He said, more to break that awkward stillness than for any other reason: «I suppose this is a rather meaningless question, but how far ahead of our civilization is yours? I mean… well, of course we’re contemporaries, but what time equivalent separates us—?» He stopped, acutely aware of his own lack of terminology.
«The question is not meaningless,» replied Gor Haml. «We are about fifteen hundred years ahead of you—in actual time. Our recorded and archeological history is longer than yours by that many years. Indeed, that is the only significant difference between our races.»
«That’s quite encouraging,» smiled the Secretary of State. «I was beginning to fear you were the sort of supermen the fiction writers love—completely alien to us. But if you help us get started, we should be able to catch up with you in a generation or two.»
«That… yes, that is why I have been so thankful,» exclaimed Brackney. «Here on Earth we die of disease and war, we impoverish ourselves and go in fear and ignorance, we are bound to this one little planet—worse yet, to our own archaic superstitions and hates. Taithan science means things like spaceships and limitless energy sources and disease-free men, yes, and that’s what all the world has been so jubilant about. But to me, it is the enlightenment and the freedom from our old heritage of cave and beast which is the great gift—» He stopped, a little embarrassed at his own loquacity. He heard his own blood beating in his arteries, and his face was hot.
Gor Haml smiled. It was a very weary smile, with no humor in it, and his lined gaunt visage was not brightened by it. He said quietly:
«The histories of Earth and Taitha run as parallel as the histories of nearly all human races known to us. The only important difference is that ours is some fifteen hundred years older—but that difference is enormous. In the Galaxy so far, we have found human races in every stage from pure savagery to our own level, but in nearly every case—and your own among them—the only variation seems to be when they got started. Once under way, they follow the same patterns.»
«But—hold on!» exploded Brackney. «You don’t mean to say that on every planet there was an ancient Egypt and Rome, or a United States—?»
«Oh, no.» Gor Haml’s smile twitched with the faintest hint of amusement. «Indeed, the superficial differences—language, dress, religion, laws and customs, almost everything which an untrained observer would notice—are usually radical. I am, however, speaking in a deeper sense. There is a parallelism in mental and, well, spiritual evolution which transcends outward appearances.»
At their evident puzzlement, he went on: «I suppose some of you, at least, are familiar with such philosophers of history as Spengler and Toynbee. They have the beginnings of the truth, in their analysis of history into distinct cultures. And be it noted, those cultures follow a cycle of genesis in barbaric folk-wanderings, growth and expression of innate tendencies in the people, breakdown, time of troubles, stiffening into a ‘universal state’ statism, and ultimate extinction. The cycle has a time scale which varies by no more than ten or twenty years from the norm for each distinct stage.
«There is no reason to invoke a mysterious ‘Destiny’ to explain this fact. The casual law is sufficient. Under similar conditions, human beings react similarly. For instance, the nature myths of primitive peoples who never heard of each other are so alike that your own anthropologists have been able to classify them according to type, and to enunciate the unspoken beliefs underlying magic rites everywhere. In like manner, what is more natural than that outlying barbarians should invade a decadent empire and, coming under its influence, generate a new civilization—or that the miseries of a time of troubles should be forcibly ended by the imposition of a universal state? I am, of course, much oversimplifying, but I believe you can see in a rough way why Earth-type planets must evolve human races and why these races must have similar cycles of history.»
«But history isn’t all cyclic,» objected Brackney.
«No, no, of course not. It is, indeed, an irreversible process only one of whose components, so to speak, is cyclic. For instance, the progress in technology is almost a direct line. Likewise, when a planet has advanced far enough, it is able to break out of the cycle of wars and other social evils—as Taitha has done. But the time of that achievement is governed by casual laws, not by wishful thinking or futile attempts at interference.»
«Wait a minute—» A sudden fear, dim and inchoate, all the more ghastly for that, crawled coldly along Brackney’s spine. «Wait! Aren’t you assuming that conditions remain the same? For instance, your arrival on Earth is a factor which, I suppose, has no parallel on Taitha—»
«That is true.» Suddenly Gar Haml’s eyes were bright—with tears? «But when we depart, our brief visit will have had no long-range significance. Men tend to thrust unpleasant facts out of their minds, and the existence of planets immensely beyond Earth will prove unpleasant to most humans.»
«Not… oh, no!» Brackney started out of his chair. «But you… you’re going to stay! You’re going to guide us, help us become truly civilized—»
«No, Mr. Brackney. We have classified Earth, and it is well below the stage of development at which prolonged contact with superior culture would be safe for either side. We leave immediately.»
He stood up, and laid a hand on the President’s shoulder. His face was bleak and stern and sorrowful. «Your assumption that we, whose intentions are admittedly benevolent, will give you guidance, is based on my own statement that Earthlings are intellectually capable of learning all that Taithans know. But man is not entirely, or even primarily, an intellectual animal. He has to feel his knowledge, if he is not to make hideous misuse of it. A wise man is not necessarily a good man, and intellect turns as readily to destructive as to useful ends. Do not forget the example of Japan, which your own people forced from feudalism to industrialism without changing the inherent structure of society—thus loosing a fanatical menace on the world.»
«But… you would change our society—wouldn’t you?»
«Never. It would leave Earthlings pensioners, with no sense of cultural continuity—worse off than primitive aborigines forced into modern factories.»
The grave, implacable voice seemed to come from enormous distances, gulfs of space and time and evolution. «Man must win his own salvation. He must learn, not only with his brain but with bitter and horrible and unforgettable experience, branded so deep as to be almost an instinct, that he is part of a whole, and that misuse of wisdom recoils a thousand fold.
«I am afraid that there is nothing we can do for you until you have had your atomic wars. We will be back in a thousand years. Good-by, gentlemen.»
SEA BURIAL
Wise shall you wander, at one with the world,
Ever the all of you eagerly errant:
Spirit in sunlight and spindrift and sea-surge,
Flesh in the fleetness of fish and of fowl,
Back to the Bearer your bone and your blood-salt.
Beloved:
The sky take you.
The sea take you.
And we will remember you in the wind.
EINSTEIN’S DISTRESS
ΔpΔx,
Werner K. Heisenberg
Claimed that our knowledge of
Atoms has gaps.
Einstein, distressed by such
Discontinuity,