‘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.
‘ They could never have succeeded. If they had not brought down Tribulation which all but destroyed them; then they would have bred with the carelessness of animals until they had reduced themselves to poverty and misery, and ultimately to starvation and barbarism. One way or another they were foredoomed because they were an inadequate species.’
It occurred to me again that these Sealanders had no little opinion of themselves. To one brought up as I had been this irreverence for the Old People was difficult to take. While I was still wrestling with it Rosalind asked:
‘But you? Where do you come from?’
‘ Our ancestors had the good fortune to live on an island – or, rather, two islands – somewhat secluded. They did not escape Tribulation and its effects even there, though it was less violent there than in most places, but they were cut off from the rest of the world, and sank back almost to barbarism. Then, somehow, the strain of people who could think-together began. In time, those who were able to do it best found others who could do it a little, and taught them to develop it. It was natural for the people who could share thoughts to tend to marry one another, so that the strain was strengthened.
‘ Later on, they started to discover thought-shape makers in other places, too. That was when they began to understand how fortunate they had been; they found that even in places where physical deviations don’t count for much people who have think-together are usually persecuted.
‘For a long time nothing could be done to help the same kind of people in other places – though some tried to sail to Zealand in canoes, and sometimes they got there – but later, when we had machines again, we were able to fetch some of them to safety. Now we try to do that whenever we make contact – but we have never before made contact at anything like this distance. It is still a strain for me to reach you. It will get easier, but I shall have to stop now. Look after the little girl. She is unique and tremendously important. Protect her at all costs.’