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EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN
EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN
NOVELS Eight Keys To Eden They'd Rather Be Right* The Forever Machine* NON-FICTION BOOK Opportunity Unlimited NOVELETTES Remembrance and Reflection How Allied What Thin Partitions** Sense From Thought Divide Star, Bright Hide! Hide! Witch! A Woman's Place Clerical Error What Now, Little Man? Do Unto Others SHORT STORIES What Have I Done? The Conqueror Kenzie Report Bow Down To Them Reward For Valour Progress Report** Crazy Joey** We're Civilized** Solution Delayed** ARTICLES It Can't Be Done The
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EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN
EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN
Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, New York 1960 All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-9470 Copyright © 1960 by Mark Clifton All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America First Edition To Charles Steinberg who made writing possible for me...
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SEVEN DOORS TO SEVEN ROOMS OF THOUGHT
SEVEN DOORS TO SEVEN ROOMS OF THOUGHT
1 Accept the statement of Eminent Authority without basis, without question. 2 Disagree with the statement without basis, out of general contrariness. 3 Perhaps the statement is true, but what if it isn't? How then to account for the phenomenon? 4 How much of the statement rationalizes to suit man's purpose that he and his shall be ascendant at the center of things? 5 What if the minor should become major, the recessive dominant, the obscure prevalent? 6 What if the statement were reversible, th
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One minute after the regular report call from the planet Eden was overdue, the communications operator summoned his supervisor. His finger hesitated over the key reluctantly, then he gritted his teeth and pressed it down. The supervisor came boiling out of his cubicle, half-running down the long aisle between the forty operators hunched over their panels. "What is it? What is it?" he quarreled, even before he came to a stop. "Eden's due. Overdue." The operator tried to make it laconic, but it ca
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The first reaction of the sector chief to the dreaded words "delayed report" was a shocked negation, an illusory belief that it couldn't happen to him. To the intense annoyance of the communications supervisor, his first act was to rush down to communications and go through all the routines for rousing the colonists the supervisor had tried. His worry was mounting so rapidly that he hardly noticed the resigned expression of the operator who knew he would have to go through all these useless moti
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In the early dawn, out at the hangar, away from the main E buildings and the endless discussions going on inside them, Thomas R. Lynwood moved methodically through his preflight inspection. Speculative thinking was none of his concern. His job was to pilot an E wherever he might want to go, and bring him back again—if possible. To Lynwood reality was a physical thing—the feel of controls beneath his broad, square hands; the hum of machinery responsive to his will. He liked mathematics not for it
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Calvin Gray, Junior Extrapolator, stood nude before his bathroom mirror and played a no-beard light over his chin and thin cheeks. That should take care of the beard problem for the next six months or so. He leaned forward and examined the fine lines beginning to appear at the corners of his eyes. Well, that was one of the signs he'd reached the thirty mark. One couldn't stay forever at the peak of youth—not yet, anyway. Perhaps he should think about that sometime. Trouble was, there was always
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On ordinary days there were only the usual few science reporters in the press room of E.H.Q. These held their jobs by the difficult compromise between the scientists' insistence upon accuracy and their publishers' equal insistence upon sensationalism. Since the publisher paid the salary; since rewrite men, like television writers, maintained their own feeling of superiority to the mass by writing down to the level of a not very bright twelve-year-old; since the facts had to be trimmed and altere
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The west wall of the E club room began to glow, lose its appearance of solidity. Cal signaled his orderly to lift away his table. Now, where the west wall had been, another room seemed to join this one, an office. A large man in a brown suit made an entrance through the door of the office and sat down back of the desk. His face was drawn with weariness. "I am Bill Hayes," he said. "Sector administration chief of the Eden area. I am acting moderator of this review. We follow the usual rules of pr
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Anyone who has witnessed even so much as a traffic-court trial cannot help but realize that "government by law instead of man" is a mere political phrase without meaning in reality. The ascendancy of me-and-mine over you-and-yours runs so deep in the human psyche that abstract idealisms must always take second place where such ascendancy is threatened. Thus we see that the belly-crawler, meek and subservient to the judge, comes off with a token sentence while the man who attempts to maintain his
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After lunch at E.H.Q., the colonizing administrator took over the review. The precolonizing scientists had not been trapped by the obviously favorable aspects of Eden into neglecting their full duties. No indeed they had given the full routine of tests and had come up with exactly nothing that might be unfavorable to man, at least not more so than on Earth. Colonization had followed the usual plan. Fifty professional colonists had been sent out to Eden. They knew their jobs. They were temperamen
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"It bothers me, it bothers me a lot," Cal said to the two E's, following the review, "that Eden should be more favorable to effortless human existence than Earth." He snapped on the communicator and asked the ship be in readiness for take-off. McGinnis and Wong looked at one another. "You think it might have been the original Garden of Eden?" Wong asked. His face was impassive. "It fits, you know. Man was banished from an ideal condition and forced to live by the sweat of his brow." "Not that so
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Louie was right. After they cleared the solar system there was no trouble getting to Eden. And there was no trouble circumnavigating the globe while still in space. Closer, but still outside the atmosphere in their surveying spiral, they had no trouble in locating the island with Crystal Palace Mountain at its center. There was only one such spot on Eden, and in their telescope viewer its crystalline spires and minarets sparkled back at them like a diamond set in jade. The trouble began when the
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The naked man, running frantically down the side of the slope, disappeared momentarily under some taller growth, came out the other side of it still running. He leaped over a small ravine, stumbled, recovered himself, and disappeared again beneath a larger growth of trees. Below him, on his side of the ridge, there lay another valley with its own stream. They caught one more fleeting glimpse, a mere flash of sunlight on tan skin. He was still heading downward in the direction of the stream. It w
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A second shock, powerfully magnified, hit him then. Because he was personally involved? For what seemed an interminable time, Cal's mind ceased to function rationally, and like an animal suddenly faced with the unknown he froze, shrank within himself, stood motionless. Yet far down within his mind, there was still detached observation, as if a part of him were removed from all this, still in the role of disinterested observer. The crew behind him was likewise frozen in tableau. And the colonists
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It was one day around noon. Jed Dawkins had come in early from his experimental field to get his dinner, well, city folks would call it lunch, and so he'd be ready afterwards for a talk with the colony committee. He'd eaten his lunch, all right, a good one. There was never any scarcity of food on Eden. Always plenty, and wide variety. If anything, a man ate too much and didn't have to work hard enough to get it. That was the main thing that had been wrong with Eden, right from the start. Man was
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At E.H.Q. on Earth communication had been working fine. The operator sat back and listened with trained ear alert for flaw or fade. A glance at the adjacent recording instrument told him it was taking down everything said—had been for hours. Nice deal about those naked colonists. Maybe the astronavigator on the E cruiser had been right. Maybe they'd all just gone back to nature, all the way back. He wondered if there were any pretty young female colonists. And how far did that word experimental
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The observer ship, with an assistant attorney general aboard was, indeed, reporting directly to the attorney general's office—to Gunderson in person. On their own secret channel, of course. Had to be secret. All right for them to know, because they were very special persons, but the people should not be told. "Gray is coming out of the ship," the assistant was saying. "He is starting down the ramp. He is alone. He has no apparent weapons. Making a grandstand play of it. Far as we can tell, the c
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"After everything disappeared, the buildings, the escape ship, everything," Cal reviewed, "and you, with your wife, found yourself crouching under the trees in what had been your front yard, without any clothes on—what then?" "That was the beginning of it," Jed Dawkins answered. He looked toward his two companions as if for confirmation. He looked at the three crewmen, at Cal, all sprawled or crouched there beneath the tree at the edge of the clearing. "We thought it was the end of everything,"
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Jed looked quickly at Cal when he told him how the colonists had spooked, bolted in panic. As if he expected disbelief. "Maybe that seems funny to you," he commented. "After taking so much we'd spook like crazy animals and hightail for the woods over not making footprints." "Pretty fundamental thing," Cal said with a shrug. "Animals are aware of spoor long before they are aware of tools. It hit deep down into fundamental being, a thing like that." Jed looked relieved. Hussein and Van Tassel exch
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All the rest of that day, and throughout the following, Cal and Tom worked with Jed in trying to round up the colonists, get them living together again. By agreement, Ahmed and Dirk stayed with the small band of colonists that had overcome their fears enough to mingle together again. Louie frankly deserted his shipmates, and spent all his time with the colonists. Frank, as if reverting to his childhood farming days, occupied himself with trying to round up the stock. He tried to keep the cows se
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"This time," the communications supervisor said with all the firmness he could muster, "this time there must not be any interference with communication. There just absolutely must not be!" "Well, it wasn't my fault," the operator retorted with an exasperation that blanketed prudent restraint. "You heard what E McGinnis said—that they could identify E Gray, and the ship's crew, and many of the colonists, but that there was no sign of the ship that took them there. If there wasn't any ship there c
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There was no frustration, no uncertainty in Gunderson's mind. His course was now clear. His observer ship had also read the messages spelled out by the placement of naked bodies on the grass, and in the semaphore wavings of the Junior E's arms. The photographs taken were all the evidence he needed to prove the morals charges he intended to bring. It might not be wise to allow the total photographs to show in the newspapers, on television, for there were ex-navy men here and there who might inter
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Cal didn't know, couldn't have known, that his efforts to signal McGinnis not to land were unnecessary. Didn't know, couldn't have known, that he himself was the specimen They had hoped to catch. That having caught what They wanted They would naturally close the door to the trap to prevent any possibility of escape, as yet, or any interference with their experiment. From the moment he walked away from the grassy slope where he had signaled the outer ship, he moved and thought as someone detached
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When he had pulled the scaled skin of the fish away from the flesh, the flesh away from the bones, and eaten his fill, Cal lay back on the rock again, to doze, to continue his search for a means of communicating. He was now sharply aware of Their presence, of Their urgency, of Their long patience. Awareness! Once man had got over his greedy delight in occupying more and more of the universe simply because he could, to protect himself against the cosmic loneliness that must follow, he too would b
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For another week, perhaps ten days or more, since time measurement had lost its meaning, Cal lived among the colonists, watched their complete retrogression into a state of unawareness. Even the speech which they had retained seemed now to thin and falter as the simplifying of their idea-content no longer required its use. Only Tom and Jed seemed to retain their orientation to the past, the clarity of awareness. These two spent much time together, seemed always available when Cal needed them, ye
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Throw a key at the feet of a turkey and it is useless to him. Show him the lock it fits, and it is still useless without the knowledge of how to insert the key and turn it. Unlock it for him, and still it is useless without the knowledge of how to push or pull the door. This was the essence of why so few mastered the simple steps of physical science, the essence of why so few were able to get beyond step two of E science. Anyone could disagree with a statement, but in answer to "What if it not b
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Across the universe, two billion years ago, there too a planet coalesced from the mutually attracted vortices of twisted space; gases compelled by gravitational forces solidifying to hardened matter, forming a crust over a molten core. In the soupy atmosphere of metallic salts and gases, tortured and rent by electrical storms of incalculable fury, among the vibrating crystals one formed that was aware. Not in the sharp awareness of later times, but at the first only ill-defined, perhaps no more
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As one awakened from a deep sleep, a hypnotic trance, Cal opened his eyes. Man's ancient thought filled his being, the subject of man's dreams, of yearnings, of philosophies. In ancient eidetic memory, the unbroken thread persisted: If I could only grasp this elusive thing, always just barely beyond my reach, I would not need the ox, the wagon, the train, the plane, the spaceship to transport me from here to there. And now, at last, the thought was in Cal's grasp. Express the things and forces b
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The communications operator looked up as the supervisor came down the aisle toward him. "Communication from the E.H.Q. ship at Eden coming in just fine," he said enthusiastically. He'd thought it over and decided he'd better repair some fences. Good job here, no use letting his irritation with the supervisor's old-maid fussiness make him cut off his nose to spite his face. "See that it does," the supervisor answered sharply. He recognized the overture for what it was, felt relieved that he would
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Had the pilot been able, a moment later, to look into the E's stateroom he would have seen still another visitor, another who had not entered his ship by any normal means. Attorney General Gunderson sat in a chair facing the two E's and Linda. He seemed stunned, frozen into immobility. Only his eyes were alive, darting here and there, unbelieving. There is limit to the number of shocks the mind can withstand, and the series had come too fast for him to adjust to them. He too had picked up Junior
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Cal stood within the crystal amphitheater atop the mountain and watched the interplay of lights until he felt communion come. Rapture! Joy! Question? "Be patient," he said. "There will be more, and more, and more. "You had an advantage," he reminded Them. "You started with a crystalline vibration nearer to the force field than that possible in protoplasm. We've had to come up the hard way. "But we have come up. "You had no competition. We've had to fight for our very lives every inch of the way,
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