Jon did not answer.
“Tonight,” said Joshua, “you remembered you could talk to me. You used to come and talk with me often, because you remembered the talk you had with me when you were a kid.”
“I broke the law,” said Jon. “I came to steal tomatoes, Joe and I, and you caught us…”
“I broke the law just now,” said Joshua. “I gave you a tomato. It was not mine to give. It was not yours to take.
“But I broke the law because the law is nothing more than reason and the giving of one tomato does not harm the reason. There must be reason behind each law or there is no occasion for the law. If there is no reason, then the law is wrong.”
“But to break a law is wrong…”
“Listen,” said Joshua. “You remember this morning?”
“Of course I do.”
“Look at those tracks—the metal tracks, set deep into the metal, running up the wall.”
Jon looked and saw them.
“That wall,” said Joshua, “was the floor until this morning.”
“But the tanks! They…”
“Exactly,” said Joshua. “That’s exactly what I thought. That’s the first thing I thought when I was thrown out of bed. My tanks, I thought. All my beautiful tanks. Hanging up there on the wall. Fastened to the floor and hanging on the wall. With the water spilling out of them. With the plants dumped out of them. With the chemicals all wasted. But it didn’t happen that way.”
He reached out and tapped Jon on the chest.
“It didn’t happen that way—not because of a certain law, but because of a certain reason. Look at the floor beneath your feet.”
Jon looked down and the tracks were there, a continuation of the tracks that ran up the wall.
“The tanks are anchored to those tracks,” said Joshua. “There are wheels enclosed within those tracks. When the floor changed to the wall, the tanks ran down the tracks and up the wall that became the floor and everything was all right. There was a little water spilled and some plants were damaged, but not many of them.”
“It was planned,” said Jon. ”The Ship…”
“There must be reason to justify each law,” Joshua told him. “There was reason here and a law as well. But the law was only a reminder not to violate the reason. If there were only reason you might forget it, or you might defy it or you might say that it had become outdated. But the law supplies authority and you follow law where you might not follow reason.
“The law said that the tracks on the wall, the old wall, that is, must be kept clear of obstacles and must be lubricated. At times we wondered why, for it seemed a useless law. But because it was a law we followed it quite blindly and so, when the Mutter came the tracks were clear and oiled and the tanks ran up them. There was nothing in the way of their doing so, as there might have been if we’d not followed law. For by following the law, we also followed the reason and it’s the reason and not the law that counts.”
“You’re trying to tell me something,” Jon said.
“I’m trying to tell you that we must follow each law blindly until we know the reason for it. And when we know, if we ever know, the reason and the purpose, we must then be able to judge whether the reason or the purpose is a worthy one. We must have the courage to say that it is bad, if it is bad. For if the reason is bad, then the law itself is bad, for a law is no more than a rule designed for a certain reason or to carry out a purpose.”
“Purpose?”
“Certainly, lad, the purpose. For there must be some purpose. Nothing so well planned as the Ship could be without a purpose.”
“The Ship itself? You think the Ship has purpose? They say…”
“I know what they say. Everything that happens must be for the best.”
He wagged his head.
“There must have been a purpose, even for the Ship. Sometime, long ago, that purpose must have been plain and clear. But we’ve forgotten it. There must be certain facts and knowledge…”
“There was knowledge in the books,” said Jon. “But they burned the books.”
“There were certain untruths in them,” said the old man. “Or what appeared to be untruths. But you cannot judge the truth until you have the facts and I doubt they had the facts. There were other reasons, other factors…
“I’m a lonely man. I have a job to do, and not many come to visit. I have not had gossip to distract me, although the Ship is full of gossip. I have thought. I have done a lot of thinking. I thought about us and the Ship. I thought about the laws and the purpose of it all.
“I have wondered what makes a plant grow, why water and chemicals are necessary to their growth. I have wondered why we must turn on the lamps for just so many hours—what is there in the lamps that helps a plant to grow? But if you forget to turn them on, the plant will start to die, so I know the lamps are needed, that the plants need not water and chemicals alone, but the lamps as well.
“I have wondered why a tomato always grows on a tomato vine and why a cucumber always grows on a cucumber vine. You never find a tomato on a cucumber vine and there must be a reason.
“Behind even so simple a thing as the growing of tomatoes there must be a mass of reasons, certain basic facts. And we do not know these facts. We do not have the knowledge.
“I have wondered what it is that makes the lamps light up when you throw the switch.
“I have wondered what our bodies do with food. How does your body use that tomato you’ve just eaten? Why must we eat to live? Why must we sleep? How did we learn to talk?”
“I have never thought of all that,” said Jon.
“You have never thought at all,” said Joshua, “or almost not at all.”
“No one does,” said Jon.
“That is the trouble with the Ship,” the old man told him. “No one ever thinks. They while away their time. They never dig for reasons. They never even wonder. Whatever happens must be for the best, and that’s enough for them.”
“I have just begun to think,” said Jon.
“There was something you wanted,” said the old man. “Some reason that you came.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” said Jon. “You have answered it.”
He went back, through the alleyways between the tanks, smelling the scent of green things growing, listening to the gurgle of the water running through the pumps. Back up the long corridors, with the stars shining true and steady now through the ports in the observation blisters.
Reason, Joshua had said. There is reason and a purpose. And that had been what the Letter had said, too—reason and a purpose. And as well as truths there will be untruths, and one must have certain knowledge to judge a thing, to say if it is true or not.
He squared his shoulders and went on.
The meeting was well under way when he reached the chapel, and he slid in quietly through the door and found Mary there. He stood beside her and she slipped her hand in his and smiled.
“You are late,” she whispered.
“Sorry,” he whispered back, and then they stood there, side by side, holding hands, watching the flicker of the two great candles that flanked the massive Holy Picture.
Jon thought that never before had he seen it to such a good advantage nor seen it quite so well, and he knew that it was a great occasion when they burned the candles for it.
He identified the men who sat below the Picture—Joe, his friend, and Greg and Frank. And he was proud that Joe, his friend, should be one of the three who sat beneath the Picture, for you must be pious and a leader to sit beneath the Picture.
They had finished reciting the Beginning and now Joe got up and began to lead them in the Ending.
“We go toward an End. There will be certain signs that shall foretell the coming of the End, but of the End itself no one may know, for it is unrevealed…”