do battle in an arena. The object is to take a small object, called a football, from one end of the arena to the other. Men devote their lives to this game and those who excel at it are heroes to our people. A man begins to prepare himself for football when he is very young and works to develop
his abilities and his body until he is too old for the game and his reflexes slow. Other men and women spend their lives developing skills. A girl will begin to skate on ice on two thin blades when she is six years old. She may spend many hours every day of her life in an effort to win a gold medal in a series of games that has the attention of our entire world. This is what Hara called the search for perfection. Each individual wants to be the best
at what he or she does and is willing to make great sacrifices. Many strive, but there can be only one winner. We exalt that winner and so we create the desire, in other young people, to emulate the winner. You may call this a useless game, but we on Earth feel that man is at his most magnificent when he is forcing his body to do something it was not designed by nature to do; when he is stretching his abilities to the ultimate to achieve that one moment of triumph which has been attained by no man before him. If you gave a man the garden of Eden…» He paused. «I understand the concept. I've acquainted myself with your culture.» «Give a man everything. Put him into an idyllic situation where he does not have to work for food, where he has eternal shelter and wants for
nothing, and he'll start counting the fruit on the trees or trying to arrange the garden in a way that comes closer to pleasing his own senses. Man is a doer, a striver. Give him the universe, and he'll want to find out where it ends and why it began.» «By your information, how long has man been on Earth?» she asked. «It depends on when you begin to think of our primitive forgoers as man,» Plank said. «We can, although I don't think it worthwhile to do the calculations, tell you exactly when we first fashioned your original primitive ancestor,» the woman said testily. «We return to a basic difference in opinion,» Plank said. «My point is this. You've been on Earth a few million of your years.
While this is not, by our standards, a long period of time, in our history we showed faster development. Our period of warfare was very brief. We began to develop beyond aggressiveness. You have killed your fellows from the beginning.» «Our last war was 75 years ago,» Heath said. The woman laughed. «That is but a moment.» «Without meaning too much more malice than the question implies,» Plank asked, «who gives you the right to judge us?» Another laugh. «Who is there to deny us that right?» «A good point,» Plank said wryly. «But let's get back for a moment to what you think of as man's games. It comes to my mind that there may be a very good reason for man's competition with himself and with his fellow man. You say your life span is unlimited. Even your retarded child has enjoyed what is to us a tremendous and almost immortal life and still has time to live. I assume, then, that you've never been faced with death, guaranteed death, death that comes in a certain span of time regardless of what you do.» «That is true.» «How would your race have developed if, in its youth, each individual had a life span of, say, 30 years? When our people began making technical advances, looking upward to the stars through primitive instruments, we were faced with that problem.» «I see,» she said, nodding. «You show an interest in what we think to be the ideal existence,» Plank said. «Perhaps we could learn by asking you the same question.» «You would not understand,» she said. «Try us,» Hara said. «You lack the capacity.» «It seems to me that you, as we do, like comforts and luxuries,» Plank
said. «This place. It is beautiful, but different only in degree from the same sort of home on our planet.» «A moment,» she said. Each of them felt a slight alteration; suddenly they were standing atop a wooded hill. Around them the woodland was dense, heavily brushed, the ground littered with the debris of fallen limbs. «Do you think I needed a building? A home?» The woman was looking at them with a tiny smile. «Did you think the flowers were for me?» «What are you then?» Plank asked. «Even that you would not understand,» she said. «Can you show us?» Plank asked. «No.» «The Eater's basic form was functional,» Plank said. The woman-form began to fade. In its place was something, a
disturbance, not visible so much as felt, a twisting, a distortion of an area of space in front of them. And then they were seated again in the luxurious room, the beautiful woman before them. «I have one question,» Plank said. «It's been demonstrated that you have control over physical things, but how much is real and how much is in our minds?» «I could, if I chose, leave the area, here, as it was. In time the natural growth would creep back, but the other, the flowers from a far planet, the building itself, they would remain.» «What do you do?» Plank said. «What is your purpose?» «I told you that you lacked the ability to understand. Greatly simplified, we blend.» «With what?» Plank persisted. «With ourselves, with the universe.» «Is the universe limited?» Plank asked. «You would not understand.» Plank snorted. «Let me say, then, that it is not my function to educate you beyond your abilities,» the woman said. «And now I think we have reached the conclusion of our discussion.» «No,» Plank said, standing quickly. «You have merely talked with three humans. You can't possibly have an overall view of the race from such limited contact. You should, before making your decision, talk to our philosophers, our men of science and religion, our artists and writers, our physicians.» «That will not be necessary,» she said. «You deserve your chance.» Plank sat down, sighing. «And now you have a choice,» the beautiful woman continued. «I will return you either to your planet or your base on the satellite of your planet.» «As we are?» Plank asked. «I told you that you were most fortunate that your missiles did not destroy the data banks when you fired upon…» She said the name that could not be pronounced, the name of the Eater. «…'s planet. He was well trained in scientific methods, even if he did not have the patience or the
intelligence to use the material he gathered. He very carefully recorded the basic patterns—you think of them, I believe, as the dna chains, which form each of your individual cells. Had he cared to, he could have duplicated millions of you, but he was too shortsighted for that. However, you will be made as you were.» She laughed. «This should remove any lingering doubts that you are, for a fact, merely a more advanced form of food creature.» «And the others?» Hara asked. «Matt Webb? All the men who were taken from their ships between Earth and the Centauri systems?» «We could recreate their bodies,» the woman said. «They were measured before they were, ah, enjoyed. But apparently the human brain is a tasty morsel.» She smiled and Plank saw, or imagined he saw, a hint of the death's head she had shown them. «He described the taste so well it raised an atavistic appetite. He saved only the brains, and thus the personalities, of just three. You three.» Hara suppressed a shudder. Plank started to speak, angered, but there was a blackness. He was aboard the Pride. He knew it, could remember how he had been a part of it, but he was no longer. Once he had flowed in that ship, had known each intricate system. Now, as he looked at it from the interior, from the lounge, he was blocked out. His mind could not extend beyond the smoothness of the panels that hid the workings of the ship. He pinched the flesh of his arm between thumb and forefinger, twisting until he felt pain. Beside him Hara looked up, her eyes wet. A glow of life was in her cheeks. Heath stood as if dazed, hands hanging at his side. The voice was in their minds and in their ears. «Here is your final instruction. Remember it well. Do your best to impress it upon your