” (By the time Sylvia recited her Whitman poem, they had become pretty fluent in the creatures’ spoken language and had begun to learn their written language.)

  “That’s true, and it is part of the reason I feel as I do,” Sylvia said. “But, even aside from the inscriptions which, for all we know, were written long ago and perhaps by an altogether different species, I had reason to believe that these creatures had some of the same feelings that we have. Perhaps their feelings extend completely across the spectrum on which our feelings are arrayed. Perhaps their feelings are narrower.”

  Peter added, “And perhaps their feelings are spread across an even wider spectrum, going places which we can hardly imagine.” “Perhaps the former and perhaps the latter,” Sylvia mused and then added, “However narrow or wide their feelings range, I am sure that some of their feelings correspond to what we regard as the highest of our own.”

  “What specifically did you see or hear that makes you think that way?” Peter asked.

  Sylvia answered, “I once asked the teacher if it believes in an after-life. It looked very strangely at me when I asked it that. Its eyes kept getting larger and smaller and getting closer and farther away from me.

  Finally, it said, “I’m not free to say more than that we believe particles and forces exist that our science cannot yet observe and measure and that, among these elusive things, are the components of souls which we believe have gotten organized into what you and we call souls. We believe these things we think of as souls last longer as organized entities than any entities made out of particles and forces that we can observe and measure which more quickly collapse, decay, or fall apart.

  “We also believe that the organized entities made out of unknown particles and forces, during their long and perhaps infinite life spans, spend some time attached to materials bodies and some time unattached.”

  It added, “I might have been human once or I might someday be human. And you might have once been one of us or you might someday be one of us. You might have, for instance, once authored the inscriptions you so diligently copied and are now so diligently trying to decipher.”

  Sylvia added, “The teacher seemed about to offer more of an explanation which, of course, I would have been very eager to hear. Instead the teacher stopped talking altogether, fiddled with objects on its desk, and, after some time had passed, said, “Forgive me my verbosity and enthusiasm. I’ve clearly said too much. When you and Peter learn to read the transcriptions you’ve drawn, especially in connection with the question you asked, Sylvia, the inscriptions Peter drew, you’ll know more about what we think with regard to this. But you’ll get nothing more from me.”

  “How incredible it is that the teacher said what he said to you. I have to admit I’ve had some of the same thoughts and am inclined too to believe in the existence of souls and in their longevity and in their transmigration from body to body and of time spent in between,” Peter remarked, adding, “but I’ve never been able to connect what I thought with what science knows.”

  “And I too have secretly harbored such thoughts but, until now, have never shared them with anyone,” Sylvia remarked. Then she lapsed into silence but, when Peter started to say something, she interrupted him by saying, “I wonder why the teacher talked about your inscriptions but not mine as being capable of shedding light on such a topic. That must mean that my inscriptions are concerned with another subject entirely. I wonder what that subject is.”

  Peter said, “I suppose we’ll find out pretty soon. We’re making a lot of progress with the written language.”

  Sylvia said nothing. Peter looked around the room for signs of microphones or cameras. He said, “I suppose they have been listening to us all along and recording what we’ve said and translating whatever we said in English into their own language.”

  “I suppose so, too,” Sylvia said. “Maybe I’ll ask the teacher what they think of the poems we’ve been reciting. Unless the teacher chooses to feign ignorance, the teacher’s reaction may help us figure out what extent the teacher as well as whatever other creatures are involved in monitoring what we do and say feel any sort of sympathetic reaction to these poems of ours.”

  At some point after both of them had become fluent in the creatures’ language, one or the other of them would recite a poem, not in English, but in that language. When that happened, the other replied in the creature’s language, leading sometimes to long conversations entirely in the language they had been taught. And, when doing that, they did not feel that anything was lost in the translation. They felt perfectly at ease speaking the new language and enjoyed the extra practice having such conversations gave them.

  In fact, the occasional veering over into the creatures’ language when reciting a poem and discussing it afterwards gave Peter an idea which he shared with Sylvia one night after he had finished his soup.

  He said to her, “You know, Sylvia, why don’t we add to the poem before dinner a discussion after dinner, entirely in the creatures’ language, of some of what we learned earlier in the day? One person would pick one lesson or part of one lesson or that person would pick one film or part of one film (if one or more were shown to us that day), summarize it, comment on it, and ask the other person for corrections or comments.” He was speaking the creatures’ language when he said that, a combination of clicks and buzzing sounds and whistling sounds all done at the required pitch and volume and with the right breaks in continuity of sound.

  She liked the idea and told him, speaking in the same language, “That’s a great idea. Let’s start tomorrow.” She added, “We’ll have to keep our conversation short however when sitting at the dinner table. I don’t want our caretakers to have to wait too long to clear the table and escort us to the door that leads to our bedrooms. I’m sure they must have lives of their own and other things to do.”

  Peter said, “Let’s keep such conversations to a half-hour at most. That way, if either of us have more to say on the subject, we’ll just resume the conversations after getting back to our rooms or, more specifically, whatever room we were planning to share that night.”

  Sylvia said she liked his idea but added, “Even those conversations need to be limited in time. I don’t want to spend too many nights talking and thus not be able to concentrate the next day as well as we should on what we are learning.” Peter smiled, hearing that, and got up from the table, went over to where she was sitting, and pulled her chair away from the table while holding out his hand to her.

  He was tempted to kiss her and almost did but, before putting an arm around her shoulder and giving her a nice kiss, he glanced at the creatures standing lined up against the wall who so patiently waited to clear everything away and accompany them to the corridor where their bedrooms were. Feeling a little bit self-conscious with them standing there and looking on, he decided just to take her hand.

  Because of how grueling the day had been and because that night was one of the six nights each week they slept together, they did not say much at all. Instead, they got into bed together, this being one of the nights when they slept in Sylvia’s room and wrapped themselves around each other’s naked bodies and made love.

  After a while, each one rolled over onto their sides, each facing an opposite wall though their backs and bottoms touched. Sylvia thought how nice life was, how complete it was, how, even though they had no outside to wander around in and no fresh air to breathe and no familiar foods to
cook or eat, life nevertheless was so good—with love being the counterweight to the important work they were doing each day.

  And Peter dreamed about reincarnating as a creature like one of those that surrounded them and of crawling up to one such mite-like or beetle-liked creature as a fellow creature and feeling a great sense of calm derived from feelings of having ‘arrived at last’ in the midst of fellow beings and of being ‘safe at last’ because of having arrived at last.

  His dream continued: After pushing closer and closer to a creature exactly like himself, he crawled on top of it and joined the heap of creatures all belonging to the same species that he now belonged to. He dreamed of pressing its new vocal apparatus against the creature’s hearing apparatus and of saying in a language that, just a little while before would have been utterly incomprehensible to him, the simple word: “Hello.”

  Peter dreamed that the creature he said hello to responded in kind. And he dreamed of how surprised he was when hearing himself being greeted and of how the surprise quickly faded away and was followed by feelings of calm and of being safe. He dreamed how strangely it struck him that the simple greeting ‘hello’ and the mere presence of this stranger belonging to the same species to which he also now belonged could make him so calm and make him feel so safe.

  Peter dreamed that he wrapped his scrawny appendages around the carapace of the creature he met, enjoying the ever enlarging feelings of safety and calm that filled him. It pleased him that the creature did not resist his advances. He was unable to say anything for a while but then he whispered some words so softly the other creature barely heard him.

  Peter whispered this: “I want you to know that I feel sure that my soul has circled around yours many times over the course of many thousands of years.

  “Once, for instance, or was it more than once—I cannot precisely recall the number—I vaguely recollect being incarnated in a body of a kind that was very different from this one—a type of body that I and the beings surrounding me at that time called ‘human’ and, during the time I was in possession of that body, I met someone who struck me as special just as I have been struck by the specialness of you.