‘Yet—?’ I repeated.
‘Sure. It’ll settle down, though, in time. Wild Country was Fringes once, but it’s steadier now; likely the parts you come from were Wild Country once, but they’ve settled down more. God’s little game of patience I reckon it is, but He certainly takes His time over it.’
‘God?’ I said doubtfully. ‘They’ve always taught us that it’s the Devil that rules in the Fringes.’
He shook his head.
‘That’s what they tell you over there. ‘Tisn’t so, boy. It’s your parts where the old Devil’s hanging on and looking after his own. Arrogant, they are. The true image, and all that…. Want to be like the Old People. Tribulation hasn’t taught ‘em a thing….
‘The Old People thought they were the tops, too. Had ideals, they did; knew just how the world ought to be run. All they had to do was get it fixed up comfortable, and keep it that way; then everybody’d be fine, on account of their ideas being a lot more civilized than God’s.’
He shook his head.
‘Didn’t work out, boy. Couldn’t work out. They weren’t God’s last word like they thought: God doesn’t have any last word. If He did He’d be dead. But He isn’t dead; and He changes and grows, like everything else that’s alive. So when they were doing their best to get everything fixed and tidy on some kind of eternal lines they’d thought up for themselves, He sent along Tribulation to bust it up and remind ‘em that life is change.
‘He saw it wasn’t going to come out the way things lay, so He shuffled the pack to see if it wouldn’t give a better break next time.’
He paused to consider that a moment, and went on:
‘Maybe He didn’t shuffle quite enough. The same sequences seem to have got kind of stuck together some places. Parts where you come from, for instance. There they are, still on the same lines, still reckoning they’re the last word, still trying their damnedest to stay as they are and fix up just the same state of affairs that brought Tribulation last time. One day He’s going to get pretty tired of the way they can’t learn a lesson, and start showing them another trick or two.’
‘Oh,’ I said, vaguely but safely. It was odd, I felt, how many people seemed to have positive, if conflicting, information upon God’s views.
The man did not seem altogether satisfied that he had got his point home. He waved his hand at the deviational landscape about us, and I suddenly noticed his own irregularity: the right hand lacked the first three fingers.
‘Some day,’ he proclaimed, ‘something is going to steady down out of all this. It’ll be new, and new kinds of plants mean new creatures. Tribulation was a shake-up to give us a new start.’
‘But where they can make the stock breed true, they destroy Deviations,’ I pointed out.
‘They try to; they think they do,’ he agreed. ‘They’re pig-headedly determined to keep the Old People’s standards — but do they? Can they? How do they know that their crops and their fruit and their vegetables are just the same? Aren’t there disputes? And doesn’t it nearly always turn out that the breed with the higher yield is accepted in the end? Aren’t cattle cross-bred to get hardiness, or milk-yield, or meat? Sure, they can wipe out the obvious deviations, but are you sure that the Old people would recognize any of the present breeds at all? I’m not, by any means. You can’t stop it, you see. You can be obstructive and destructive, and you can slow it all up and distort it for your own ends, but somehow it keeps on happening. Just look at these horses.’
‘They’re government approved,’ I told him.
‘Sure. That’s just what I mean,’ he said.
‘But if it keeps on anyway, I don’t see why there had to be Tribulation,’ I objected.
‘For other forms it keeps on keeping on,’ he said, ‘but not for man, not for kinds like the Old People and your people, if they can help it. They stamp on any change: they close the way and keep the type fixed because they’ve got the arrogance to think themselves perfect. As they reckon it, they, and only they, are in the true image; very well, then it follows that if the image is true, they themselves must be God: and, being God, they reckon themselves entitled to decree, “thus far, and no farther.” That is their great sin: they try to strangle the life out of Life.’
There was an air about the last few sentences, rather out of keeping with the rest, which caused me to suspect I had encountered some kind of creed once more. I decided to shift the conversation on to a more practical plane by inquiring why we had been taken prisoner.
He did not seem very sure about that, except to assure me that it was always done when any stranger was found entering Fringes territory.
I thought that over, and then got into touch with Michael again.
‘What do you suggest we tell them?’ I asked. ‘I imagine there’ll be an examination. When they find we’re physically normal we shall have to give some reason for being on the run.’
‘Best to tell them the truth, only minimize it. Play it right down the way Katherine and Sally did. Just let them know enough to account for it,’ he suggested.
‘Very well,’ I agreed. ‘Do you understand that, Petra? You tell them you can just make think-pictures to Rosalind and me. Nothing about Michael, or Sealand people.’
‘The Sealand people are coming to help. They’re not so far away as they were, now,’ she told us confidently.
Michael received that with scepticism. ‘All very nice — if they can. But don’t mention them.’
‘All right,’ Petra agreed.
We discussed whether we would tell our two guards about the intended pursuit, and decided it would do no harm.
The man in the other pannier showed no surprise at the news.
‘Good. That’ll suit us,’ he said. But he explained no further, and we plodded steadily on.
Petra began to converse with her distant friend again, and there was no doubt that the distance was less. Petra did not have to use such disturbing force to reach her, and for the first time I was able by straining hard to catch bits of the other side of the exchange. Rosalind caught it, too. She put out a question as strongly as she could. The unknown strengthened her projection and came to us clearly, pleased to have made contact, and anxious to know more than Petra could tell.
Rosalind explained what she could of our present situation, and that we did not seem to be in immediate danger. The other advised:
‘Be cautious. Agree to whatever they say, and play for time. Be emphatic about the danger you are in from your own people. It is difficult to advise you without knowing the tribe. Some deviational tribes detest the appearance of normality. It can’t do any harm to exaggerate how different you are inside from your own people. The really important matter is the little girl. Keep her safe at all costs. We have never before known such a power of projection in one so young. What is her name?’
Rosalind spelt it out in letter-forms. Then she asked:
‘But who are you? What is this Sealand?’
‘We are the New People — your kind of people. The people who can think-together. We’re the people who are going to build a new kind of world — different from the Old People’s world, and from the savages’.’
‘The kind of people that God intended, perhaps?’ I inquired, with a feeling of being on familiar ground again.
‘I don’t know about that. Who does? But we do know that we can make a better world than the Old People did. They were only ingenious half-humans, little better than savages; all living shut off from one another, with only clumsy words to link them. Often they were shut off still more by different languages, and different beliefs. Some of them could think individually, but they had to remain individuals. Emotions they could sometimes share, but they could not think collectively. When their conditions were primitive they could get along all right, as the animals can; but the more complex they made their world, the less capable they were of dealing with it. They had no means of consensus. They learnt to co-operate constructively in small units; but only destructively in large units. They aspired greedily, and then refused to face the responsibilities they had created. They created vast problems, and then buried their heads in the sands of idle faith. There was, you see, no real communication, no understanding between them. They could, at their best, be near-sublime animals, but not more.