“Do you mean, sir, that I have nothing to say about it?”
“If you want to put it that bluntly, yes. To leave the bright ones among the ranks of the Crew is to breed heresy. We can’t have that. We had it once and it almost destroyed tbe human race. You have marked yourself out by your exceptional ability; you must now be instructed in right thinking, be initiated into the mysteries, in order that you may be a conserving force rather than a focus of infection and a source of trouble.” The orderly reappeared loaded down with bundles which he dumped on the deck. Hugh glanced at them, then burst out, “Why, those are my things!”
“Certainly,” acknowledged Nelson. “I sent for them. You’re to sleep here henceforth. I’ll see you later and start you on your studies, unless you have something more on your mind?”
“Why, no, sir. I guess not. I must admit I am a little confused. I suppose … I suppose this means you don’t want me to marry?”
“Oh, that,” Nelson answered indifferently. “Take her if you like; her father can’t protest now. But let me warn you, you’ll grow tired of her.”
Hugh Hoyland devoured the ancient books that his mentor permitted him to read, and felt no desire for many, many sleeps to go climbing, or even to stir out of Nelson’s cabin. More than once he felt that he was on the track of the secret — a secret as yet undefined, even as a question — but again he would find himself more confused than ever. It was evidently harder to reach the wisdom of scientisthood than he had thought.
Once, while he was worrying away at the curious twisted characters of the ancients and trying to puzzle out their odd rhetoric and unfamiliar terms, Nelson came into the little compartment that had been set aside for him, and, laying a fatherly hand on his shoulder, asked, “How goes it, boy?”
“Why, well enough, sir, I suppose,” he answered, laying the book aside. “Some of it is not quite clear to me — not clear at all, to tell the truth.”
“That is to be expected,” the old man said equably. “I’ve let you struggle along by yourself at first in order that you may see the traps that native wit alone will fall into. Many of these things are not to be understood without instruction. What have you there?” He picked up the book and glanced at it. It was inscribed Basic Modern Physics. “So? This is one of the most valuable of the sacred writings, yet the uninitiate could not possibly make good use of it without help. The first thing that you must understand, my boy, is that our forefathers, for all their spiritual perfection, did not look at things in the fashion in which we do.
“They were incurable romantics, rather than rationalists, as we are, and the truths which they handed down to us, though strictly true, were frequently clothed in allegorical language. For example, have you come to the Law of Gravitation?”
“I read about it.”
“Did you understand it? No, I can see that you didn’t.”
“Well,” said Hugh defensively, “it didn’t seem to mean anything. It just sounded silly, if you will pardon me, sir.”
“That illustrates my point. You were thinking of it in literal terms, like the laws governing electrical devices found elsewhere in this same book. ‘Two bodies attract each other directly as the product of their masses and inversely as the square of their distance.’ It sounds like a rule for simple physical facts, does it not? Yet it is nothing of the sort; it was the poetical way the old ones bad of expressing the rule of propinquity which governs the emotion of love. The bodies referred to are human bodies, mass is their capacity for love. Young people have a greater capacity for love than the elderly; when they are thrown together, they fall in love, yet when they are separated they soon get over it. ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’ It’s as simple as that. But you were seeking some deep meaning for it.”