realized, he remembered, in the reading of it, how far short he fell, how
far short the human race must fall, in an understanding of it.
The Talisman could be operated only by certain beings with certain
types of minds and something else besides (could it be, he wondered, with
certain kinds of souls?). “Sensitives” was the word he had used in his
mental translation of the term for these kinds of people, but once again, he
could not be sure if the word came close to fitting. The Talisman was placed
in the custody of the most capable, or the most efficient, or the most
devoted (whichever it might be) of the galactic sensitives, who carried it
from star to star in a sort of eternal progression. And on each planet the
people came to make personal and individual contact with the spiritual force
through the intervention and the agency of the Talisman and its custodian.
He found that he was shivering at the thought of it-the pure ecstasy of
reaching out and touching the spirituality that flooded through the galaxy
and, undoubtedly, through the universe. The assurance would be there, he
thought, the assurance that life had a special place in the great scheme of
existence, that one, no matter how small, how feeble, how insignificant,
still did count for something in the vast sweep of space and time.
“What is the trouble, Enoch?” Mary asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “I was just thinking. I am sorry. I will pay
attention now.”
“You were talking,” David said, “about what we could find in the
galaxy. There was, for one thing, that strange sort of math. You were
telling us of it once and it was something …”
“The Arcturus math, you mean,” said Enoch. “I know little more than
when I told you of it. It is too involved. It is based on behavior
symbolism.”
There was some doubt, he told himself, that you could even call it
math, although, by analysis, that was probably what it was. It was something
that the scientists of Earth, no doubt, could use to make possible the
engineering of the social sciences as logically and as efficiently as the
common brand of math had been used to build the gadgets of the Earth.
“And the biology of that race in Andromeda,” Mary said. “The ones who
colonized all those crazy planets.”
“Yes, I know. But Earth would have to mature a bit in its intellectual
and emotional outlook before we’d venture to use it as the Andromedans did.
Still, I suppose that it would have its applications.”
He shupered inwardly as he thought of how the Andromedans used it. And
that, he knew, was proof that he still was a man of Earth, kin to all the
bias and the prejudice and the shibboleths of the human mind. For what the
Andromedans had done was only common sense. If you cannot colonize a planet
in your present shape, why, then you change your shape. You make yourself
into the sort of being that can live upon the planet and then you take it
over in that alien shape into which you have changed yourself. If you need
to be a worm, then you become a worm-or an insect or a shellfish or whatever
it may take. And you change not your body only, but your mind as well, into
the kind of mind that will be necessary to live upon that planet.
“There are all the drugs,” said Mary, “and the medicines. The medical
knowledge that could apply to Earth. There was that little package Galactic
Central sent you.”
“A packet of drugs,” said Enoch, “that could cure almost every ill on
Earth. That, perhaps, hurts me most of all. To know they’re up there in the
cupboard, actually on this planet, where so many people need them.”
“You could mail out samples,” David said, “to medical associations or
to some drug concern.”
Enoch shook his bead. “I thought of that, of course. But I have the
galaxy to consider. I have an obligation to Galactic Central. They have
taken great precautions that the station not be known. There are Ulysses and
all my other alien friends. I cannot wreck their plans. I cannot play the
traitor to them. For when you think of it, Galactic Central and the work
it’s doing is more important than the Earth.”
“Divided loyalties,” said David with slight mockery in his tone.
“That is it, exactly. There had been a time, many years ago, when I
thought of writing papers for submissions to some of the scientific
journals. Not the medical journals, naturally, for I know nothing about
medicine. The drugs are there, of course, lying on the shelf, with
directions for their use, but they are merely so many pills or powders or
ointments, or whatever they may be. But there were other things I knew of,
other things I’d learned. Not too much about them, naturally, but at least
some hints in some new directions. Enough that someone could pick them up
and go on from there. Someone who might know what to do with them.”
“But look here,” David said, “that wouldn’t have worked out. You have
no technical nor research background, no educational record. You’re not tied
up with any school or college. The journals just don’t publish you unless
you can prove yourself.”
“I realize that, of course. That’s why I never wrote the papers. I knew
there was no use. You can’t blame the journals. They must be responsible.
Their pages aren’t open to just anyone. And even if they had viewed the
papers with enough respect to want to publish them, they would have had to
find out who I was. And that would have led straight back to the station.”
“But even if you could have gotten away with it,” David pointed out,
“you’d still not have been clear. You said a while ago you had a loyalty to
Galactic Central.”
“If,” said Enoch, “in this particular case I could have got away with
it, it might have been all right. If you just threw out ideas and let some
Earth scientists develop them, there’d be no harm done Galactic Central. The
main problem, of course, would be not to reveal the source.”
“Even so,” said David, “there’d be little you actually could tell them.
What I mean is that generally you haven’t got enough to go on. So much of
this galactic knowledge is off the beaten track.”
“I know,” said Enoch. “The mental engineering of Mankalinen III, for
one thing. If the Earth could know of that, our people undoubtedly could
find a clue to the treatment of the neurotic and the mentally disturbed. We
could empty all the institutions and we could tear them down or use them for
something else. There’d be no need of them. But no one other than the people
out on Mankalinen Ill could ever tell us of it. I only know they are noted
for their mental engineering, but that is all I know. I haven’t the faintest
inkling of what it’s all about. It’s something that you’d have to get from
the people out there.”
“What you are really talking of,” said Mary, “are all the nameless
sciences-the ones that no human has ever thought about.”
“Like us, perhaps,” said David.
“David!” Mary cried.
“There is no sense,” said David angrily, “in pretending we are people.”
“But you are,” said Enoch tensely. “You are people to me. You are the
only people that I have. What is the matter, David?”
“I think,” said David, “that the time has come to say what we really
are. That we are illusion. That we are created and called up. That we exist
only for one purpose, to come and talk with you, to fill in for the real
people that you cannot have.”
“Mary,” Enoch cried, “you don’t think that way, too! You can’t think
that way!”
He reached out his arms to her and then he let them drop-terrified at
the realization of what he’d been about to do. It was the first time he’d
ever tried to touch her. It was the first time, in all the years, that he
had forgotten.
“I am sorry, Mary. I should not have done that.”
Her eyes were bright with tears.
“I wish you could,” she said. “Oh, how I wish you could!”
“David,” he said, not turning his head.
“David left,” said Mary.
“He won’t be back,” said Enoch.
Mary shook her head.
“What is the matter, Mary? What is it all about? What have I done!”
“Nothing,” Mary said, “except that you made us too much like people. So
that we became more human, until we were entirely human. No longer puppets,
no longer pretty dolls, but really actual people. I think David must resent
it-not that he is people, but that being people, he is still a shadow. It
did not matter when we were dolls or puppets, for we were not human then. We