“Yes, I see what you mean.”
“In the same way, nothing you discover here about life in the community of life is going to astound anyone, certainly not naturalists or biologists or animal behaviorists. My achievement, if I succeed, will simply be in formulating it as a law.”
“Okay. Got it.”
4
“Would y
ou say that the law of gravity is about flight?”
I thought about that for a while and said, “It isn’t about flight, but it’s certainly relevant to flight, inasmuch as it applies to aircraft in the same way it applies to rocks. It makes no distinction between aircraft and rocks.”
“Yes. That’s well said. The law we’re looking for here is much like that with respect to civilizations. It’s not about civilizations, but it applies to civilizations in the same way that it applies to flocks of birds and herds of deer. It makes no distinction between human civilizations and beehives. It applies to all species without distinction. This is one reason why the law has remained undiscovered in your culture. According to Taker mythology, man is by definition a biological exception. Out of all the millions of species, only one is an end product. The world wasn’t made to produce frogs or katydids or sharks or grasshoppers. It was made to produce man. Man therefore stands alone, unique and infinitely apart from all the rest.”
“True.”
5
Ishmael spent the next few minutes staring at a point about twenty inches in front of his nose, and I began to wonder if he’d forgotten I was there. Then he shook his head and came to. For the first time in our acquaintance, he delivered something like a minilecture.
“The gods have played three dirty tricks on the Takers,” he began. “In the first place, they didn’t put the world where the Takers thought it belonged, in the center of the universe. They really hated hearing this, but they got used to it. Even if man’s home was stuck off in the boondocks, they could still believe he was the central figure in the drama of creation.
“The second of the gods’ tricks was worse. Since man was the climax of creation, the creature for whom all the rest was made, they should have had the decency to produce him in a manner suited to his dignity and importance—in a separate, special act of creation. Instead they arranged for him to evolve from the common slime, just like ticks and liver flukes. The Takers really hated hearing this, but they’re beginning to adjust to it. Even if man evolved from the common slime, it’s still his divinely appointed destiny to rule the world and perhaps even the universe itself.
“But the last of the gods’ tricks was the worst of all. Though the Takers don’t know it yet, the gods did not exempt man from the law that governs the lives of grubs and ticks and shrimps and rabbits and mollusks and deer and lions and jellyfish. They did not exempt him from this law any more than they exempted him from the law of gravity, and this is going to be the bitterest blow of all to the Takers. To the gods’ other dirty tricks, they could adjust. To this one, no adjustment is possible.”
He sat there for a while, a hillside of fur and flesh, I guess letting this pronouncement sink in. Then he went on. “Every law has effects or it wouldn’t be discoverable as a law. The effects of the law we’re looking for are very simple. Species that live in compliance with the law live forever—environmental conditions permitting. This will, I hope, be taken as good news for mankind in general, because if mankind lives in compliance with this law, then it too will live forever—or for as long as conditions permit.
“But of course this isn’t the law’s only effect. Those species that do not live in compliance with the law become extinct. In the scale of biological time, they become extinct very rapidly. And this is going to be very bad news for the people of your culture—the worst they’ve ever heard.”
“I hope,” I said, “that you don’t think any of this is showing me where to look for this law.”
Ishmael thought for a moment, then took a branch from the pile at his right, held it up for me to see, then let it fall to the floor. “That’s the effect Newton was trying to explain.” He waved a hand toward the world outside. “That’s the effect I’m trying to explain. Looking out there, you see a world full of species that, environmental conditions permitting, are going to go on living indefinitely.”
“Yes, that’s what I assume. But why does it need explaining?”
Ishmael selected another branch from his pile, held it up, and let it fall to the floor. “Why does that need explaining?”
“Okay. So you’re saying this phenomenon is not the result of nothing. It’s the effect of a law. A law is in operation.”
“Exactly. A law is in operation, and my task is to show you how it operates. At this point, the easiest way to show you how it operates is by analogy with laws you already know—the law of gravity and the laws of aerodynamics.”
“Okay.”
6
“You know that, as we sit here, we are in no sense defying the law of gravity. Unsupported objects fall toward the center of the earth, and the surfaces on which we’re sitting are our supports.”
“Right.”
“The laws of aerodynamics don’t provide us with a way of defying the law of gravity. I’m sure you understand that. They simply provide us with a way of using the air as a support. A man sitting in an airplane is subject to the law of gravity in exactly the way we’re subject to it sitting here. Nevertheless the man sitting in the plane obviously enjoys a freedom we lack: the freedom of the air.”
“Yes.”
“The law we’re looking for is like the law of gravity: There is no escaping it, but there is a way of achieving the equivalent of flight—the equivalent of freedom of the air. In other words, it is possible to build a civilization that flies.”
I stared at him for a while, then I said, “Okay.”