













		      I   S   H   M   A   E   L


			     Daniel Quinn


 













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				O N E
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    -- 1 --


The first time I read the ad, I choked and cursed and spat and threw
the paper to the floor. Since even this didn't seem to be quite
enough, I snatched it up, marched into the kitchen, and shoved it into
the trash. While I was there, I made myself a little breakfast and
gave myself some time to cool down. I ate and thought about something
else entirely. That's right. Then I dug the paper out of the trash and
turned back to the Personals section, just to see if the damn thing
was still there and just the way I remembered it. It was.


            TEACHER seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire 
            to save the world. Apply in person.


_An earnest desire to save the world!_ Oh, I liked that. That was rich
indeed. An earnest desire to save the world--yes, that was splendid.
By noon, two hundred mooncalfs, softheads, boobies, ninnyhammers,
noodleheads, gawkies, and assorted oafs and thickwits would doubtless
be lined up at the address given, ready to turn over all their
worldlies for the rare privilege of sitting at the feet of some guru
pregnant with the news that all will be well if everyone will just
turn around and give his neighbor a big hug.

You will wonder: Why is this man so indignant? So bitter? It's a fair
question. In fact, it's a question I was asking myself.

The answer goes back to a time, a couple decades ago, when I'd had the
silly notion that the thing I most wanted to do in the world was . . .
to find a teacher. That's right. I imagined I wanted a teacher--needed
a teacher. To show me how one goes about doing something that might be
called . . . saving the world.

Stupid, no? Childish. Naive. Simple. Callow. Or just fundamentally
dumb. In one so manifestly normal in other respects, it needs
explaining.

It came about in this way.

During the children's revolt of the sixties and seventies, I was just
old enough to understand what these kids had in mind--they meant to
turn the world upside down--and just young enough to believe they
might actually succeed. It's true. Every morning when I opened my
eyes, I expected to see that the new era had begun, that the sky was a
brighter blue and the grass a brighter green. I expected to hear
laughter in the air and to see people dancing in the streets, and not
just kids--everyone! I won't apologize for my naivete; you only have
to listen to the songs to know that I wasn't alone.

Then one day when I was in my mid-teens I woke up and realized that
the new era was never going to begin. The revolt hadn't been put down,
it had just dwindled away into a fashion statement. Can I have been
the only person in the world who was disillusioned by this? Bewildered
by this? It seemed so. Everyone else seemed to be able to pass it off
with a cynical grin that said, "Well, what did you really expect?
There's never been any more than this and never will be any more than
this. Nobody's out to save the world, because nobody gives a damn
about the world, that was just a bunch of goofy kids talking. Get a
job, make some money, work till you're sixty, then move to Florida and
die."

I couldn't shrug it away like this, and in my innocence I thought
there had to be _someone_ out there with an unknown wisdom who could
dispel my disillusionment and bewilderment: a teacher.

Well, of course there wasn't.

I didn't want a guru or a kung fu master or a spiritual director. I
didn't want to become a sorcerer or learn the zen of archery or
meditate or align my chakras or uncover past incarnations. Arts and
disciplines of that kind are fundamentally selfish; they're all
designed to benefit the pupil--not the world. I was after something
else entirely, but it wasn't in the Yellow Pages or anywhere else that
I could discover.

In Hermann Hesse's _The Journey to the East_, we never find out what
Leo's awesome wisdom consists of. This is because Hesse couldn't tell
us what he himself didn't know. He was like me--he just yearned for
there to be someone in the world like Leo, someone with a secret
knowledge and a wisdom beyond his own. In fact, of course, there is no
secret knowledge; no one knows anything that can't be found on a shelf
in the public library. But I didn't know that then.

So I looked. Silly as it sounds now, I looked. By comparison, going
after the Grail would have made more sense. I won't talk about it,
it's too embarrassing. I looked until I wised up. I stopped making a
fool of myself, but something died inside of me--something that I'd
always sort of liked and admired. In its place grew a scar--a tough
spot but also a sore spot.

And now, years after I'd given up the search, here was some charlatan
advertising in the newspaper for the very same young dreamer that I'd
been fifteen years ago.

But this still doesn't explain my outrage, does it?

Try this: You've been in love with someone for a decade--someone who
barely knows you're alive. You've done everything, tried everything to
make this person see that you're a valuable, estimable person, and
that your love is worth something. Then one day you open up the paper
and glance at the Personals column, and there you see that your loved
one has placed an ad . . . seeking someone worthwhile to love and be
loved by.

Oh, I know it's not exactly the same. Why should I have expected this
unknown teacher to have contacted me instead of advertising for a
pupil? Contrariwise, if this teacher was a charlatan, as I assumed,
why would I have _wanted_ him to contact me?

Let it go. I was being irrational. It happens, it's allowed.










    -- 2 --


I had to go down there, of course--had to satisfy myself that it was
just another scam. You understand. Thirty seconds would do it, a
single look, ten words out of his mouth. Then I'd know. Then I could
go home and forget about it.

When I got there, I was surprised to find it was a very ordinary sort
of office building, full of second-rate flacks, lawyers, dentists,
travel agents, a chiropractor, and a private investigator or two. I'd
expected something a little more atmospheric--a brownstone with
paneled walls, high ceilings, and shuttered windows, perhaps. I was
looking for Room 105, and I found it in the back, where a window would
overlook the alley. The door was uninformative. I pushed it open and
stepped into a large, empty room. This uncommon space had been created
by knocking down interior partitions, the marks of which could still
be seen on the bare hardwood floor.

That was my first impression: emptiness. The second was olfactory; the
place reeked of the circus--no, not the circus, the menagerie:
unmistakable but not unpleasant. I looked around. The room was not
entirely empty. Against the wall at the left stood a small bookcase
containing thirty or forty volumes, mainly on history, prehistory, and
anthropology. A lone overstuffed chair stood in the middle, facing
away, toward the wall at the right, and looking like something the
movers had left behind. Doubtless this was reserved for the master;
his pupils would kneel or crouch on mats arranged in a semicircle at
his knee.

And where were these pupils, who I had predicted would be present by
the hundreds? Had they perhaps come and been led away like the
children of Hamelin? A film of dust lay undisturbed on the floor to
disprove this fancy.

There was something odd about the room, but it took me another look
round to figure out what it was. In the wall opposite the door stood
two tall casement windows admitting a feeble light from the alley; the
wall to the left, common with the office next door, was blank. The
wall to the right was pierced by a very large plate-glass window, but
this was plainly not a window to the outside world, for it admitted no
light at all; it was a window into an adjacent room, even dimmer than
the one I occupied. I wondered what object of piety was displayed
there, safely beyond the touch of inquisitive hands. Was it some
embalmed Yeti or Bigfoot, made of cat fur and papier-mache? Was it the
body of a UFOnaut cut down by a National Guardsman before he could
deliver his sublime message from the stars ("We are brothers. Be
nice.")?

Because it was backed by darkness, the glass in this window was
black--opaque, reflective. I made no attempt to see beyond it as I
approached; I was the spectacle under observation. On arrival, I
continued to gaze into my own eyes for a moment, then rolled the focus
forward beyond the glass--and found myself looking into another pair
of eyes.

I fell back, startled. Then, recognizing what I'd seen, I fell back
again, now a little frightened.

The creature on the other side of the glass was a full-grown gorilla.

_Full-grown_ says nothing, of course. He was terrifyingly enormous, a
boulder, a sarsen of Stonehenge. His sheer mass was alarming in
itself, even though he wasn't using it in any menacing way. On the
contrary, he was half-sitting, half-reclining most placidly, nibbling
delicately on a slender branch he carried in his left hand like a
wand.

I did not know what to say. You will be able to judge how unnerved I
was by this fact: that it seemed to me I should speak--excuse myself,
explain my presence, justify my intrusion, beg the creature's pardon.
I felt it was an affront to gaze into his eyes, but I was paralyzed,
helpless. I could look at nothing else in the world but his face, more
hideous than any other in the animal kingdom because of its similarity
to our own, yet in its way more noble than any Greek ideal of
perfection.

There was in fact no obstacle between us. The pane of glass would have
parted like a tissue had he touched it. But he seemed to have no idea
of touching it. He sat and gazed into my eyes and nibbled the end of
his branch and waited. No, he wasn't waiting; he was merely _there_,
had been there before I arrived and would be there when I'd left. I
had the feeling I was of no more significance to him than a passing
cloud is to a shepherd resting on a hillside.

As my fear began to ebb, consciousness of my situation returned. I
said to myself that the teacher was plainly not on hand, that there
was nothing to keep me there, that I should go home. But I didn't like
to leave with the feeling that I'd accomplished nothing at all. I
looked around, thinking I'd leave a note, if I could find something to
write on (and with), but there was nothing. Nevertheless, this search,
with the thought of written communication in mind, brought to my
attention something I'd overlooked in the room that lay beyond the
glass; it was a sign or poster hanging on the wall behind the gorilla.
It read:

				   
		     WITH MAN GONE, WILL THERE BE
			  HOPE FOR GORILLA?
          

This sign stopped me--or rather, this text stopped me. Words are my
profession; I seized these and demanded that they explain themselves,
that they cease to be ambiguous. Did they imply that hope for gorillas
lay in the extinction of the human race or in its survival? It could
be read either way.

It was, of course, a koan--meant to be inexplicable. It disgusted me
for that reason, and for another reason: because it appeared that this
magnificent creature beyond the glass was being held in captivity for
no other reason than to serve as a sort of animate _illustration_ for
this koan.

_You really ought to do something about this_, I told myself angrily.
Then I added: _It would be best if you sat down and were still_.

I listened to the echo of this strange admonishment as if it were a
fragment of music I couldn't quite identify. I looked at the chair and
wondered: _Would_ it be best to sit down and be still? And if so, why?
The answer came readily enough: _Because, if you are still, then you
will be better able to hear_. Yes, I thought, that is undeniably so.

For no conscious reason, I lifted my eyes to those of my beastly
companion in the next room. As everyone knows, eyes _speak_. A pair of
strangers can effortlessly reveal their mutual interest and attraction
in a single glance. _His_ eyes spoke, and I understood. My legs turned
to jelly, and I barely managed to reach the chair without collapsing.

"But how?" I said, not daring to speak the words aloud.

"What does it matter?" he replied as silently. "It's so, and nothing
more needs to be said."

"But you--" I sputtered. "You are . . ."

I found that, having come to the word, and with no other word to put
in its place, I could not speak it.

After a moment he nodded, as if in acknowledgment of my difficulty. "I
am the teacher."

For a time, we gazed into each other's eyes, and my head felt as empty
as a derelict barn.

Then he said: "Do you need time to collect yourself?"

"Yes!" I cried, speaking aloud for the first time.

He turned his massive head to one side to peer at me curiously. "Will
it help you to listen to my story?"

"Indeed it will," I said. "But first--if you will--please tell me your
name."

He stared at me for a while without replying and (as far as I could
tell at that time) without expression. Then he proceeded as if I
hadn't spoken at all.

"I was born somewhere in the forests of equatorial West Africa," he
said. "I've never made any effort to find out exactly where, and see
no reason to do so now. Do you happen to know anything about animal
collecting for zoos and circuses?"

I looked up, startled. "I know nothing at all about animal
collecting."

"At one time, or at least during the thirties, the method commonly
used with gorillas was this: On finding a band, collectors would shoot
the females and pick up all the infants in sight."

"How terrible," I said, without thinking.

The creature replied with a shrug. "I have no actual memory of the
event--though I have memories of still earlier times. In any case, the
Johnsons sold me to a zoo in some small northeastern city--I can't say
which, for I had no awareness of such things as yet. There I lived and
grew for several years."

He paused and nibbled absentmindedly on his branch for a while, as if
gathering his thoughts.









    -- 3 --


In such places (he went on at last), where animals are simply penned
up, they are almost always more thoughtful than their cousins in the
wild. This is because even the dimmest of them cannot help but sense
that something is very wrong with this style of living. When I say
that they are more thoughtful, I don't mean to imply that they acquire
powers of ratiocination. But the tiger you see madly pacing its cage
is nevertheless preoccupied with something that a human would
certainly recognize as a thought. And this thought is a question:
_Why_? "Why, why, why, why, why, why?" the tiger asks itself hour
after hour, day after day, year after year, as it treads its endless
path behind the bars of its cage. It cannot analyze the question or
elaborate on it. If you were somehow able to ask the creature, "Why
_what_?" it would be unable to answer you. Nevertheless this question
burns like an unquenchable flame in its mind, inflicting a searing
pain that does not diminish until the creature lapses into a final
lethargy that zookeepers recognize as an irreversible rejection of
life. And of course this questioning is something that no tiger does
in its normal habitat.

Before long I too began to ask myself _why_. Being neurologically far
in advance of the tiger, I was able to examine what I meant by the
question, at least in a rudimentary way. I remembered a different sort
of life, which was, for those who lived it, interesting and pleasant.
By contrast, this life was agonizingly boring and never pleasant.
Thus, in asking _why_, I was trying to puzzle out why life should be
divided in this way, half of it interesting and pleasant and half of
it boring and unpleasant. I had no concept of myself as a captive; it
didn't occur to me that anyone was preventing me from having an
interesting and pleasant life. When no answer to my question was
forthcoming, I began to consider the differences between the two
life-styles. The most fundamental difference was that in Africa I was
a member of a family--of a sort of family that the people of your
culture haven't known for thousands of years. If gorillas were capable
of such an expression, they would tell you that their family is like a
hand, of which they are the fingers. They are fully aware of being a
family but are very little aware of being individuals. Here in the zoo
there were other gorillas--but there was no family. Five severed
fingers do not make a hand.

I considered the matter of our feeding. Human children dream of a land
where the mountains are ice cream and the trees are gingerbread and
the stones are bonbons. For a gorilla, Africa is just such a land.
Wherever one turns, there is something wonderful to eat. One never
thinks, "Oh, I'd better look for some food." Food is everywhere, and
one picks it up almost absentmindedly, as one takes a breath of air.
In fact, one does not think of feeding as a distinct activity at all.
Rather, it's like a delicious music that plays in the background of
all activities throughout the day. In fact, feeding became feeding for
me only at the zoo, where twice daily great masses of tasteless fodder
were pitched into our cages.

It was in puzzling out such small matters as these that my interior
life began--quite unnoticed.

Although naturally I knew nothing of it, the Great Depression was
taking its toll on all aspects of American life. Zoos everywhere were
being forced to economize, reducing the number of animals to be
maintained and thereby reducing expenses of all kinds. A great many
animals were simply put down, I believe, for there was no market in
the private sector for animals that were neither easy to keep nor very
colorful or dramatic. The exceptions were, of course, the big cats and
the primates.

To make a long story short, I was sold to the owner of a traveling
menagerie with an empty wagon to fill. I was a large and impressive
adolescent and doubtless represented a sensible long-term investment.

You might imagine that life in one cage is like life in any other
cage, but this is not at all the case. Take the matter of human
contact, for example. At the zoo, all the gorillas were aware of our
human visitors. They were a curiosity for us, worth watching, in the
way that birds or squirrels around a house might seem worth watching
to a human family. It was clear that these strange creatures were
there looking at us, but it never crossed our minds that they had come
for that express purpose. At the menagerie, however, I quickly came to
a true understanding of this phenomenon.

Indeed, my education in this regard began from the moment I was first
put on display. A small group of visitors approached my wagon and
after a moment began _speaking to me_. I was astounded. At the zoo,
visitors had talked to _one another_ --never to us. "Perhaps these
people are confused," I said to myself. "Perhaps they've mistaken me
for one of themselves." My wonderment and perplexity grew as, one
after another, every group that visited my wagon behaved in the same
way. I simply didn't know what to make of it.

That night, without thinking of it as such, I made my first real
attempt to marshal my thoughts to solve a problem. Was it possible, I
wondered, that changing my location had somehow changed _me_? I didn't
feel in the least changed, and certainly nothing in my appearance
seemed to have changed. Perhaps, I thought, the people who visited me
that day belonged to a different species from those who had come to
the zoo. This reasoning did not impress me; the two groups were
identical in every way but this: that one group talked among
themselves and the other talked to me. Even the sound of the talking
was the same. It had to be something else.

The following night I attacked the problem again, reasoning in this
way: If nothing has changed in me and nothing has changed in them,
then _something else_ must have changed. I am the same and they are
the same, therefore something else is _not_ the same. Looking at the
matter this way, I could see only one answer: At the zoo there were
many gorillas; here there was only one. I felt the force of this but
could not imagine why visitors would behave one way in the presence of
many gorillas and a different way in the presence of one gorilla.

The next day I tried to pay more attention to what my visitors were
saying. I soon noticed that, although every speech was different,
there was one sound that occurred over and over, and it seemed to be
intended to attract my attention. Of course I was unable to hazard a
guess as to its meaning; I possessed nothing that would serve as a
Rosetta Stone.

The wagon to the right of mine was occupied by a female chimpanzee
with an infant, and I had already observed that visitors spoke to her
in the same way they spoke to me. Now I noticed that visitors employed
a different recurrent sound to attract her attention. At her wagon,
visitors called out, "Zsa-Zsa! Zsa-Zsa! Zsa-Zsa!" At my wagon, they
called out, "Goliath! Goliath! Goliath!"

By small steps such as these, I soon understood that these sounds in
some mysterious way attached directly to the two of us _as
individuals_. You, who have had a name from birth and who probably
think that even a pet dog is aware of having a name (which is untrue),
cannot imagine what a revolution in perception the acquisition of a
name produced in me. It would be no exaggeration to say that I was
truly born in that moment--born as a person.

From the realization that I had a name to the realization that
_everything_ has a name was not a great leap. You might think a caged
animal would have little opportunity to learn the language of its
visitors, but this is not so. Menageries attract families, and I soon
discovered that parents are incessantly schooling their children in
the arts of language: "Look, Johnny, there's a duck! Can you say
_duck_? D-u-u-c-k.! Do you know what a duck says? A duck says _quack
quack_!"

Within a couple of years I was able to follow most conversations
within earshot, but I found that puzzlement kept pace with
comprehension. I knew by now that I was a gorilla and that Zsa-Zsa was
a chimpanzee. I also knew that all the inhabitants of the wagons were
_animals_. But I could not quite make out the constitution of an
animal; our human visitors clearly distinguished between themselves
and animals, but I was unable to figure out why. If I understood what
made us animals (and I thought I did), I couldn't understand what made
them _not_ animals.

The nature of our captivity was no longer a mystery, for I had heard
it explained to hundreds of children. All the animals of the menagerie
had originally lived in something called The Wild, which extended all
over the world (whatever a "world" might be). We had been taken from
The Wild and brought together in one place, because, for some strange
reason, people found us interesting. We were kept in cages because we
were "wild" and "dangerous"--terms that baffled me, because they
evidently referred to qualities I epitomized in myself. I mean that
when parents wanted to show their children a particularly wild and
dangerous creature, they would point at me. It's true that they would
also point at the big cats, but since I'd never seen a big cat outside
a cage, this was not enlightening.

On the whole, life at the menagerie was an improvement over life at
the zoo, because it was not so oppressively boring. It didn't occur to
me to be resentful of my keepers. Although they had a greater range of
movement, they seemed as much bound to the menagerie as the rest of
us, and I had no inkling that they lived an entirely different sort of
life on the outside. It would have been as plausible for Boyle's law
to have popped into my head as the notion that I had been unjustly
deprived of some inborn right, such as the right to live as I pleased.

Perhaps three or four years passed. Then one rainy day, when the lot
was deserted, I received a peculiar visitor: a lone man, who looked to
be ancient and shriveled to me, but who I later learned was only in
his early forties. Even his approach was distinctive. He stood at the
entrance to the menagerie, glanced methodically at each wagon in turn,
and then headed straight for mine. He paused at the rope slung some
five feet away, planted the tip of his walking stick in the mud just
ahead of his shoes, and peered intently into my eyes. I have never
been disconcerted by a human gaze, so I placidly returned his stare. I
sat and he stood for several minutes without moving. I remember
feeling an unusual admiration for this man, so stoically enduring the
drizzle that was streaming down his face and soaking his clothes.

At last he straightened up and gave me a nod, as if he'd come to some
carefully considered conclusion.

"You are _not_ Goliath," he said.

At that, he turned and marched back the way he'd come, without a look
to right or left.










    -- 4 --


I was thunderstruck, as you may well imagine. _Not_ Goliath? What
could it possibly mean to be _not_ Goliath?

It didn't occur to me to say, "Well, if I'm not Goliath, then who _am_
I?" A human would ask this question, because he would know that,
whatever his name, he is assuredly _someone_. I did not. On the
contrary, it seemed to me that if I was not Goliath, then I must be no
one at all.

Though this stranger had never laid eyes on me before that day, I
didn't doubt for a moment that he spoke with an unquestionable
authority. A thousand others had called me by the name of
Goliath--even those who, like the workers at the menagerie, knew me
well--but that was clearly not the point, counted for nothing. The
stranger hadn't said, "Your _name_ is not Goliath." He had said,
"_You_ are not Goliath." There was a world of difference. As I felt it
(though I could not have expressed it this way at the time), my
awareness of selfhood had been pronounced a delusion.

I drifted into a sort of fugue state, neither aware nor unconscious.
An attendant came round with food, but I ignored him. Night fell, but
I didn't sleep. The rain stopped and the sun rose without my noticing.
Soon there were the usual crowds of visitors calling out, "Goliath!
Goliath! Goliath!" but I paid no attention.

Several days passed in this way. Then one evening after the menagerie
had closed for the day, I took a long drink from my bowl and soon fell
asleep--a powerful sedative had been added to my water. At dawn I
awoke in an unfamiliar cage. At first, because it was so large and so
strangely shaped, I didn't even recognize it as a cage. In fact, it
was circular, and open to the air on all sides; as I later understood,
a gazebo had been modified to serve the purpose. Except for a large
white house nearby, it stood alone in the midst of an attractive park
that I imagined must extend to the ends of the earth.

It was not long before I'd conceived an explanation for this strange
translocation: The people who visited the menagerie came, at least in
part, with the expectation of seeing a gorilla named Goliath; how they
came to have this expectation I could not guess, but they certainly
seemed to have it; and when the owner of the menagerie learned that I
was in fact _not_ Goliath, he could scarcely go on exhibiting me as
such, and so had no real choice but to send me away. I didn't know
whether to be sorry about this or not; my new home was far more
pleasant than anything I'd seen since leaving Africa, but without the
daily stimulation of the crowds, it would soon become even more
excruciatingly boring than the zoo, where at least I'd had the company
of other gorillas. I was still pondering these matters when, around
midmorning, I looked up and saw that I was not alone. A man was
standing just beyond the bars, blackly silhouetted against the sunlit
house in the distance. I approached cautiously and was astonished to
recognize him.

As if reenacting our former encounter, we gazed into each other's eyes
for several minutes, I sitting on the floor of my cage, he leaning on
his walking stick. I saw that, dry and freshly dressed, he was not the
elderly person I'd first taken him for. His face was long and dark and
bony, his eyes burned with a strange intensity, and his mouth seemed
set in an expression of bitter mirth. At last he nodded, exactly as
before, and said:

"Yes, I was right. You are not Goliath. You are Ishmael."

Once again, as if everything that mattered was now finally settled, he
turned and walked away.

And once again I was thunderstruck--but this time by a feeling of
profound relief, for I had been redeemed from oblivion. More, the
error that caused me to live as an unwitting impostor for so many
years had been corrected at last. I had been made whole as a
person--not again but for the very first time.

I was consumed with curiosity about my savior. I didn't think to
associate him with my removal from the menagerie to this charming
belvedere, for I was as yet incapable of even that most primitive of
fallacies: _post hoc, ergo propter hoc_. He was to me a supernal
being. To a mind ready for mythology, he was the beginning of what is
meant by _godlike_. He had twice made a brief appearance in my
life--and twice, with a single utterance, had transformed me. I tried
to search for the underlying meaning of these appearances, but found
only questions. Had this man come to the menagerie in search of
Goliath or in search of me? Had he come because he _hoped_ I was
Goliath or because he suspected I was _not_ Goliath? How had he so
promptly found me in my new location? I had no measure of the extent
of human information; if it was common knowledge that I could be found
at the menagerie (as it had seemed to be), was it also common
knowledge that I could now be found here? Despite all these
unanswerable questions, the overwhelming fact remained that this
uncanny creature had twice sought me out in order to address me in an
unprecedented way--as a person. I was certain that, having finally
settled the matter of my identity, he would vanish from my life
forever; what more was there for him to do?




Doubtless you will have surmised that all these breathless
apperceptions were just so much moonshine. Nonetheless the truth (as I
later learned it) was not much less fantastic.

My benefactor was a wealthy Jewish merchant of this city, a man by the
name of Walter Sokolow. On the day he discovered me at the menagerie,
he'd been out walking in the rain, in a kind of suicidal gloom that
had descended on him a few months before, when he learned beyond any
doubt that his entire family had been swallowed up in the Nazi
holocaust. His wanderings led him to a carnival set up at the edge of
town, and he went in with nothing in particular on his mind. Because
of the rain, most of the booths and rides were shut down, giving the
place an air of abandonment that accorded well with his melancholy. At
last he came to the menagerie, whose chief attractions were advertised
in a series of lurid paintings. One of these, more lurid than the
rest, depicted the gorilla Goliath brandishing the broken body of an
African native as if it were a weapon. Walter Sokolow, perhaps
thinking that a gorilla named Goliath was an apt symbol for the Nazi
giant that was then engaged in crushing the race of David, decided it
would be satisfying to behold such a monster behind bars.

He went in, approached my wagon, and by gazing into my eyes, soon
realized that I was no relation to the bloodthirsty monster in the
painting--and indeed no relation to the Philistine tormentor of his
race. He found it gave him no satisfaction whatever to see me behind
bars. On the contrary, in a quixotic gesture of guilt and defiance, he
decided to rescue me from my cage and fashion me into a dreadful
substitute for the family he had failed to rescue from the cage of
Europe. The owner of the menagerie was agreeable to a sale; he was
even glad to let Mr. Sokolow hire away a handler who had looked after
me since my arrival. The owner was a realist; with America's
inevitable entrance into the war, traveling shows like his were either
going to spend the duration in winter quarters or simply become
extinct.

After letting me settle in for a day in my new surroundings, Mr.
Sokolow returned to begin to make my acquaintance. He wanted the
handler to show him how everything was done, from mixing my feed to
cleaning my cage. He asked him if he thought I was dangerous. The
handler said I was like a piece of heavy machinery--dangerous not by
disposition but by dint of sheer size and power.

After an hour or so, Mr. Sokolow sent him away, and we gazed at each
other in a long silence as we had already done twice before.
Finally--reluctantly, as if surmounting some daunting interior
barrier--he began to speak to me, not in the jocular way of visitors
to the menagerie but rather as one speaks to the wind or to the waves
crashing on a beach, uttering that which must be said but which must
not be heard by anyone. As he poured out his sorrows and
self-recriminations, he gradually forgot the need for caution. By the
time an hour had passed, he was propped up against my cage with a hand
wrapped around a bar. He was looking at the ground, lost in thought,
and I used this opportunity to express my sympathy, reaching out and
gently stroking the knuckles of his hand. He leaped back, startled and
horrified, but a search of my eyes reassured him that my gesture was
as innocent of menace as it seemed.

Alerted by this experience, he began to suspect that I possessed real
intelligence, and a few simple tests were enough to convince him of
this. Having proved that I understood his words, he leaped to the
conclusion (as others were later to do in working with other primates)
that I should be able to produce some of my own. In short, he decided
to teach me to talk. I will pass over the painful and humiliating
months that followed. Neither one of us understood that the difficulty
was unsurmountable, owing to a lack of basic phonic equipment on my
part. In the absence of that understanding, we both labored on under
the impression that the knack would someday magically manifest itself
in me if we persevered. But at last there came a day when I couldn't
go on, and in my anguish at not being able to _tell_ him this, I
_thought_ him this, with all the mental power I possessed. He was
stunned--as was I when I saw that he'd heard my mental cry.

I won't burden you with all the steps of our progress once full
communication was established between us, since they are easily
imagined, I believe. Over the next decade, he taught me all he knew of
the world and the universe and human history, and when my questions
went beyond his knowledge, we studied side by side. And when my
studies carried me beyond his own interests at last, he cheerfully
became my research assistant, tracking down books and information in
places that were of course beyond my reach.

With the new interest of my education to absorb his attention, my
benefactor soon forgot to torment himself with remorse and so
gradually recovered from his gloom. By the early sixties I was like a
houseguest who needed very little attention from his host, so Mr.
Sokolow began to allow himself to be rediscovered in social circles,
with the not-unpredictable result that he soon found himself in the
hands of a young woman of forty who saw no reason why he could not be
made into a satisfactory sort of husband. In fact, he was not at all
averse to marriage, but he made a terrible mistake in anticipation of
it: He decided that our special relationship should be kept a secret
from his wife. It was not an extraordinary decision for those times,
and I was not sufficiently experienced in such matters to recognize it
for the error it was.

I moved back into the gazebo as soon as it had been renovated to
accommodate the civilized habits I'd acquired. From the first,
however, Mrs. Sokolow viewed me as a peculiar and alarming pet and
began agitating for my speedy removal or disposal. Luckily, my
benefactor was used to having his own way and made it clear that no
amount of pleading or coercion would change the situation he'd created
for me.

A few months after the wedding, he dropped in to tell me that his
wife, like Abraham's Sarah, was soon going to present him with a child
of his old age.

"I anticipated nothing like this when I named you Ishmael," he told
me. "But rest assured that I won't let her cast you out of my house
the way Sarah cast your namesake out of Abraham's house."
Nevertheless, it amused him to say that, if it was a boy, he would
name him Isaac. As matters turned out, however, it was a girl, and
they named her Rachel.










    -- 5 --


At that, Ishmael paused for so long, with his eyes closed, that I
began to wonder if he'd fallen asleep. But at last he went on.

"Wisely or foolishly, my benefactor decided that I would be the girl's
mentor, and (wisely or foolishly) I was delighted to have a chance to
please him in this way. In her father's arms, Rachel spent nearly as
much time with me as with her mother--which of course did nothing to
improve my standing with that person. Because I was able to speak to
her in a language more direct than speech, I could soothe and amuse
her when others failed, and a bond gradually developed between us that
might be likened to the one that exists between identical
twins--except that I was brother, pet, tutor, and nurse all rolled
into one.

"Mrs. Sokolow looked forward to the day when Rachel would begin
school, for then new interests would make her a stranger to me. When
this result didn't occur, she renewed her campaign to have me sent
away, predicting that my presence would stunt the child's social
growth. Her social growth remained unstunted, however, even though she
skipped no fewer than three grades in elementary school and one grade
in high school; she had a master's degree in biology before her
twentieth birthday. Nonetheless, after so many years of being thwarted
in a matter that pertained to the management of her own home, Mrs.
Sokolow no longer needed any particular reason to wish me gone.

"On the death of my benefactor in 1985, Rachel herself became my
protector. There was no question of my remaining in the gazebo. Using
funds provided for this purpose in her father's will, Rachel moved me
to a retreat that had been prepared in advance."

Once again Ishmael fell silent for several minutes. Then he went on:
"In the years that followed, nothing worked out as it had been planned
or hoped for. I found I was not content to `retreat'; having spent a
lifetime in retreat, I now wanted somehow to advance into the very
center of your culture, and I proceeded to exhaust my new protector's
patience by trying one bothersome arrangement after another to achieve
this end. At the same time, Mrs. Sokolow was not content to leave
things as they were and persuaded a court to cut in half the funds
that had been allocated to my support for life.

"It was not until 1989 that things came clear at last. In that year I
finally comprehended that my unfulfilled vocation was to teach--and
finally devised a system that would enable me to exist in tolerable
circumstances in this city."

He nodded to let me know this was the end of his story--or was as much
of it as he meant to tell.










    -- 6 --


There are times when having too much to say can be as dumbfounding as
having too little. I could think of no way to respond adequately or
gracefully to such a tale. Finally I asked a question that seemed no
more or less inane than the dozens of others that occurred to me.

"And have you had many pupils?"

"I've had four, and failed with all four."

"Oh. Why did you fail?"

He closed his eyes to think for a moment. "I failed because I
underestimated the difficulty of what I was trying to teach--and
because I didn't understand the minds of my pupils well enough."

"I see," I said. "And what _do_ you teach?"

Ishmael selected a fresh branch from a pile at his right, examined it
briefly, then began to nibble at it, gazing languidly into my eyes. At
last he said, "On the basis of my history, what subject would you say
I was best qualified to teach?"

I blinked and told him I didn't know.

"Of course you do. My subject is: _captivity_."

"Captivity."

"That's correct."

I sat there for a minute, then I said, "I'm trying to figure out what
this has to do with saving the world."

Ishmael thought for a moment. "Among the people of your culture, which
want to destroy the world?"

"Which _want_ to destroy it? As far as I know, no one specifically
_wants_ to destroy the world."

"And yet you do destroy it, each of you. Each of you contributes daily
to the destruction of the world."

"Yes, that's so."

"Why don't you stop?"

I shrugged. "Frankly, we don't know how."

"You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels
you to go on destroying the world in order to live."

"Yes, that's the way it seems."

"So. You are captives--and you have made a captive of the world
itself. That's what's at stake, isn't it?--your captivity and the
captivity of the world."

"Yes, that's so. I've just never thought of it that way."

"And you yourself are a captive in a personal way, are you not?"

"How so?"

Ishmael smiled, revealing a great mass of ivory-colored teeth. I
hadn't known he could, until then.

I said: "I have an _impression_ of being a captive, but I can't
explain why I have this impression."

"A few years ago--you must have been a child at the time, so you may
not remember it--many young people of this country had the same
impression. They made an ingenuous and disorganized effort to escape
from captivity but ultimately failed, because they were unable to find
the bars of the cage. If you can't discover what's keeping you in, the
will to get out soon becomes confused and ineffectual."

"Yes, that's the sense I have of it."

Ishmael nodded.

"But again, how does this relate to saving the world?"

"The world is not going to survive for very much longer as humanity's
captive. Does that need explication?"

"No. At least not to me."

"I think there are many among you who would be glad to release the
world from captivity."

"I agree."

"What prevents them from doing this?"

"I don't know."

"This is what prevents them: They're unable to find the bars of the
cage."

"Yes," I said. "I see." Then: "What do we do next?"

Ishmael smiled again. "Since I have told you a story that explains how
I come to be here, perhaps you will do the same."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, perhaps you will tell me a story that explains how you come
to be here."

"Ah," I said. "Give me a moment."

"You may have any number of moments," he replied gravely.










    -- 7 --


"Once when I was in college," I told him at last, "I wrote a paper for
a philosophy class. I don't remember exactly what the assignment
was--something to do with epistemology. Here's what I said in the
paper, roughly: Guess what? The Nazis didn't lose the war after all.
They won it and flourished. They took over the world and wiped out
every last Jew, every last Gypsy, black, East Indian, and American
Indian. Then, when they were finished with that, they wiped out the
Russians and the Poles and the Bohemians and the Moravians and the
Bulgarians and the Serbians and the Croatians--all the Slavs. Then
they started in on the Polynesians and the Koreans and the Chinese and
the Japanese--all the peoples of Asia. This took a long, long time,
but when it was all over, everyone in the world was one hundred
percent Aryan, and they were all very, very happy.

"Naturally the textbooks used in the schools no longer mentioned any
race but the Aryan or any language but German or any religion but
Hitlerism or any political system but National Socialism. There would
have been no point. After a few generations of that, no one could have
put anything different into the textbooks even if they'd wanted to,
because they didn't _know_ anything different.

"But one day two young students were conversing at the University of
New Heidelberg in Tokyo. Both were handsome in the usual Aryan way,
but one of them looked vaguely worried and unhappy. That was Kurt. His
friend said, `What's wrong, Kurt? Why are you always moping around
like this?' Kurt said, `I'll tell you, Hans. There _is_ something
that's troubling me--and troubling me deeply.' His friend asked what
it was. `It's this,' Kurt said. `I can't shake the crazy feeling that
there is some small thing that we're being _lied_ to about.'

"And that's how the paper ended."

Ishmael nodded thoughtfully. "And what did your teacher think of
that?"

"He wanted to know if I had the same crazy feeling as Kurt. When I
said I did, he wanted to know what I thought we were being lied to
about. I said, `How could I know? I'm no better off than Kurt.' Of
course, he didn't think I was being serious. He assumed it was just an
exercise in epistemology."

"And do you still wonder if you've been lied to?"

"Yes, but not as desperately as I did then."

"Not as desperately? Why is that?"

"Because I've found out that, as a practical matter, it doesn't make
any difference. Whether we're being lied to or not, we still have to
get up and go to work and pay the bills and all the rest."

"Unless, of course, you _all_ began to suspect you were being lied
to--and _all_ found out what the lie was."

"What do you mean?"

"If you alone found out what the lie was, then you're probably
right--it would make no great difference. But if you _all_ found out
what the lie was, it might conceivably make a very great difference
indeed."

"True."

"Then that is what we must hope for."

I started to ask him what he meant by that, but he held up a leathery
black hand and told me: "Tomorrow."










    -- 8 --


That evening I went for a walk. To walk for the sake of walking is
something I seldom do. Inside my apartment I'd felt inexplicably
anxious. I needed to talk to someone, to be reassured. Or perhaps I
needed to confess my sin: I was once again having impure thoughts
about saving the world. Or it was neither of these--I was afraid I was
dreaming. Indeed, considering the events of the day, it was likely
that I was dreaming. I sometimes fly in my dreams, and each time I say
to myself, "At last--it's happening _in reality_ and not in a dream!"

In any case, I needed to talk to someone, and I was alone. This is my
habitual condition, by choice--or so I tell myself. Mere
acquaintanceship leaves me unsatisfied, and few people are willing to
accept the burdens and risks of friendship as I conceive of it.

People say that I'm sour and misanthropic, and I tell them they're
probably right. Argument of any sort, on any subject, has always
seemed like a waste of time to me.

The next morning I woke and thought: "Even so, it _could_ be a dream.
One can sleep in a dream, even have dreams in a dream." As I went
through the motions of making breakfast, eating, and washing up, my
heart was pounding furiously. It seemed to be saying, "How can you
pretend not to be terrified?"

The time passed. I drove downtown. The building was still there. The
office at the end of the hall on the ground floor was still there and
still unlocked.

When I opened the door, Ishmael's huge, meaty aroma came down on me
like a thunderclap. On wobbly legs, I walked to the chair and sat
down.

Ishmael studied me gravely through the dark glass, as if wondering if
I was strong enough to be taxed with serious conversation. When he
made up his mind, he began without preamble of any kind, and I came to
know that this was his usual style.


















	  --------------------------------------------------
				T W O
	  --------------------------------------------------




    -- 1 --


"Oddly enough," he said, "it was my benefactor who awakened my
interest in the subject of captivity and not my own condition. As I
may have indicated in yesterday's narrative, he was obsessed by the
events then taking place in Nazi Germany."

"Yes, that's what I gathered."

"From your story about Kurt and Hans yesterday, I take it that you're
a student of the life and times of the German people under Adolf
Hitler."

"A student? No, I wouldn't go as far as that. I've read some of the
well-known books--Speer's memoirs, _Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_,
and so on--and a few studies of Hitler."

"In that case, I'm sure you understand what Mr. Sokolow was at pains
to show me: that it was not only the Jews who were captives under
Hitler. The entire German nation was a captive, including his
enthusiastic supporters. Some detested what he was doing, some just
shambled on as best they could, and some positively thrived on it--but
they were all his captives."

"I think I see what you mean."

"What was it that held them captive?"

"Well . . . terror, I suppose."

Ishmael shook his head. "You must have seen films of the prewar
rallies, with hundreds of thousands of them singing and cheering as
one. It wasn't terror that brought them to those feasts of unity and
power."

"True. Then I'd have to say it was Hitler's charisma."

"He certainly had that. But charisma only wins people's attention.
Once you have their attention, you have to have something to tell
them. And what did Hitler have to tell the German people?"

I pondered this for a few moments without any real conviction. "Apart
from the Jewish business, I don't think I could answer that question."

"What he had to tell them was a story."

"A story."

"A story in which the Aryan race and the people of Germany in
particular had been deprived of their rightful place in the world,
bound, spat upon, raped, and ground into the dirt under the heels of
mongrel races, Communists, and Jews. A story in which, under the
leadership of Adolf Hitler, the Aryan race would burst its bonds,
wreak vengeance on its oppressors, purify mankind of its defilements,
and assume its rightful place as the master of all races."

"True."

"It may seem incredible to you now that any people could have been
captivated by such nonsense, but after nearly two decades of
degradation and suffering following World War I, it had an almost
overwhelming appeal to the people of Germany, and it was reinforced
not only through the ordinary means of propaganda but by an intensive
program of education of the young and reeducation of the old."

"True."

"As I say, there were many in Germany who recognized this story as
rank mythology. They were nevertheless held captive by it simply
because the vast majority around them thought it sounded wonderful and
were willing to give their lives to make it a reality. Do you see what
I mean?"

"I think so. Even if you weren't personally captivated by the story,
you were a captive all the same, because the people around you _made_
you a captive. You were like an animal being swept along in the middle
of a stampede."

"That's right. Even if you privately thought the whole thing was
madness, you had to play your part, you had to take your place in the
story. The only way to avoid that was to escape from Germany
entirely."

"True."

"Do you understand why I'm telling you this?"

"I think so, but I'm not sure."

"I'm telling you this because the people of your culture are in much
the same situation. Like the people of Nazi Germany, they are the
captives of a story."

I sat there blinking for a while. "I know of no such story," I told
him at last.

"You mean you've never heard of it?" 

"That's right."

Ishmael nodded. "That's because there's no _need_ to hear of it.
There's no need to name it or discuss it. Every one of you knows it by
heart by the time you're six or seven. Black and white, male and
female, rich and poor, Christian and Jew, American and Russian,
Norwegian and Chinese, you all hear it. And you hear it incessantly,
because every medium of propaganda, every medium of education pours it
out incessantly. And hearing it incessantly, you don't listen to it.
There's no _need_ to listen to it. It's always there humming away in
the background, so there's no need to attend to it at all. In fact,
you'll find--at least initially--that it's _hard_ to attend to it.
It's like the humming of a distant motor that never stops; it becomes
a sound that's no longer heard at all."

"This is very interesting," I told him. "But it's also a little hard
to believe."

Ishmael's eyes closed gently in an indulgent smile. "Belief is not
required. Once you know this story, you'll hear it everywhere in your
culture, and you'll be astonished that the people around you don't
hear it as well but merely take it in."










    -- 2 --


"Yesterday you told me you have the _impression_ of being a captive.
You have this impression because there is enormous pressure on you to
take a place in the story your culture is enacting in the world--any
place at all. This pressure is exerted in all sorts of ways, on all
sorts of levels, but it's exerted most basically this way: Those who
refuse to take a place do not get fed."

"Yes, that's so."

"A German who couldn't bring himself to take a place in Hitler's story
had an option: He could leave Germany. You don't have that option.
Anywhere you go in the world, you'll find the same story being
enacted, and if you don't take a place in it you won't get fed."

"True."

"Mother Culture teaches you that this is as it should be. Except for a
few thousand savages scattered here and there, all the peoples of the
earth are now enacting this story. This is the story man was born to
enact, and to depart from it is to resign from the human race itself,
is to venture into oblivion. Your place is _here_, participating in
this story, putting your shoulder to the wheel, and as a reward, being
fed. There is no `something else.' To step out of this story is to
fall off the edge of the world. There's no way out of it except
through death."

"Yes, that's the way it seems."

Ishmael paused to think for a bit. "All this is just a preface to our
work. I wanted you to hear it because I wanted you to have at least a
vague idea of what you're getting into here. Once you learn to discern
the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background, telling her
story over and over again to the people of your culture, you'll never
stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life,
you'll be tempted to say to the people around you, `How can you listen
to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is?' And if you do
this, people will look at you oddly and wonder what the devil you're
talking about. In other words, if you take this educational journey
with me, you're going to find yourself alienated from the people
around you--friends, family, past associates, and so on."

"That I can stand," I told him, and let it go at that.









    -- 3 --


"It is my most heartfelt and unattainable fantasy to travel once in
your world as you do, freely and unobtrusively--to step out onto a
street and flag down a taxi to take me to the airport, where I would
board a flight to New York or London or Florence. Much of this fantasy
is spent in making delicious preparations for the journey, in
pondering what must accompany me in my luggage and what may be safely
left behind. (You understand that I would of course be traveling in
human disguise.) If I take too much, dragging it from place to place
will be tiresome; on the other hand, if I take too little, I will
forever be having to break my journey to pick up things along the
way--and that will be even more tiresome."

"True," I said, just to be agreeable.

"That's what today is for: We're packing a bag for our journey
together. I'm going to throw into this bag some things I won't want to
stop and pick up later on. These things will mean little or nothing to
you right now. I'll just show them to you briefly and then toss them
into the bag. That way you'll recognize them when I take them out
later on."

"Okay."

"First, some vocabulary. Let's have some names so we don't have to go
on talking about `the people of your culture' and `the people of all
other cultures.' I've used various names with various pupils, but I'm
going to try a new pair with you. You're familiar with the expression
`Take it or leave it.' Using them in this sense, do the words _takers_
and _leavers_ have any heavy connotation for you?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"I mean, if I call one group Takers and the other group Leavers, will
this sound like I'm setting up one to be good guys and the other to be
bad guys?"

"No. They sound pretty neutral to me."

"Good. So henceforth I'm going to call the people of your culture
Takers and the people of all other cultures Leavers."

I hmm'ed a bit. "I have a problem with that."

"Speak."

"I don't see how you can lump everyone else in the world into one
category like that."

"This is the way it's done in your own culture, except that you use a
pair of heavily loaded terms instead of these relatively neutral
terms. You call yourselves _civilized_ and all the rest _primitive_.
You are universally agreed on these terms; I mean that the people of
London and Paris and Baghdad and Seoul and Detroit and Buenos Aires
and Toronto all know that--whatever else separates them--they are
united in being _civilized_ and distinct from Stone Age peoples
scattered all over the world; you consider or recognize that, whatever
their differences, these Stone Age peoples are likewise united in
being _primitive_."

"Yes, that's right."

"Would you be more comfortable if we used these terms, _civilized_ and
_primitive_?"

"Yes, I suppose I would be, but only because I'm used to them. Takers
and Leavers is fine with me."










    -- 4 --


"Second: the map. I have it. You don't have to memorize the route. In
other words, don't worry if, at the end of any day, you suddenly
realize that you can't remember a word I've said. That doesn't matter.
It's the journey itself that's going to change you. Do you see what I
mean?"

"I'm not sure."

Ishmael thought for a moment. "I'll give you a general idea of where
we're heading, then you'll understand."

"Okay."

"Mother Culture, whose voice has been in your ear since the day of
your birth, has given you an explanation of _how things came to be
this way_. You know it well; everyone in your culture knows it well.
But this explanation wasn't given to you all at once. No one ever sat
you down and said, `Here is how things came to be this way, beginning
ten or fifteen billion years ago right up to the present.' Rather, you
assembled this explanation like a mosaic: from a million bits of
information presented to you in various ways by others who share that
explanation. You assembled it from the table talk of your parents,
from cartoons you watched on television, from Sunday School lessons,
from your textbooks and teachers, from news broadcasts, from movies,
novels, sermons, plays, newspapers, and all the rest. Are you with me
so far?"

"I think so."

"This explanation of _how things came to be this way_ is ambient in
your culture. Everyone knows it and everyone accepts it without
question."

"Okay."

"As we make our journey here, we're going to be reexamining key pieces
of that mosaic. We're going to be taking them out of your mosaic and
fitting them into an entirely different mosaic: into an entirely
different explanation of _how things came to be this way_. "

"Okay."

"And when we're finished, you'll have an entirely new perception of
the world and of all that's happened here. And it won't matter in the
least whether you remember how that perception was assembled. The
journey itself is going to change you, so you don't have to worry
about memorizing the route we took to accomplish that change."

"Right. I see what you mean now."










    -- 5 --


"Third," he said, "definitions. These are words that will have a
special meaning in our discourse here. First definition: _story_. A
story is a scenario interrelating man, the world, and the gods."

"Okay."

"Second definition: _to enact_. To enact a story is to live so as to
make the story a reality. In other words, to enact a story is to
strive to make it come true. You recognize that this is what the
people of Germany were doing under Hitler. They were trying to make
the Thousand Year Reich a reality. They were trying to make the story
he was telling them come true."

"Right."

"Third definition: _culture_. A culture is a people enacting a story."

"A people enacting a story. And a story again is . . . ?"

"A scenario interrelating man, the world, and the gods."

"Okay. So you're saying that the people of my culture are enacting
their own story about man, the world, and the gods."

"That's right."

"But I still don't know what that story is."

"You will. Don't fret about it. For the moment all you have to know is
that two fundamentally different stories have been enacted here during
the lifetime of man. One began to be enacted here some two or three
million years ago by the people we've agreed to call Leavers and is
still being enacted by them today, as successfully as ever. The other
began to be enacted here some ten or twelve thousand years ago by the
people we've agreed to call Takers, and is apparently about to end in
catastrophe."

"Ah," I said, meaning I know not what.










    -- 6 --


"If Mother Culture were to give an account of human history using
these terms, it would go something like this: `The Leavers were
chapter one of human history--a long and uneventful chapter. Their
chapter of human history ended about ten thousand years ago with the
birth of agriculture in the Near East. This event marked the beginning
of chapter two, the chapter of the Takers. It's true there are still
Leavers living in the world, but these are anachronisms,
fossils--people living in the past, people who just don't realize that
their chapter of human history is over.' "

"Right."

"This is the general shape of human history as it's perceived in your
culture."

"I would say so."

"As you'll come to see, what I'm saying is quite different from this.
The Leavers are not chapter one of a story in which the Takers are
chapter two."

"Say that again?"

"I'll say it differently. The Leavers and the Takers are enacting two
separate stories, based on entirely different and contradictory
premises. This is something we'll be looking at later, so you don't
have to understand it right this second."

"Okay."










    -- 7 --


Ishmael scratched the side of his jaw thoughtfully. From my side of
the glass, I heard nothing of this; in imagination it sounded like a
shovel being dragged across gravel.

"I think our bag is packed. As I said, I don't expect you to remember
everything I've thrown into it today. When you leave here, everything
will probably all just turn into one great muddle."

"I believe you," I said with conviction.

"But that's all right. If I pull something from our bag tomorrow that
I put in today, you'll recognize it instantly, and that's all that
matters."

"Okay. I'm glad to hear it."

"We'll make this a short session today. The journey itself begins
tomorrow. Meanwhile, you can spend the rest of today groping for the
story the people of your culture have been enacting in the world for
the past ten thousand years. Do you remember what it's about?"

"About?"

"It's about the meaning of the world, about divine intentions in the
world, and about human destiny."

"Well, I can tell you _stories_ about these things, but I don't know
any _one_ story."

"It's the one story that everyone in your culture knows and accepts."

"I'm afraid that doesn't help much."

"Perhaps it'll help if I tell you that it's an _explaining_ story,
like `How the Elephant Got Its Trunk' or `How the Leopard Got Its
Spots.' "

"Okay."

"And what do you suppose this story of yours explains?"

"God, I have no idea."

"That should be clear from what I've already told you. It explains
_how things came to be this way_. From the beginning until now."

"I see," I said, and stared out the window for a while. "I'm certainly
not aware of knowing such a story. As I said, _stories_, yes, but
nothing like a _single_ story."

Ishmael pondered this for a minute or two. "One of the pupils I
mentioned yesterday felt obliged to explain to me what she was looking
for, and she said, `Why is it that no one is excited? I hear people
talking in the Laundromat about the end of the world, and they're no
more excited than if they were comparing detergents. People talk about
the destruction of the ozone layer and the death of all life. They
talk about the devastation of the rain forests, about deadly pollution
that will be with us for thousands and millions of years, about the
disappearance of dozens of species of life every day, about the end of
speciation itself. And they seem perfectly calm.'

"I said to her, `Is this what you want to know then--why people aren't
excited about the destruction of the world?' She thought about that
for a while and said, `No, I know why they're not excited. They're not
excited because they believe what they've been told.' "

I said, "Yes?"

"What have people been told that keeps them from becoming excited,
that keeps them relatively calm when they view the catastrophic damage
they're inflicting on this planet?"

"I don't know."

"They've been told an explaining story. They've been given an
explanation of _how things came to be this way_, and this stills their
alarm. This explanation covers everything, including the deterioration
of the ozone layer, the pollution of the oceans, the destruction of
the rain forests, and even human extinction--and it satisfies them. Or
perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it _pacifies_ them. They
put their shoulders to the wheel during the day, stupefy themselves
with drugs or television at night, and try not to think too
searchingly about the world they're leaving their children to cope
with."

"Right."

"You yourself were given the same explanation of _how things came to
be this way_ as everyone else--but it apparently doesn't satisfy you.
You've heard it from infancy but have never managed to swallow it. You
have the feeling something's been left out, glossed over. You have the
feeling you've been lied to about something, and if you can, you'd
like to know what it is--and that's what you're doing here in this
room."

"Let me think about this for a second. Are you saying that this
explaining story contains the lies I was talking about in my paper
about Kurt and Hans?"

"That's right. That's it exactly."

"This boggles my mind. I don't know any such story. Not any _single_
story."

"It's a single, perfectly unified story. You just have to think
mythologically."

"What?"

"I'm talking about your culture's mythology, of course. I thought that
was obvious."

"It wasn't obvious to me."

"Any story that explains the meaning of the world, the intentions of
the gods, and the destiny of man is bound to be mythology."

"That may be so, but I'm not aware of anything remotely like that. As
far as I know, there's nothing in our culture that could be called
mythology, unless you're talking about Greek mythology or Norse
mythology or something like that."

"I'm talking about _living_ mythology. Not recorded in any
book--recorded in the minds of the people of your culture, and being
enacted all over the world even as we sit here and speak of it.

"Again, as far as I know, there's nothing like that in our culture."

Ishmael's tarry forehead crinkled into furrows as he gave me a look of
amused exasperation. "This is because you think of mythology as a set
of fanciful tales. The Greeks didn't think of their mythology this
way. Surely you must realize that. If you went up to a man of Homeric
Greece and asked him what fanciful tales he told his children about
the gods and the heroes of the past, he wouldn't know what you were
talking about. He'd say what you said: `As far as I know, there's
nothing like that in our culture.' A Norseman would have said the
same."

"Okay. But that doesn't exactly help."

"All right. Let's cut the assignment down to a more modest size. This
story, like every story, has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And
each of these parts is a story in itself. Before we get together
tomorrow, see if you can find the beginning of the story."

"The beginning of the story."

"Yes. Think . . . anthropologically."

I laughed. "What does that mean?"

"If you were an anthropologist after the story being enacted by the
Alawa aborigines of Australia, you would expect to hear a story with a
beginning, a middle, and an end."

"Okay."

"And what would you expect the beginning of the story to be?"

"I have no idea."

"Of course you do. You're just playing dumb."

I sat there for a minute, trying to figure out how to stop playing
dumb. "Okay," I said at last. "I guess I'd expect it to be their
creation myth."

"Of course."

"But I don't see how that helps me."

"Then I'll spell it out. You're looking for your own culture's
creation myth."

I stared at him balefully. "We _have_ no creation myth," I said.
"That's a certainty."

















	  --------------------------------------------------
			      T H R E E
	  --------------------------------------------------




    -- 1 --


"What's that?" I said when I arrived the following morning. I was
referring to an object resting on the arm of my chair.

"What does it look like?"

"A tape recorder." 

"That's exactly what it is." 

"I mean, what's it for?"

"It's for recording for posterity the curious folktales of a doomed
culture, which you are going to tell me."

I laughed and sat down. "I'm afraid I haven't as yet found any curious
folktales to tell you."

"My suggestion that you look for a creation myth bore no fruit?"

"We have no creation myth," I said again. "Unless you're talking about
the one in Genesis."

"Don't be absurd. If an eighth-grade teacher invited you to explain
how all this began, would you read the class the first chapter of
Genesis?"

"Certainly not."

"Then what account _would_ you give them?"

"I could give them an account, but it certainly wouldn't be a _myth_."

"Naturally you wouldn't consider it a myth. No creation story is a
myth to the people who tell it. It's just _the story_."

"Okay, but the story I'm talking about is definitely not a myth. Parts
of it are still in question, I suppose, and I suppose later research
might make some revisions in it, but it's certainly not a myth."

"Turn on the tape recorder and begin. Then we'll know."

I gave him a reproachful look. "You mean you actually want me to . . .
uh . . ."

"To tell the story, that's right."

"I can't just reel it off. I need some time to get it together."

"There's plenty of time. It's a ninety-minute tape."

I sighed, turned on the recorder, and closed my eyes.










    -- 2 --


"It all started a long time ago, ten or fifteen billion years ago," I
began a few minutes later. "I'm not current on which theory is in the
lead, the steady-state or the big-bang, but in either case the
universe began a long time ago."

At that point I opened my, eyes and gave Ishmael a speculative look.

He gave me one back and said, "Is that it? Is that the story?"

"No, I was just checking." I closed my eyes and began again. "And
then, I don't know--I guess about six or seven billion years ago--our
own solar system was born . . . . I have a picture in my mind from
some childhood encyclopedia of blobs being thrown out or blobs
coalescing . . . and these were the planets. Which, over the next
couple billion years, cooled and solidified . . . . Well, let's see.
Life appeared in the chemical broth of our ancient oceans about
what--five billion years ago?"

"Three and a half or four."

"Okay. Bacteria, microorganisms evolved into higher forms, more
complex forms, which evolved into still more complex forms. Life
gradually spread to the land. I don't know . . . slimes at the edge of
the oceans . . . amphibians. The amphibians moved inland, evolved into
reptiles. The reptiles evolved into mammals. This was what? A billion
years ago?"

"Only about a quarter of a billion years ago."

"Okay. Anyway, the mammals . . . I don't know. Small critters in small
niches--under bushes, in the trees . . . . From the critters in the
trees came the primates. Then, I don't know--maybe ten or fifteen
million years ago--one branch of the primates left the trees 
and . . ." I ran out of steam.

"This isn't a test," Ishmael said. "The broad outlines will do--just
the story as it's generally known, as it's known by bus drivers and
ranch hands and senators."

"Okay," I said, and closed my eyes again. "Okay. Well, one thing led
to another. Species followed species, and finally man appeared. That
was what? Three million years ago?"

"Three seems pretty safe."

"Okay."

"Is that it?"

"That's it in outline."

"The story of creation as it's told in your culture."

"That's right. To the best of our present knowledge."

Ishmael nodded and told me to turn off the tape recorder. Then he sat
back with a sigh that rumbled through the glass like a distant
volcano, folded his hands over his central paunch, and gave me a long,
inscrutable look. "And you, an intelligent and moderately
well-educated person, would have me believe that this isn't a myth."

"What's mythical about it?"

"I didn't say there was anything mythical _about_ it. I said it was a
myth."

I think I laughed nervously. "Maybe I don't know what you mean by a
myth."

"I don't mean anything you don't mean. I'm using the word in the
ordinary sense."

"Then it's not a myth."

"Certainly it's a myth. Listen to it." Ishmael told me to rewind the
tape and play it back.

After listening to it, I sat there looking thoughtful for a minute or
two, for the sake of appearances. Then I said, "It's not a myth. You
could put that in an eighth-grade science text, and I don't think
there's a school board anywhere that would quibble with it--leaving
aside the Creationists."

"I agree wholeheartedly. Haven't I said that the story is ambient in
your culture? Children assemble it from many media, including science
textbooks."

"Then what are you saying? Are you trying to tell me that this isn't a
factual account?"

"It's full of facts, of course, but their arrangement is purely
mythical."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You've obviously turned off your mind. Mother Culture has crooned you
to sleep."

I gave him a hard look. "Are you saying that evolution is a myth?"

"No."

"Are you saying that man did not evolve?" 

"No."

"Then what is it?"

Ishmael looked at me with a smile. Then he shrugged his shoulders.
Then he raised his eyebrows.

I stared at him and thought: _I'm being teased by a gorilla_. It
didn't help.

"Play it again," he told me.

When it was over, I said, "Okay, I heard one thing, the word
_appeared_. I said that finally man _appeared_. Is that it?"

"No, it's nothing like that. I'm not quibbling over a word. It was
clear from the context that the word _appeared_ was just a synonym for
_evolved_. "

"Then what the hell is it?"

"You're really not thinking, I'm afraid. You've recited a story you've
heard a thousand times, and now you're listening to Mother Culture as
she murmurs in your ear: `There, there, my child, there's nothing to
think about, nothing to worry about, don't get excited, don't listen
to the nasty animal, this is no myth, nothing I tell you is a myth, so
there's nothing to think about, nothing to worry about, just listen to
my voice and go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep . . . .' "

I chewed on a lip for a while, then I said, "That doesn't help."

"All right," he said. "I'll tell you a story of my own, and maybe
that'll help." He nibbled for a moment on a leafy wand, closed his
eyes, and began. 










    -- 3 --


This story (Ishmael said) takes place half a billion years ago--an
inconceivably long time ago, when this planet would be all but
unrecognizable to you. Nothing at all stirred on the land, except the
wind and the dust. Not a single blade of grass waved in the wind, not
a single cricket chirped, not a single bird soared in the sky. All
these things were tens of millions of years in the future. Even the
seas were eerily still and silent, for the vertebrates too were tens
of millions of years away in the future.

But of course there was an anthropologist on hand. What sort of world
would it be without an anthropologist? He was, however, a very
depressed and disillusioned anthropologist, for he'd been everywhere
on the planet looking for someone to interview, and every tape in his
knapsack was as blank as the sky. But one day as he was moping along
beside the ocean he saw what seemed to be a living creature in the
shallows off shore. It was nothing to brag about, just a sort of
squishy blob, but it was the only prospect he'd seen in all his
journeys, so he waded out to where it was bobbing in the waves.

He greeted the creature politely and was greeted in kind, and soon the
two of them were good friends. The anthropologist explained as well as
he could that he was a student of life-styles and customs, and begged
his new friend for information of this sort, which was readily
forthcoming. "And now," he said at last, "I'd like to get on tape in
your own words some of the stories you tell among yourselves."

"Stories?" the other asked.

"You know, like your creation myth, if you have one."

"What is a creation myth?" the creature asked.

"Oh, you know," the anthropologist replied, "the fanciful tale you
tell your children about the origins of the world."

Well, at this, the creature drew itself up indignantly--at least as
well as a squishy blob can do--and replied that his people had no such
fanciful tale.

"You have no account of creation then?"

"Certainly we have an account of creation," the other snapped. "But it
is definitely not a _myth_."

"Oh, certainly not," the anthropologist said, remembering his training
at last. "I'll be terribly grateful if you share it with me."

"Very well," the creature said. "But I want you to understand that,
like you, we are a strictly rational people, who accept nothing that
is not based on observation, logic, and the scientific method."

"Of course, of course," the anthropologist agreed.

So at last the creature began its story. "The universe," it said, "was
born a long, long time ago, perhaps ten or fifteen billion years ago.
Our own solar system--this star, this planet and all the others seem
to have come into being some two or three billion years ago. For a
long time, nothing whatever lived here. But then, after a billion
years or so, life appeared."

"Excuse me," the anthropologist said. "You say that life appeared.
Where did that happen, according to your myth--I mean, according to
your scientific account."

The creature seemed baffled by the question and turned a pale
lavender. "Do you mean in what precise spot?"

"No. I mean, did this happen on the land or in the sea?"

"Land?" the other asked. "What is land?"

"Oh, you know," he said, waving toward the shore, "the expanse of dirt
and rocks that begins over there."

The creature turned a deeper shade of lavender and said, "I can't
imagine what you're gibbering about. The dirt and rocks over there are
simply the lip of the vast bowl that holds the sea."

"Oh yes," the anthropologist said, "I see what you mean. Quite. Go
on."

"Very well," the other said. "For many millions of centuries the life
of the world was merely microorganisms floating helplessly in a
chemical broth. But little by little, more complex forms appeared:
single-celled creatures, slimes, algae, polyps, and so on.

"But finally," the creature said, turning quite pink with pride as he
came to the climax of his story, "but finally _jellyfish appeared_!"










    -- 4 --


Nothing much came out of me for ninety seconds or so, except maybe
waves of baffled fury. Then I said, "That's not fair."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't exactly know what I mean. You've made some sort of point, but
I don't know what it is."

"You don't?"

"No, I don't."

"What did the jellyfish mean when it said, `But finally jellyfish
appeared'?"

"It meant . . . that is what it was all leading up to. This is what
the whole ten or fifteen billion years of creation were leading up to:
jellyfish."

"I agree. And why doesn't _your_ account of creation end with the
appearance of jellyfish?"

I suppose I tittered. "Because there was more to come beyond
jellyfish."

"That's right. Creation didn't end with jellyfish. Still to come were
the vertebrates and the amphibians and the reptiles and the mammals,
and of course, finally, man."

"Right."

"And so your account of creation ends, `And finally man appeared.' "

"Yes."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that there was no more to come. Meaning that creation had
come to an end."

"This is what it was all leading up to."

"Yes."

"Of course. Everyone in your culture knows this. The pinnacle was
reached in man. Man is the climax of the whole cosmic drama of
creation."

"Yes."

"When man finally appeared, creation came to an end, because its
objective had been reached. There was nothing left to create."

"That seems to be the unspoken assumption."

"It's certainly not always unspoken. The religions of your culture
aren't reticent about it. Man is the end product of creation. Man is
the creature for whom all the rest was made: this world, this solar
system, this galaxy, the universe itself."

"True."

"Everyone in your culture knows that the world wasn't created for
jellyfish or salmon or iguanas or gorillas. It was created for man."

"That's right."

Ishmael fixed me with a sardonic eye. "And this is not mythology?"

"Well . . . the facts are facts."

"Certainly. Facts are facts, even when they're embodied in mythology.
But what about the rest? Did the entire cosmic process of creation
come to an end three million years ago, right here on this little
planet, with the appearance of man?"

No.

"Did even the planetary process of creation come to an end three
million years ago with the appearance of man? Did evolution come to a
screeching halt just because man had arrived?"

"No, of course not." 

"Then why did you tell it that way?"

"I guess I told it that way, because that's the way it's told."

"That's the way it's told among the Takers. It's certainly not the
only way it can be told."

"Okay, I see that now. How would you tell it?"

He nodded toward the world outside his window. "Do you see the
slightest evidence anywhere in the universe that creation came to an
end with the birth of man? Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere
out there that man was the climax toward which creation had been
straining from the beginning?"

"No. I can't even imagine what such evidence would look like."

"That should be obvious. If the astrophysicists could report that the
fundamental creative processes of the universe came to a halt five
billion years ago, when our solar system made its appearance, that
would offer at least some support for these notions."

"Yes, I see what you mean."

"Or if the biologists and paleontologists could report that speciation
came to a halt three million years ago, this too would be suggestive."

"Yes."

"But you know that neither of these things happened in fact. Very far
from it. The universe went on as before, the planet went on as before.
Man's appearance caused no more stir than the appearance of
jellyfish."

"Very true."

Ishmael gestured toward the tape recorder. "So what are we to make of
that story you told?"

I bared my teeth in a rueful grin. "It's a myth. Incredibly enough,
it's a myth."










    -- 5 --


"I told you yesterday that the story the people of your culture are
enacting is about the meaning of the world, about divine intentions in
the world, and about human destiny."

"Yes."

"And according to this first part of the story, what is the meaning of
the world?"

I thought about that for a moment. "I don't quite see how it explains
the meaning of the world."

"Along about the middle of your story, the focus of attention shifted
from the universe at large to this one planet. Why?"

"Because this one planet was destined to be the birthplace of man."

"Of course. As you tell it, the birth of man was a central
event--indeed _the_ central event--in the history of the cosmos
itself. From the birth of man on, the rest of the universe ceases to
be of interest, ceases to participate in the unfolding drama. For
this, the earth alone is sufficient; it is the birthplace and home of
man, and that's its meaning. The Takers regard the world as a sort of
human life-support system, as a machine designed to produce and
sustain human life."

"Yes, that's so."

"In your telling of the story, you naturally left out any mention of
the gods, because you didn't want it to be tainted with mythology.
Since its mythological character is now established, you no longer
have to worry about that. Supposing there is a divine agency behind
creation, what can you tell me about the gods' intentions?"

"Well, basically, what they had in mind when they started out was man.
They made the universe so that our galaxy could be in it. They made
the galaxy so that our solar system could be in it. They made our
solar system so that our planet could be in it. And they made our
planet so that we could be in it. The whole thing was made so that man
would have a hunk of dirt to stand on."

"And this is generally how it's understood in your culture--at least
by those who assume that the universe is an expression of divine
intentions."

"Yes."

"Obviously, since the entire universe was made so that man could be
made, man must be a creature of enormous importance to the gods. But
this part of the story gives no hint of their intentions toward him.
They must have some special destiny in mind for him, but that's not
revealed here."

"True."










    -- 6 --


"Every story is based on a premise, is the _working out_ of a premise.
As a writer, I'm sure you know that."

"Yes."

"You'll recognize this one: _Two children of warring families fall in
love_."

"Right. _Romeo and Juliet_. "

"The story being enacted in the world by the Takers also has a
premise, which is embodied in the part of the story you told me today.
See if you can figure out what it is."

I closed my eyes and pretended I was working hard, when in fact I knew
I didn't stand a chance. "I'm afraid I don't see it."

"The story the Leavers have enacted in the world has an entirely
different premise, and it would be impossible for you to discover it
at this point. But you should be able to discover the premise of your
own story. It's a very simple notion and the most powerful in all of
human history. Not necessarily the most beneficial but certainly the
most powerful. Your entire history, with all its marvels and
catastrophes, is a working out of this premise."

"Truthfully, I can't even imagine what you're getting at."

"Think. . . . Look, the world wasn't made for jellyfish, was it?"

"No."

"It wasn't made for frogs or lizards or rabbits."

"No."

"Of course not. The world was made for man."

"That's right."

"Everyone in your culture knows that, don't they? Even atheists who
swear there is no god know that the world was made for man.

"Yes, I'd say so."

"All right. That's the premise of your story: _The world was made for
man_. "

"I can't quite grasp it. I mean, I can't quite see why it's a
premise."

"The people of your culture _made_ it a premise--_took_ it as a
premise. They said: _What if_ the world was made for _us_?"

"Okay. Keep going."

"Think of the consequences of taking that as your premise: If the
world was made for you, _then what_?"

"Okay, I see what you mean. I think. If the world was made for us,
then it _belongs_ to us and we can do what we damn well please with
it."

"Exactly. That's what's been happening here for the past ten thousand
years: You've been doing what you damn well please with the world. And
of course you mean to go right on doing what you damn well please with
it, because the whole damn thing _belongs to you_. "

"Yes," I said, and thought for a second. "Actually, that's pretty
amazing. I mean, you hear this fifty times a day. People talk about
_our_ environment, _our_ seas, _our_ solar system. I've even heard
people talk about _our wildlife_."

"And just yesterday you assured me with complete confidence that there
was nothing in your culture remotely resembling mythology."

"True. I did." Ishmael continued to stare at me morosely. "I was
wrong," I told him. "What more do you want?"

"Astonishment," he said.

I nodded. "I'm astonished, all right. I just don't let it show."

"I should have gotten you when you were seventeen."

I shrugged, meaning that I wished he had.










    -- 7 --


"Yesterday I told you that your story provides you with an explanation
of _how things came to be this way_."

"Right."

"What contribution does this first part of the story make to that
explanation?"

"You mean . . . what contribution does it make to explaining how
things came to be the way they are right now?"

"That's right."

"Offhand, I don't see how it makes any contribution to it."

"Think. Would things have come to be this way if the world had been
made for jellyfish?"

"No, they wouldn't."

"Obviously not. If the world had been made for jellyfish, things would
be entirely different."

"That's right. But it wasn't made for jellyfish, it was made for man.

"And this partly explains _how things came to be this way_."

"Right. It's sort of a sneaky way of blaming everything on the gods.
If they'd made the world for jellyfish, then none of this would have
happened."

"Exactly," Ishmael said. "You're beginning to get the idea."










    -- 8 --


"Do you have a feeling now for where you might find the other parts of
this story--the middle and the end?"

I gave this some thought. "I'd watch _Nova_, I think."

"Why?"

"I'd say that if _Nova_ was doing the story of creation, the story I
told today would be the outline. All I have to do now is figure out
how they'd do the rest."

"Then that's your next assignment. Tomorrow I want to hear the middle
of the story."

















	  --------------------------------------------------
			       F O U R
	  --------------------------------------------------




    -- 1 --


"Okay," I said. "I think I have the middle and the end of the story
down pat."

Ishmael nodded and I started the tape recorder.

"What I did was start with the premise: The world was made for man.
Then I asked myself how I would write the story as a treatment for
_Nova_. It came out like this: "The world was made for man, but it
took him a long, long time to figure that out. For nearly three
million years he lived as though the world had been made for
jellyfish. That is, he lived as though he were just like any other
creature, as though he were a lion or a wombat."

"What exactly does it mean to live like a lion or a wombat?"

"It means . . . to live at the mercy of the world. It means to live
without having any control over your environment."

"I see. Go on."

"Okay. In this condition, man could not be truly man. He couldn't
develop a truly human way of life--a way of life that was
distinctively human. So, during the early part of his life--actually
the greater part of his life--man just foozled along getting nowhere
and doing nothing.

"As it happened, there was a key problem to be solved, and it was this
that took me a long time to work out: what the problem was. Man could
get nowhere living like a lion or a wombat, because if you're a lion
or a wombat . . . . In order to accomplish anything, man had to settle
down in one place where he could get to work, so to speak. I mean that
it was impossible for him to get beyond a certain point living out in
the open as a hunter-gatherer, always moving from place to place in
search of food. To get beyond that point, he had to settle down, had
to have a permanent base from which he could begin to master his
environment.

"Okay. Why not? I mean, well, what was stopping him from doing that?
What was stopping him was the fact that if he settled down in one
place for more than a few weeks, he'd starve. As a hunter-gatherer, he
would simply clean the place out--there would be nothing left to hunt
and gather. In order to achieve settlement, man had to learn one
fundamental manipulation. He had to learn how to manipulate his
environment so that this food-exhaustion didn't occur. He had to
manipulate it so that it produced _more human food_. In other words,
he had to become an agriculturalist.

"This was the turning point. The world had been made for man, but he
was unable to take possession of it until this problem was cracked.
And he finally cracked it about ten thousand years ago, back there in
the Fertile Crescent. This was a very big moment--the biggest in human
history up to this point. Man was at last free of all those restraints
that . . . . The limitations of the hunting-gathering life had kept
man in check for three million years. With agriculture, those
limitations vanished, and his rise was meteoric. Settlement gave rise
to division of labor. Division of labor gave rise to technology. With
the rise of technology came trade and commerce. With trade and
commerce came mathematics and literacy and science, and all the rest.
The whole thing was under way at last, and the rest, as they say, is
history.

"And that's the middle of the story."










    -- 2 --


"Very impressive," Ishmael said. "I'm sure you realize that the `big
moment' you've just described was in fact the birth of your culture."

"Yes."

"It should be pointed out, however, that the notion that agriculture
spread across the world from a single point of origin is distinctly
old hat. Nevertheless the Fertile Crescent remains the _legendary_
birthplace of agriculture, at least in the West, and this has a
special importance that we'll look at later on."

"Okay."

"Yesterday's part of the story revealed the meaning of the world as
it's understood among the Takers: The world is a human life-support
system, a machine designed to produce and sustain human life."

"Right." 

"Today's part of the story seems to be about the destiny of man.
Obviously it was not man's destiny to live like a lion or a wombat."

"That's right."

"What is man's destiny then?"

"Hm," I said. "Well. Man's destiny is . . . to achieve, to accomplish
great things."

"As it's known among the Takers, man's destiny is more specific than
that."

"Well, I suppose you could say that his destiny is to build
civilization."

"Think mythologically."

"I'm afraid I don't know how that's done."

"I'll demonstrate. Listen."

I listened.










    -- 3 --


"As we saw yesterday, creation wasn't complete when jellyfish appeared
or when amphibians appeared or when reptiles appeared or even when
mammals appeared. According to your mythology, it was complete only
when man appeared."

"Right."

"Why was the world and the universe incomplete without man? Why did
the world and the universe _need_ man?"

"I don't know."

"Well, think about it. Think about the world without man. _Imagine_
the world without man."

"Okay," I said, and closed my eyes. A couple minutes later I told him
I was imagining the world without man.

"What's it like?"

"I don't know. It's just the world."

"Where are you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Where are you looking at it from?"

"Oh. From above. From outer space."

"What are you doing up there?"

"I don't know."

"Why aren't you down on the surface?"

"I don't know. Without man on it . . . I'm just a visitor, an alien."

"Well, go on down to the surface."

"Okay," I said, but after a minute I went on to say, "That's
interesting. I'd rather _not_ go down there."

"Why? What's down there?"

I laughed. "The _jungle_ is down there."

"I see. You mean, `Nature, red in tooth and claw . . . Dragons of the
prime that tare each other in their slime.' "

"That's it."

"And what would happen if you did go down there?"

"I'd be one of the ones the dragons were tearing in their slime."

I opened my eyes in time to see Ishmael nodding. "And it is at this
point that we begin to see where man fits into the divine scheme. The
gods didn't mean to leave the world a jungle, did they?"

"You mean in our mythology? Certainly not."

"So: Without man, the world was unfinished, was just nature, red in
tooth and claw. It was in chaos, in a state of primeval anarchy."

"That's right. That's it exactly."

"So it needed what?"

"It needed someone to come in and . . . straighten it out. Someone to
put it in order."

"And what sort of person is it who straightens things out? What sort
of person takes anarchy in hand and puts it in order?"

"Well . . . a ruler. A king."

"Of course. The world needed a ruler. It needed man."

"Yes."

"So now we have a clearer idea what this story is all about: _The
world was made for man, and man was made to rule it_. "

"Yes. That's very obvious now. Everyone understands that."

"And this is what?"

"What?"

"Is this fact?"

"No."

"Then what is it?"

"It's mythology," I said.

"Of which no trace is to be found in your culture."

"That's right."

Once again Ishmael stared at me glumly through the glass.

"Look," I said after a bit. "The things you're showing me, the things
you're doing, are . . . almost beyond belief. I know that. But it's
just not in me to leap up out of my chair while striking my brow and
crying, `My God, this is incredible!' "

He wrinkled his forehead thoughtfully for a moment before saying:
"What's _wrong_ with you then?"

He seemed so genuinely concerned that I had to smile.

"All frozen inside," I told him. "An iceberg."

He shook his head, sorry for me.










    -- 4 --


"To return to our subject . . . . As you say, it took man a long, long
time to tumble to the fact that he was meant for greater things than
he could achieve living like a lion or a wombat. For some three
million years he was just part of the anarchy, was just one more
creature rolling around in the slime."

"Right."

"It was only about ten thousand years ago that he finally realized
that his place was not in the slime. He had to lift himself out of the
slime and take this place in hand and straighten it out."

"Right."

"But the world didn't meekly submit to human rule, did it?" 

"No."

"No, the world defied him. What man built up, the wind and rain tore
down. The fields he cleared for his crops and his villages, the jungle
fought to reclaim. The seeds he sowed, the birds snatched away. The
shoots he nurtured, the insects nibbled. The harvest he stored, the
mice plundered. The animals he bred and fed, the wolves and foxes
stole away. The mountains, the rivers, and the oceans stood in their
places and would not make way for him. The earthquake, the flood, the
hurricane, the blizzard, and the drought would not disappear at his
command."

"True."

"The world would not meekly submit to man's rule, so he had to do what
to it?"

"What do you mean?"

"If the king comes to a city that will not submit to his rule, what
does he have to do?"

"He has to conquer it."

"Of course. In order to make himself the ruler of the world, man first
had to conquer it."

"Good lord," I said--and nearly leaped up out of my chair while
striking my brow and all the rest.

"Yes?"

"You hear this fifty times a day. You can turn on the radio or the
television and hear it every hour. Man is conquering the deserts, man
is conquering the oceans, man is conquering the atom, man is
conquering the elements, man is conquering outer space."

Ishmael smiled. "You didn't believe me when I said that this story is
ambient in your culture. Now you see what I mean. The mythology of
your culture hums in your ears so constantly that no one pays the
slightest bit of attention to it. Of course man is conquering space
and the atom and the deserts and the oceans and the elements.
According to your mythology, this is what he was _born_ to do."

"Yes. That's very clear now."










    -- 5 --


"Now the first two parts of the story have come together: The world
was made for man, and man was made to conquer and rule it. And how
does the second part contribute to your explanation of _how things
came to be this way_?"

"Let me think about that . . . . Once again this is a sort of sneaky
way of blaming the gods. They made the world for man, and they made
man to conquer and rule it--which he eventually did. And this is how
things came to be the way they are."

"Nail it down. Go a little deeper."

I closed my eyes and gave it a couple of minutes, but nothing came.

Ishmael nodded toward the windows. "All this--all your triumphs and
tragedies, all your marvels and miseries--are a direct result of . . .
what?"

I chewed on it for a while, but I still couldn't see what he was
getting at.

"Try it this way," Ishmael said. "Things wouldn't be the way they are
if the gods had meant man to live like a lion or a wombat, would
they?"

"No."

"Man's destiny was to conquer and rule the world. So things came to be
this way as a direct result of . . . ?"

"Of man fulfilling his destiny."

"Of course. And he _had_ to fulfill his destiny, didn't he?"

"Yes, absolutely."

"So what is there to get excited about?"

"Very true, very true."

"As the Takers see it, all this is simply the price of becoming
human."

"How do you mean?"

"It wasn't possible to become fully human living beside the dragons in
the slime, was it?"

"No."

"In order to become fully human, man had to pull himself out of the
slime. And all this is the result. As the Takers see it, the gods gave
man the same choice they gave Achilles: a brief life of glory or a
long, uneventful life in obscurity. And the Takers chose a brief life
of glory."

"Yes, that's certainly how it's understood. People just shrug and say,
`Well, this is the price that had to be paid for indoor plumbing and
central heating and air conditioning and automobiles and all the
rest.' " I gave him a quizzical look. "And what are _you_ saying?"

"I'm saying that the price you've paid is not the price of becoming
human. It's not even the price of having the things you just
mentioned. It's the price of enacting a story that casts mankind as
the enemy of the world."

















	  --------------------------------------------------
			       F I V E
	  --------------------------------------------------




    -- 1 --


"We have the beginning and middle of the story together," Ishmael said
when we started the next day. "Man is finally beginning to fulfill his
destiny. The conquest of the world is under way. And how does the
story end?" 

"I guess I should have kept on going yesterday. I've sort of lost the
thread."

"Perhaps it would help to listen to the way the second part ends."
           
"Good idea." I rewound a minute or so of tape and let it play:

"Man was at last free of all those restraints that . . . . The
limitations of the hunting-gathering life had kept man in check for
three million years. With agriculture, those limitations vanished, and
his rise was meteoric. Settlement gave rise to division of labor.
Division of labor gave rise to technology. With the rise of technology
came trade and commerce. With trade and commerce came mathematics and
literacy and science, and all the rest. The whole thing was under way
at last, and the rest, as they say, is history."

"Right," I said. "Okay. Man's destiny was to conquer and rule the
world, and this is what he's done--almost. He hasn't quite made it,
and it looks as though this may be his undoing. The problem is that
man's conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And in
spite of all the mastery we've attained, we don't have enough mastery
to _stop_ devastating the world--or to repair the devastation we've
already wrought. We've poured our poisons into the world as though it
were a bottomless pit--and we _go on_ pouring our poisons into the
world. We've gobbled up irreplaceable resources as though they could
never run out--and we _go on_ gobbling them up. It's hard to imagine
how the world could survive another century of this abuse, but
nobody's really doing anything about it. It's a problem our children
will have to solve, or their children.

"Only one thing can save us. We have to _increase_ our mastery of the
world. All this damage has come about through our conquest of the
world, but we have to _go on_ conquering it until our rule is
_absolute_. Then, when we're in _complete_ control, everything will be
fine. We'll have fusion power. No pollution. We'll turn the rain on
and off. We'll grow a bushel of wheat in a square centimeter. We'll
turn the oceans into farms. We'll control the weather--no more
hurricanes, no more tornadoes, no more droughts, no more untimely
frosts. We'll make the clouds release their water over the land
instead of dumping it uselessly into the oceans. All the life
processes of this planet will be where they belong--where the gods
meant them to be--in our hands. And we'll manipulate them the way a
programmer manipulates a computer.

"And that's where it stands right now. We have to carry the conquest
forward. And carrying it forward is either going to destroy the world
or turn it into a paradise--into the paradise it was meant to be under
human rule.

"And if we manage to do this--if we finally manage to make ourselves
the absolute rulers of the world--then nothing can stop us. Then we
move into the _Star Trek_ era. Man moves out into space to conquer and
rule the entire universe. And that may be the ultimate destiny of man:
to conquer and rule the entire universe. That's how wonderful man is."










    -- 2 --


To my astonishment, Ishmael picked up a wand from his pile and waved
it at me in an enthusiastic gesture of approval. "Once again, that was
excellent," he said, neatly biting off its leafy head.

"But you realize, of course, that if you'd been telling this part of
the story a hundred years ago--or even fifty years ago--you would have
spoken only of the paradise to come. The idea that man's conquest of
the world could be anything but beneficial would have been unthinkable
to you. Until the last three or four decades, the people of your
culture had no doubt that things were just going to go on getting
better and better and better forever. There was no conceivable end in
sight."

"Yes, that's so."

"There is, however, one element of the story that you've left out, and
we need it to complete your culture's explanation of _how things came
to be this way_. "

"What element is that?"

"I think you can figure it out. So far we have this much: _The world
was made for man to conquer and rule, and under human rule it was
meant to become a paradise_. This clearly has to be followed by a
`but.' It has always been followed by a `but.' This is because the
Takers have always perceived that the world was far short of the
paradise it was meant to be."

"True. Let me see . . . How's this: The world was made for man to
conquer and rule, but his conquest turned out to be more destructive
than was anticipated."

"You're not listening. The `but' was part of the story long before
your conquest became globally destructive. The `but' was there to
explain all the flaws in your paradise--warfare and brutality and
poverty and injustice and corruption and tyranny. It's still there
today to explain famine and oppression and nuclear proliferation and
pollution. It explained World War II, and if it ever has to, it will
explain World War III."

I looked at him blankly.

"This is a commonplace. Any third-grader could supply it."

"I'm sure you're right, but I don't see it yet."

"Come, think. What went wrong here? What has _always_ gone wrong here?
Under human rule, the world should have become a paradise, but . . ."

"But people screwed it up."

"Of course. And why did they screw it up?"

"Why?"

"Did they screw it up because they didn't _want_ a paradise?"

"No. The way it's seen is . . . they were _bound_ to screw it up. They
wanted to turn the world into a paradise, but, being human, they were
bound to screw it up."

"But why? Why, being human, were they bound to screw it up?"

"It's because there's something fundamentally _wrong_ with humans.
Something that definitely works against paradise. Something that makes
people stupid and destructive and greedy and shortsighted."

"Of course. Everyone in your culture knows this. Man was born to turn
the world into a paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so
his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidity, greed,
destructiveness, and shortsightedness."

"That's right."










    -- 3 --


Having second thoughts, I gave him a long incredulous stare. "Are you
suggesting that this explanation is _false_?"

Ishmael shook his head. "It's pointless to argue with mythology. Once
upon a time, the people of your culture believed that man's home was
the center of the universe. Man was the reason the universe had been
created in the first place, so it made sense that his home should be
its capital. The followers of Copernicus didn't argue with this. They
didn't point at people and say, `You're wrong.' They pointed at the
heavens and said, `Look at what's actually _there_.' "

"I'm not sure what you're getting at."

"How did the Takers come to the conclusion that there's something
fundamentally wrong with humans? What evidence were they looking at?"

"I don't know."

"I think you're being purposely dense. They were looking at the
evidence of human history."

"True."

"And when did human history begin?"

"Well . . . three million years ago." 

Ishmael gave me a disgusted look. "Those three million years were only
very recently tacked onto human history, as you very well know. Before
that, it was universally assumed that human history began when?"

"Well, just a few thousand years ago."

"Of course. In fact, among the people of your culture, it was assumed
that the whole of human history was _your_ history. No one had the
slightest suspicion that human life extended beyond your reign."

"That's so."

"So when the people of your culture concluded that there's something
fundamentally wrong with humans, what evidence were they looking at?"

"They were looking at the evidence of their own history."

"Exactly. They were looking at a half of one percent of the evidence,
taken from a single culture. Not a reasonable sample on which to base
such a sweeping conclusion."

"No."

"There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to
enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in
accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at
odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the
world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the
world, they will _act_ like lords of the world. And, given a story to
enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer
it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to
death at their feet, as the world is now."










    -- 4 --


"A few days ago," Ishmael said, "I described your explanation of how
things came to be this way as a mosaic. What we've looked at so far is
only the cartoon of the mosaic--the general outline of the picture.
We're not going to fill in the cartoon here. That's something you can
easily do for yourself when we're finished."

"Okay."

"However, one major element of the cartoon remains to be sketched in
before we go on . . . . One of the most striking features of Taker
culture is its passionate and unwavering dependence on prophets. The
influence of people like Moses, Gautama Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and
Muhammad in Taker history is simply enormous. I'm sure you're aware of
that."

"Yes."

"What makes it so striking is the fact that there is absolutely
nothing like this among the Leavers--unless it occurs as a response to
some devastating contact with Taker culture, as in the case of Wovoka
and the Ghost Dance or John Frumm and the Cargo Cults of the South
Pacific. Aside from these, there is no tradition whatever of prophets
rising up among the Leavers to straighten out their lives and give
them new sets of laws or principles to live by."

"I was sort of vaguely aware of that. I suppose everyone is. I think
it's . . . I don't know."

"Go on."

"I think the feeling is, what the hell, who cares about these people?
I mean, it's no great surprise that savages have no prophets. God
didn't really get interested in mankind until those nice white
neolithic farmers came along."

"Yes, that's well perceived. But what I want to look at right now is
not the absence of prophets among the Leavers but the enormous
influence of prophets among the Takers. Millions have been willing to
back their choice of prophet with their very lives. What makes them so
important?"

"It's a hell of a good question, but I don't think I know the answer."

"All right, try this. What were the prophets trying to accomplish
here? What were they here to do?"

"You said it yourself a minute ago. They were here to straighten us
out and tell us how we ought to live."

"Vital information. Worth dying for, evidently."

"Evidently."

"But why? Why do you need _prophets_ to tell you how you ought to
live? Why do you need _anyone_ to tell you how you ought to live?"

"Ah. Okay, I see what you're getting at. We need prophets to tell us
how we ought to live, because otherwise we wouldn't know."

"Of course. Questions about how people ought to live always end up
becoming religious questions among the Takers--always end up being
arguments among the prophets. For example, when abortion began to be
legalized in this country, it was initially treated as a purely civil
matter. But when people began to have second thoughts about it, they
turned to their prophets, and it soon became a religious squabble,
with both sides lining up clergy to back them. In the same way, the
question of legalizing drugs like heroin and cocaine is now being
debated in primarily practical terms--but if it ever becomes a serious
possibility, people of a certain turn of mind will undoubtedly begin
combing scriptures to see what their prophets have to say on the
subject."

"Yes, that's so. This is such an automatic response that people just
take it for granted."

"A minute ago you said, `We need prophets to tell us how we ought to
live, because otherwise we wouldn't know.' Why is that? Why wouldn't
you know how to live without your prophets?"

"That's a good question. I'd say it's because . . . Look at the case
of abortion. We can _argue about it_ for a thousand years, but there's
never going to be an argument powerful enough to _end_ the argument,
because every argument has a counterargument. So it's impossible to
_know_ what we should do. That's why we need the prophet. The prophet
_knows_."

"Yes, I think that's it. But the question remains: Why don't _you_
know?"

"I think the question remains because I can't answer it."

"You know how to split atoms, how to send explorers to the moon, how
to splice genes, but you don't know how people ought to live."

"That's right."

"Why is that? What does Mother Culture have to say?"

"Ah," I said, and closed my eyes. And after a minute or two: "Mother
Culture says it's possible to have _certain_ knowledge about things
like atoms and space travel and genes, but there's no such thing as
certain knowledge about how people should live. It's just not
available, and that's why we don't have it."

"I see. And having listened to Mother Culture, what do _you_ say?"

"In this case, I have to say that I agree. Certain knowledge about how
people ought to live is just not _out there_."

"In other words, the best you can do--since there's nothing `out
there'--is to consult the insides of your heads. That's what's being
done in the debate about legalizing drugs. Each side is preparing a
case based on what's _reasonable_, and whichever way you actually jump
you still won't know whether you did the right thing."

"That's absolutely right. It won't be a question of doing what ought
to be done, because there's no way of finding that out. It'll just be
a question of taking a vote."

"You're quite sure about all this. There's simply no way to obtain any
certain knowledge about how people ought to live."

"Absolutely sure."

"How do you come by this assurance?"

"I don't know. Certain knowledge about how to live is . . .
unobtainable in any of the ways we derive certain knowledge. As I say,
it's just not _out_ there."

"Have any of you ever _looked_ out there?"

I snickered.

"Has anyone ever said, `Well, we have certain knowledge about all
these other things, why don't we see if any such knowledge can be
found about how to live?' Has anyone ever done that?"

"I doubt it."

"Doesn't that seem strange to you? Considering the fact that this is
by far the most important problem mankind has to solve--has ever had
to solve--you'd think there would be a whole branch of science devoted
to it. Instead, we find that not a single one of you has ever wondered
whether any such knowledge is even out there to be obtained."

"We know it's not there."

"In advance of looking, you mean."

"That's right."

"Not a very scientific procedure for such a scientific people."

"True."










    -- 5 --


"We now know two highly important things about people," Ishmael said,
"at least according to Taker mythology. One, there's something
fundamentally wrong with them, and, two, they have no certain
knowledge about how they ought to live--and never will have any. It
seems as though there should be a connection between these two
things."

"Yes. If people knew how to live, then they'd be able to handle what
was wrong with human nature. I mean, knowing how to live would have to
include knowing how to live as flawed beings. If it didn't, then it
wouldn't be the real McCoy. Do you see what I mean?"

"I think so. In effect, you're saying that if you knew how you ought
to live, then the flaw in man could be controlled. If you knew how you
ought to live, you wouldn't be forever screwing up the world. Perhaps
in fact the two things are actually one thing. Perhaps the flaw in man
is exactly this: that he doesn't know how he ought to live."

"Yes, there's something to that."










    -- 6 --


"We now have in place all the major elements of your culture's
explanation of _how things came to be this way_. The world was given
to man to turn into a paradise, but he's always screwed it up, because
he's fundamentally flawed. He might be able to do something about this
if he knew how he ought to live, but he doesn't--and he never will,
because no knowledge about that is obtainable. So, however hard man
might labor to turn the world into a paradise, he's probably just
going to go on screwing it up."

"Yes, that's the way it seems."

"It's a sorry story you have there, a story of hopelessness and
futility, a story in which there is literally _nothing to be done_.
Man is flawed, so he keeps on screwing up what should be paradise, and
there's nothing you can do about it. You don't know how to live so as
to _stop_ screwing up paradise, and there's nothing you can do about
that. So there you are, rushing headlong toward catastrophe, and all
you can do is watch it come."

"Yes, that's the way it seems."

"With nothing but this wretched story to enact, it's no wonder so many
of you spend your lives stoned on drugs or booze or television. It's
no wonder so many of you go mad or become suicidal."

"True. But is there another one?"

"Another what?"

"Another story to be in."

"Yes, there is another story to be in, but the Takers are doing their
level best to destroy that along with everything else."










    -- 7 --

"Have you done much sightseeing in your travels?"

I blinked at him stupidly. "Sightseeing?"

"Have you gone out of your way to have a look at the local sights?"

"I guess so. Sometimes."

"I'm sure you've noticed that _only_ tourists really look at local
landmarks. For all practical purposes, these landmarks are invisible
to the natives, simply because they're always there in plain sight."

"Yes, that's so."

"This is what we've been doing in our journey so far. We've been
wandering around your cultural homeland looking at the landmarks the
natives never see. A visitor from another planet would find them
remarkable, even extraordinary, but the natives of your culture take
them for granted and don't even notice them."

"That's right. You've had to clamp my head between your hands and
point it in one direction and say, `Don't you _see_ that?' And I'd
say, `See what? There's nothing there to see.' "

"We've spent a lot of today looking at one of your most impressive
monuments--an axiom stating that there is no way to obtain any certain
knowledge about how people ought to live. Mother Culture offers this
for acceptance on its own merits, without proof, since it is
inherently unprovable."

"True."

"And the conclusion you draw from this axiom is . . . ?"

"Therefore there's no point in looking for such knowledge."

"That's right. According to your maps, the world of thought is
coterminous with your culture. It ends at the border of your culture,
and if you venture beyond that border, you simply fall off the edge of
the world. Do you see what I mean?"

"I think so."

"Tomorrow we'll screw up our courage and cross that border. And as
you'll see, we will not fall off the edge of the world. We'll just
find ourselves in new territory, in territory never explored by anyone
in your culture, because your maps say it isn't there--and indeed
_can't_ be there."


















	  --------------------------------------------------
				S I X
	  --------------------------------------------------




    -- 1 --


"And how are you feeling today?" Ishmael asked. "Palms sweating? Heart
going pit-a-pat?"

I gazed at him thoughtfully through the glass that separated us. This
twinkle-eyed playfulness was something new, and I wasn't sure I liked
it. I was tempted to remind him that he was a _gorilla_, for God's
sake, but I held it in and muttered:

"Relatively calm, so far."

"Good. Like the Second Murderer, you are one whom the vile blows and
buffets of the world have so incens'd that you are reckless what you
do to spite the world."

"Absolutely."

"Then let's begin. We confront a wall at the boundary of thought in
your culture. Yesterday I called it a monument, but I suppose there's
nothing to prevent a wall from being a monument as well. In any case,
this wall is an axiom stating that certain knowledge about how people
should live is unobtainable. I reject this axiom and climb over the
wall. We don't need prophets to tell us how to live; we can find out
for ourselves by consulting _what's actually there_. "

There was nothing to say to that, so I just shrugged.

"You're skeptical, of course. According to the Takers, all sorts of
useful information can be found in the universe, but none of it
pertains to how people should live. By studying the universe, you've
learned how to fly, split atoms, send messages to the stars at the
speed of light, and so on, but there's no way of studying the universe
to acquire the most basic and needful knowledge of all: the knowledge
of how you ought to live."

"That's right."

"A century ago the would-be aeronauts of the world were in exactly the
same condition with regard to learning how to fly. Do you see why?"

"No. I don't see what aeronauts have to do with it."

"It was far from certain that the knowledge these would-be aeronauts
were looking for existed at all. Some said it wasn't out there to be
found, so there was no point in looking for it. Do you see the
similarity now?"

"Yes, I suppose."

"There's more to the similarity than that, however. At that point in
time, there wasn't a single piece of knowledge about flying that could
be considered certain. Everyone had his own theory. One would say,
`The only way to achieve flight is to imitate the bird; you've got to
have a pair of flapping wings.' Another would say, `One pair isn't
enough, you've got to have two.' And another would say, `Nonsense.
Paper airplanes fly without flapping wings; you need a pair of rigid
wings and a power plant to push you through the air.' And so on. They
could argue their pet notions to their hearts' content, because there
wasn't a single thing that was certain. All they could do was proceed
by trial and error."

"Uh huh."

"What would have enabled them to proceed in a more efficient way?"

"Well, as you say, obviously some knowledge."

"But what knowledge in particular?"

"Lord . . . They needed to know how to produce lift. They needed to
know that air flowing over an airfoil . . ."

"What is it you're trying to describe?"

"I'm trying to describe what happens when air flows over an airfoil."

"You mean what _always_ happens when air flows over an airfoil?"

"That's right."

"What's that called? A statement that describes what always happens
when certain conditions are met."

"A law."

"Of course. The early aeronauts had to proceed by trial and error,
because they didn't know the laws of aerodynamics--didn't even know
there _were_ laws."

"Okay, I see what you're getting at now."

"The people of your culture are in the same condition when it comes to
learning how they ought to live. They have to proceed by trial and
error, because they don't know the relevant laws--and don't even know
that there _are_ laws."

"And I agree with them," I said. 

"You're certain that no laws can be discovered concerning how people
ought to live."

"That's right. Obviously there are made-up laws, like the laws against
drug use, but these can be changed by a vote. You can't change the
laws of aerodynamics by a vote--and there are no laws like that about
how people should live."

"I understand. That's what Mother Culture teaches, and in this case
you agree with her. That's fine. But at last you have a clear
understanding of what I'm attempting here: to show you a law that you
will agree is not subject to change by any vote."

"Okay. My mind is open, but I can't imagine any way in the world
you're going to accomplish that."










    -- 2 --


"What's the law of gravity?" Ishmael asked, once again startling me
with an apparent change of subject.

"The law of gravity? Well, the law of gravity is . . . every particle
in the universe is attracted to every other particle, and this
attraction varies with the distance between them."

"And that expression of the law was read where?"

"What do you mean?"

"It was derived by looking at what?"

"Well . . . at matter, I suppose. The behavior of matter."

"It wasn't derived by a close study of the habits of bees."

"No."

"If you want to understand the habits of bees, you study bees, you
don't study mountain-building."

"That's right."

"And if you had the strange notion that there might be a set of laws
about how to live, where would you look for it?"

"I don't know."

"Would you look into the heavens?"

"No."

"Would you delve into the realm of subatomic particles?"

"No."

"Would you study the properties of wood?"

"No."

"Take a wild guess."

"Anthropology?"

"Anthropology is a field of study, like physics. Did Newton discover
the law of gravity by reading a book on physics? Is that where the law
was written?"

"No."

"Where was it written?"

"In matter. In the universe of matter."

"So, again: If there is a law pertaining to life, where will we find
it written?"

"I suppose in human behavior."

"I have amazing news for you. Man is _not alone on this planet_. He is
part of a community, upon which he depends absolutely. Have you ever
had any suspicions to that effect?"

It was the first time I'd seen him raise a single eyebrow.

"You don't have to be sarcastic," I told him.

"What's the name of this community, of which man is only one member?"

"The community of life."

"Bravo. Does it seem at all plausible to you that the law we're
looking for could be written in this community?"

"I don't know."

"What does Mother Culture say?"

I closed my eyes and listened for a while. "Mother Culture says that
if there were such a law it wouldn't apply to us."

"Why not?"

"Because we're so far above all the rest of that community."

"I see. And can you think of any other laws from which you are exempt
because you're humans?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that cows and cockroaches are subject to the law of gravity.
Are you exempt?"

"No."

"Are you exempt from the laws of aerodynamics?"

"No."

"Genetics?"

"No."

"Thermodynamics?"

"No."

"Can you think of any laws at all from which humans are exempt?"

"Not offhand."

"Let me know if you do. That will be real news."

"Okay."

"But meanwhile, if there does happen to be a law that governs behavior
in the community of life in general, humans would be exempt from it."

"Well, that's what Mother Culture says."

"And what do you say?"

"I don't know. I don't see how a law for turtles and butterflies could
be of much relevance to us. I assume that turtles and butterflies
follow the law you're talking about."

"That's right, they do. As to relevance, the laws of aerodynamics
weren't always relevant to you, were they?"

"No."

"When did they become relevant?"

"Well . . . when we wanted to fly."

"When you want to fly, the laws governing flight become relevant."

"Yes, that's right."

"And when you're on the brink of extinction and want to live for a
while longer, the laws governing life might conceivably become
relevant."

"Yes, I suppose they might."










    -- 3 --


"What's the effect of the law of gravity? What's gravity good for?"

"I'd say that gravity is what organizes things on the macroscopic
level. It's what keeps things together--the solar system, the galaxy,
the universe."

Ishmael nodded. "And the law we're looking for is the law that keeps
the living community together. It organizes things on the biological
level just the way the law of gravity organizes things on the
macroscopic level."

"Okay." I guess Ishmael could sense I had something else on my mind,
because he waited for me to go on. "It's hard to believe our own
biologists aren't aware of this law."

Lines of amused astonishment crinkled the blue-gray skin of his face.
"Do you imagine that Mother Culture doesn't talk to your biologists?"

"No."

"Then what does she tell them?"

"That if there is such a law it doesn't apply to us."

"Of course. But that doesn't really answer your question. Your
biologists would certainly not be astounded to hear that behavior in
the natural community follows certain patterns. You have to remember
that when Newton articulated the law of gravity, no one was astounded.
It's not a superhuman achievement to notice that unsupported objects
fall toward the center of the earth. Everyone past the age of two
knows that. Newton's achievement was not in discovering the
_phenomenon_ of gravity, it was in formulating the phenomenon _as a
law_."

"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 you 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."

"You remember how the Takers went about trying to achieve powered
flight. They didn't begin with an understanding of the laws of
aerodynamics. They didn't begin with a theory based on research and
carefully planned experimentation. They just built contraptions,
pushed them off the sides of cliffs, and hoped for the best."

"True."

"All right. I want to follow one of those early trials in detail.
Let's suppose that this trial is being made in one of those wonderful
pedal-driven contraptions with flapping wings, based on a mistaken
understanding of avian flight."

"Okay."

"As the flight begins, all is well. Our would-be airman has been
pushed off the edge of the cliff and is pedaling away, and the wings
of his craft are flapping like crazy. He's feeling wonderful,
ecstatic. He's experiencing the freedom of the air. What he doesn't
realize, however, is that this craft is aerodynamically incapable of
flight. It simply isn't in compliance with the laws that make flight
possible--but he would laugh if you told him this. He's never heard of
such laws, knows nothing about them. He would point at those flapping
wings and say, `See? Just like a bird!' Nevertheless, whatever he
thinks, he's not in flight. He's an unsupported object falling toward
the center of the earth. He's not in flight, he's in free fall. Are
you with me so far?"

"Yes."

"Fortunately--or, rather, unfortunately for our airman--he chose a
very high cliff to launch his craft from. His disillusionment is a
long way off in time and space. There he is in free fall, feeling
wonderful and congratulating himself on his triumph. He's like the man
in the joke who jumps out of a ninetieth-floor window on a bet. As he
passes the tenth floor, he says to himself, `Well, so far so good!'

"There he is in free fall, experiencing the exhilaration of what he
takes to be flight. From his great height he can see for miles around,
and one thing he sees puzzles him: The floor of the valley is dotted
with craft just like his--not crashed, simply abandoned. `Why,' he
wonders, `aren't these craft in the air instead of sitting on the
ground? What sort of fools would abandon their aircraft when they
could be enjoying the freedom of the air?' Ah well, the behavioral
quirks of less talented, earthbound mortals are none of his concern.
However, looking down into the valley has brought something else to
his attention. He doesn't seem to be maintaining his altitude. In
fact, the earth seems to be rising up toward him. Well, he's not very
worried about that. After all, his flight has been a complete success
up to now, and there's no reason why it shouldn't go on being a
success. He just has to pedal a little harder, that's all.

"So far so good. He thinks with amusement of those who predicted that
his flight would end in disaster, broken bones, and death. Here he is,
he's come all this way, and he hasn't even gotten a bruise, much less
a broken bone. But then he looks down again, and what he sees really
disturbs him. The law of gravity is catching up to him at the rate of
thirty-two feet per second per second--at an accelerating rate. The
ground is now rushing up toward him in an alarming way. He's disturbed
but far from desperate. `My craft has brought me _this_ far in
safety,' he tells himself. `I just have to keep going.' And so he
starts pedaling with all his might. Which of course does him no good
at all, because his craft simply isn't in accord with the laws of
aerodynamics. Even if he had the power of a thousand men in his
legs--ten thousand, a million--that craft is not going to achieve
flight. That craft is doomed--and so is he unless he abandons it."

"Right. I see what you're saying, but I don't see the connection with
what we're talking about here."

Ishmael nodded. "Here is the connection. Ten thousand years ago, the
people of your culture embarked on a similar flight: a civilizational
flight. Their craft wasn't designed according to any theory at all.
Like our imaginary airman, they were totally unaware that there is a
law that must be complied with in order to achieve civilizational
flight. They didn't even wonder about it. They wanted the freedom of
the air, and so they pushed off in the first contraption that came to
hand: the Taker Thunderbolt.

"At first all was well. In fact, all was terrific. The Takers were
pedaling away and the wings of their craft were flapping beautifully.
They felt wonderful, exhilarated. They .were experiencing the freedom
of the air: freedom from restraints that bind and limit the rest of
the biological community. And with that freedom came marvels--all the
things you mentioned the other day: urbanization, technology,
literacy, mathematics, science.

"Their flight could never end, it could only go on becoming more and
more exciting. They couldn't know, couldn't even have guessed that,
like our hapless airman, they were in the air but not in flight. They
were in free fall, because their craft was simply not in compliance
with the law that makes flight possible. But their disillusionment is
far away in the future, and so they're pedaling away and having a
wonderful time. Like our airman, they see strange sights in the course
of their fall. They see the remains of craft very like their own--not
destroyed, merely abandoned--by the Maya, by the Hohokam, by the
Anasazi, by the peoples of the Hopewell cult, to mention only a few of
those found here in the New World. `Why,' they wonder, `are these
craft on the ground instead of in the air? Why would any people prefer
to be earthbound when they could have the freedom of the air, as we
do?' It's beyond comprehension, an unfathomable mystery.

"Ah well, the vagaries of such foolish people are nothing to the
Takers. They're pedaling away and having a wonderful time. They're not
going to abandon _their_ craft. They're going to enjoy the freedom of
the air forever. But alas, a law is catching up to them. They don't
know such a law even exists, but this ignorance affords them no
protection from its effects. This is a law as unforgiving as the law
of gravity, and it's catching up to them in exactly the same way the
law of gravity caught up to our airman: _at an accelerating rate_.

"Some gloomy nineteenth-century thinkers, like Robert Wallace and
Thomas Robert Malthus, look down. A thousand years before, even five
hundred years before, they would probably have noticed nothing. But
now what they see alarms them. It's as though the ground is rushing up
to meet them--as though they are going to crash. They do some figuring
and say, `If we goon this way, we're going to be in big trouble in the
not-too-distant future.' The other Takers shrug their predictions off.
`We've come all this enormous way and haven't even received so much as
a scratch. It's true the ground seems to be rising up to meet us, but
that just means we'll have to pedal a little harder. Not to worry.'
Nevertheless, just as was predicted, famine soon becomes a routine
condition of life in many parts of the Taker Thunderbolt--and the
Takers have to pedal even harder and more efficiently than before. But
oddly enough, the harder and more efficiently they pedal, the worse
conditions become. Very strange. Peter Farb calls it a paradox:
`Intensification of production to feed an increased population leads
to a still greater increase in population.' `Never mind,' the Takers
said. `We'll just have to put some people pedaling away on a reliable
method of birth control. Then the Taker Thunderbolt will fly forever.'

"But such simple answers aren't enough to reassure the people of your
culture nowadays. Everyone is looking down, and it's obvious that the
ground is rushing up toward you--and rushing up faster every year.
Basic ecological and planetary systems are being impacted by the Taker
Thunderbolt, and that impact increases in intensity every year. Basic,
irreplaceable resources are being devoured every year--and they're
being devoured more greedily every year. Whole species are
disappearing as a result of your encroachment--and they're
disappearing in greater numbers every year. Pessimists--or it may be
that they're realists--look down and say, `Well, the crash may be
twenty years off or maybe as much as fifty years off. Actually it
could happen anytime. There's no way to be sure.' But of course there
are optimists as well, who say, `We must have faith in our craft.
After all, it has brought us _this_ far in safety. What's ahead isn't
doom, it's just a little hump that we can clear if we all just pedal a
little harder. Then we'll soar into a glorious, endless future, and
the Taker Thunderbolt will take us to the stars and we'll conquer the
universe itself.' But your craft isn't going to save you. Quite the
contrary, it's your craft that's carrying you toward catastrophe. Five
billion of you pedaling away--or ten billion or twenty billion--can't
make it fly. It's been in free fall from the beginning, and that fall
is about to end."

At last I had something of my own to add to this. "The worst part of
it is this," I said, "that the survivors, if there are any, will
immediately set about doing it all over again, exactly the same way."

"Yes, I'm afraid you're right. Trial and error isn't a bad way to
learn how to build an aircraft, but it can be a disastrous way to
learn how to build a civilization."

















	  --------------------------------------------------
			      S E V E N
	  --------------------------------------------------




    -- 1 --


"Here is a puzzle for you to consider," said Ishmael. "You are in a
faraway land and find yourself in a strange city isolated from all
others. You're immediately impressed by the people you find there.
They're friendly, cheerful, healthy, prosperous, vigorous, peaceable,
and well educated, and they tell you things have been this way for as
long as anyone can remember. Well, you're glad to break your journey
here, and one family invites you to stay with them.

"That night you sample their food at dinner and, finding it delicious
but unfamiliar, ask them what it is, and they say, `Oh, it's B meat,
of course. That's all we eat.' This naturally puzzles you and you ask
if they mean the meat of the little insects that gather honey. They
laugh and take you to the window. `There are some B's there,' they
say, pointing to their neighbors in the next house.

" `Good lord!' you exclaim in horror, `you don't mean that you eat
_people_!' And they look at you in a puzzled way and say, `We eat
B's.'

" `How atrocious,' you reply. `Are they your slaves then? Do you keep
them penned up?'

" 'Why on earth should we keep them penned up?' your hosts ask.

" `To keep them from running away, of course!'

"By now your hosts are beginning to think you're a little weak in the
head, and they explain that the B's would never think of running away,
because their own food, the A's, live right across the street.

"Well, I won't weary you with all your outraged exclamations and their
baffled explanations. Eventually you piece together the whole ghastly
scheme. The A's are eaten by the B's and the B's are eaten by the C's
and the C's in turn are eaten by the A's. There is no hierarchy among
these food classes. The C's don't lord it over the B's just because
the B's are their food, because after all they themselves are the food
of the A's. It's all perfectly democratic and friendly. But of course
it's all perfectly dreadful to you, and you ask them how they can
stand to live in this lawless way. Once again they look at you in
bafflement. `What do you mean, lawless?' they ask. `We have a law, and
we all follow it invariably. This is why we're friendly and cheerful
and peaceable and all those other things you find so attractive in us.
This law is the foundation of our success as a people and has been so
from the beginning.'

"Here at last is the puzzle. Without asking them, how can you discover
what law it is they follow?"

I blinked at him for a moment. "I can't imagine."

"Think about it."

"Well . . . obviously their law is that A's eat C's and B's eat A's
and C's eat B's."

Ishmael shook his head. "These are food preferences. No law is
required."

"I need something more to go on then. All I've got is their food
preferences."

"You have three other things to go on. They have a law, they follow it
invariably, and because they follow it invariably, they have a highly
successful society."

"It's still very tenuous. Unless it's something like . . . `Be cool.' "

"I'm not asking you to guess what the law is. I'm asking you to devise
a method for _discovering_ what the law is."

I slid down in my chair, folded my hands on my stomach, and stared at
the ceiling. After a few minutes I had an idea. "Is there a penalty
for breaking this law?"

"Death."

"Then I'd wait for an execution."

Ishmael smiled. "Ingenious, but hardly a method. Besides, you're
overlooking the fact that the law is obeyed invariably. There has
never been an execution."

I sighed and closed my eyes. A few minutes later I said: "Observation.
Careful observation over a long period."

"That's more like it. What would you be looking for?"

"For what they _didn't_ do. For what they _never_ did."

"Good. But how would you eliminate irrelevancies? For example, you
might find that they never slept standing on their heads or that they
never threw rocks at the moon. There would be a million things they
never did, but these wouldn't necessarily be prohibited by the law."

"True. Well, let's see. They have a law, they follow it invariably,
and according to them . . . ah. According to them, following this law
has given them a society that works very well. Am I supposed to take
that seriously?"

"Certainly. It's part of the hypothesis."

"Then this would eliminate most of the irrelevancies. The fact that
they never sleep standing on their heads wouldn't have anything to do
with having a society that works well. Let's see. In effect . . . What
I would actually be looking for is . . . I would be closing in on it
from two sides. From one side I would be saying: `What is it that
makes this society work?' And from the other side I would be saying:
`What is it they _don't_ do that makes this society work?' "

"Bravo. Now, since you've worked this out so brilliantly, I'm going to
give you a break: There's going to be an execution after all. For the
first time in history, someone has broken the law that is the
foundation of their society. They're outraged, horrified, astounded.
They take the offender, cut him into little bits, and feed him to the
dogs. This should be a big help to you in discovering their law."

"Yes."

"I'll take the part of your host. We've just been to the execution.
You may ask questions."

"Okay. Just what did this guy do?"

"He broke the law."

"Yes, but specifically what did he do?"

Ishmael shrugged. "He lived contrary to the law. He did the things we
never do."

I glared at him. "That's not fair. You're not answering my questions."

"I tell you the whole sorry tale is public record, young man. His
biography, complete in every detail, is available at the library."

I grunted.

"So how are you going to use this biography? It doesn't say how he
broke the law. It's just a complete record of how he lived, and much
of it is bound to be irrelevant."

"Okay, but I can see that it gives me another guide. I now have three:
what makes their society work well, what they never do, and what _he_
did that they _never_ do."










    -- 2 --


"Very good. These are precisely the three guides you have to the law
we're looking for here. The community of life on this planet has
worked well for three billion years--has worked beautifully, in fact.
The Takers draw back in horror from this community, thinking it to be
a place of lawless chaos and savage, relentless competition, where
every creature goes in terror of its life. But those of your species
who actually live in this community don't find it to be so, and they
will fight to the death rather than be separated from it.

"It is in fact an orderly community. The green plants are food for the
plant eaters, which are food for the predators, and some of these
predators are food for still other predators. And what's left over is
food for the scavengers, who return to the earth nutrients needed by
the green plants. It's a system that has worked magnificently for
billions of years. Filmmakers understandably love footage of gore and
battle, but any naturalist will tell you that the species are not in
any sense at war with one another. The gazelle and the lion are
enemies only in the minds of the Takers. The lion that comes across a
herd of gazelles doesn't massacre them, as an enemy would. It kills
one, not to satisfy its hatred of gazelles but to satisfy its hunger,
and once it has made its kill the gazelles are perfectly content to go
on grazing with the lion right in their midst.

"All this comes about because there is a law that is followed
invariably within the community, and without this law the community
would indeed be in chaos and would very quickly disintegrate and
disappear. Man owes his very existence to this law. If the species
around him had not obeyed it, he could not have come into being or
survived. It's a law that protects not only the community as a whole
but species within the community and even individuals. Do you
understand?"

"I understand what you're saying, but I have no idea what the law is."

"I'm pointing to its effects."

"Oh. Okay."

"It is the peace-keeping law, the law that keeps the community from
turning into the howling chaos the Takers imagine it to be. It's the
law that fosters life for all--life for the grasses, life for the
grasshopper that feeds on the grasses, life for the quail that feeds
on the grasshopper, life for the fox that feeds on the quail, life for
the crows that feed on the dead fox.

"The club-finned fish that nosed the shores of the continents came
into being because hundreds of millions of generations of life before
them had followed this law, and some of them became amphibians
following this law. And some of the amphibians became reptiles
following this law. And some of the reptiles became birds and mammals
following this law. And some of the mammals became primates following
this law. And one branch of the primates became _Australopithecus_
following this law. And _Australopithecus_ became _Homo habilis_
following this law. And _Homo habilis_ became _Homo erectus_ following
this law. And _Homo erectus_ became _Homo sapiens_ following this law.
And _Homo sapiens_ became _Homo sapiens sapiens_ following this law.

"And then about ten thousand years ago one branch of the family of
_Homo sapiens sapiens_ said, `Man is exempt from this law. The gods
never meant man to be bound by it.' And so they built a civilization
that flouts the law at every point, and within five hundred
generations--in an eye-blink in the scale of biological time--this
branch of the family of _Homo sapiens sapiens_ saw that they had
brought the entire world to the point of death. And their explanation
for this calamity was . . . what?"

"Huh?"

"Man lived harmlessly on this planet for some three million years, but
the Takers have brought the whole thing to the point of collapse in
only five hundred generations. And their explanation for this is
what?"

"I see what you mean. Their explanation is that something is
fundamentally wrong with people."

"Not that you Takers may be doing something wrong but rather that
there is something fundamentally wrong with human nature itself."

"That's right."

"How do you like that explanation now?"

"I'm beginning to have my doubts about it."

"Good."










    -- 3 --


"At the time when the Takers blundered into the New World and began
kicking everything to pieces, the Leavers here were searching for an
answer to this question: `Is there a way to achieve settlement that is
in accord with the law that we've been following from the beginning of
time?' I don't mean, of course, that they had consciously formulated
this question. They were no more consciously aware of this law than
the early aeronauts were consciously aware of the laws of
aerodynamics. But they were struggling with it all the same: building
and abandoning one civilizational contraption after another, trying to
find one that would fly. Done this way, it's slow work. Proceeding
simply by trial and error, it might have taken them another ten
thousand years--or another fifty thousand years. They apparently had
the wisdom to know there was no hurry. They didn't _have_ to get into
the air. It made no sense to them to commit themselves to one
civilizational craft that was clearly headed for disaster, the way the
Takers have done."

Ishmael stopped there, and when he didn't go on, I said, "What now?"

His cheeks crinkled in a smile. "Now you leave and come back when
you're prepared to tell me what law or set of laws has been at work in
the community of life from the beginning."

"I'm not sure I'm ready for that."

"That's what we've been doing here for the last half week, if not from
the very beginning: getting you ready."

"But I wouldn't know where to begin."

"You do know. You have the same three guides as in the case of the
A's, the B's, and the C's. The law you're looking for has been obeyed
invariably in the living community for three billion years." He nodded
to the world outside. "And this is _how things came to he this way_.
If this law had not been obeyed from the beginning and in each
generation thereafter, the seas would be lifeless deserts and the land
would still be dust blowing in the wind. All the countless forms of
life that you see here came into being following this law, and
following this law, man too came into being. And only once in all the
history of this planet has any species tried to live in defiance of
this law--and it wasn't an entire species, it was only one people,
those I've named Takers. Ten thousand years ago, this one people said,
`No more. Man was not meant to be bound by this law,' and they began
to live in a way that flouts the law at every point. Every single
thing that is prohibited under the law they incorporated into their
civilization _as a fundamental policy_. And now, after five hundred
generations, they are about to pay the penalty that any other species
would pay for living contrary to this law."

Ishmael turned over a hand. "That should be guide enough for you."










    -- 4 --


The door closed behind me, and there I was. I couldn't go back in and
I didn't want to go home, so I just stood there. My mind was a blank.
I felt depressed. On no rational grounds, I even managed to feel
rejected.

Things were piling up at home. I was falling behind in my work,
missing deadlines. In addition, I now had an assignment from Ishmael
that did not fill me with enthusiasm. It was time to buckle down and
get serious, so I did something I seldom do; I went out and had a
drink. I needed to talk to someone, and solitary drinkers are lucky in
this regard--they always have someone to talk to.

So: What was at the bottom of these mysterious feelings of depression
and rejection? And why had they emerged on this one day in particular?
The answer: On this one day in particular, Ishmael had sent me away to
work on my own. He might have spared me the investigation I was about
to undertake, but he chose not to. Therefore: rejection, of a sort.
Childish, of course, to perceive it this way, but I never claimed to
be perfect.

There was more to it than this, however, because I still felt
depressed. A second bourbon helped me to it: I was making progress.
That's right. This was the source of my feeling of depression.

Ishmael had a curriculum. Well, of course, why wouldn't he? He'd
developed his curriculum over a period of years, working with one
pupil after another. Makes sense. You've got to have a plan. You start
here, move to this point, then to this point, this point, and this
point, and then, voila! One fine day you're finished. Thanks for your
attention, have a nice life, and close the door behind you when you
leave.

How far along was I, at this point? Halfway? A third of the way? A
quarter? Whatever, every advance I made took be a step closer to being
out of Ishmael's life.

What's the best word that describes this way of taking the situation?
Selfishness? Possessiveness? Stinginess? Whatever it is, I'll own to
it and make no excuses.

I had to face it: I didn't just want a teacher--I wanted a teacher for
life.

















	  --------------------------------------------------
			      E I G H T
	  --------------------------------------------------


				   

    -- 1 --


The search for the law took me four days.

I spent one day telling myself I couldn't do it, two days doing it,
and one day making sure I'd done it. On the fifth day I went back. As
I walked into Ishmael's office, I was mentally rehearsing what I was
going to say, which was, "I think I see why you insisted I do it
myself."

I looked up from my thoughts and was momentarily disoriented. I had
forgotten what was waiting for me there: the empty room, the lone
chair, the slab of glass with a pair of glowing eyes behind it.
Foolishly, I quavered a hello into the air.

Then Ishmael did something he'd never done before. By way of greeting,
he lifted his upper lip to give me a look at a row of amber teeth as
massive as elbows. I scurried to my chair and waited like a schoolboy
for his nod.

"I think I see why you insisted I do it myself," I told him. "If you
had done the work for me and pointed out the things the Takers do that
are never done in the natural community, I would have said, `Well,
sure, so what, big deal.' "

Ishmael grunted.

"Okay. As I make it out, there are four things the Takers do that are
never done in the rest of the community, and these are all fundamental
to their civilizational system. First, they exterminate their
competitors, which is something that never happens in the wild. In the
wild, animals will defend their territories and their kills and they
will invade their competitors' territories and preempt their kills.
Some species even include competitors among their prey, but they never
hunt competitors down just to make them dead, the way ranchers and
farmers do with coyotes and foxes and crows. What they hunt, they
eat."

Ishmael nodded. "It should be noted, however, that animals will also
kill in self-defense, or even when they merely feel threatened. For
example, baboons may attack a leopard that hasn't attacked them. The
point to see is that, although baboons will go looking for food, they
will never go looking for leopards."

"I'm not sure I see what you mean."

"I mean that in the absence of food, baboons will organize themselves
to find a meal, but in the absence of leopards they will never
organize themselves to find a leopard. In other words, it's as you
say: when animals go hunting--even extremely aggressive animals like
baboons--it's to obtain food, not to exterminate competitors or even
animals that prey on them."

"Yes, I see what you're getting at now."

"And how can you be sure this law is invariably followed? I mean,
aside from the fact that competitors are never seen to be
exterminating each other, in what you call the wild."

"If it weren't invariably followed, then, as you say, things would not
have come to be this way. If competitors hunted each other down just
to make them dead, then there would _be_ no competitors. There would
simply be one species at each level of competition: the strongest."

"Go on."

"Next, the Takers systematically destroy their competitors' food to
make room for their own. Nothing like this occurs in the natural
community. The rule there is: Take what you need, and leave the rest
alone."

Ishmael nodded.

"Next, the Takers deny their competitors access to food. In the wild,
the rule is: You may deny your competitors access to what you're
eating, but you may not deny them access to food in general. In other
words, you can say, `This gazelle is mine,' but you can't say, `_All_
the gazelles are mine.' The lion defends its kill as its own, but it
doesn't defend the herd as its own."

"Yes, that's true. But suppose you raised up a herd of your own, from
scratch, so to speak. Could you defend that herd as your own?"

"I don't know. I suppose so, so long as it wasn't your policy that all
the herds in the world were your own."

"And what about denying competitors access to what you're growing?"

"Again . . . _Our_ policy is: Every square foot of this planet belongs
to us, so if we put it all under cultivation, then all our competitors
are just plain out of luck and will have to become extinct. Our policy
is to deny our competitors access to _all the food in the world_, and
that's something no other species does."

"Bees will deny you access to what's inside their hive in the apple
tree, but they won't deny you access to the apples."

"That's right."

"Good. And you say there's a fourth thing the Takers do that is never
done in the wild, as you call it."

"Yes. In the wild, the lion kills a gazelle and eats it. It doesn't
kill a second gazelle to save for tomorrow. The deer eats the grass
that's there. It doesn't cut the grass down and save it for the
winter. But these are things the Takers do."

"You seem less certain about this one."

"Yes, I _am_ less certain. There _are_ species that store food, like
bees, but most don't."

"In this case, you've missed the obvious. Every living creature stores
food. Most simply store it in their bodies, the way lions and deer and
people do. For others, this would be inadequate to their adaptations,
and they must store food externally as well."

"Yes, I see."

"There's no prohibition against food storage as such. There couldn't
be, because that's what makes the whole system work: the green plants
store food for the plant eaters, the plant eaters store food for the
predators, and so on."

"True. I hadn't thought of it that way."

"Is there anything else the Takers do that is never done in the rest
of the community of life?"

"Not that I can see. Not that seems relevant to what makes that
community work."










    -- 2 --


"This law that you have so admirably described defines the limits of
competition in the community of life. You may compete to the full
extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your
competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In
other words, you may compete but you may not wage war."

"Yes. As you said, it's the peace-keeping law."

"And what's the effect of the law? What does it promote?"

"Well . . . it promotes order."

"Yes, but I'm after something else now. What would have happened if
this law had been repealed ten million years ago? What would the
community be like?"

"Once again, I'd have to say there would only be one form of life at
each level of competition. If all the competitors for the grasses had
been waging war on each other for ten million years, I'd have to think
an overall winner would have emerged by now. Or maybe there'd be one
insect winner, one avian winner, one reptile winner, and so on. The
same would be true at all levels."

"So the law promotes what? What's the difference between this
community and the community as it is?"

"I suppose the community I've just described would consist of a few
dozen or a few hundred different species. The community as it is
consists of millions of species."

"So the law promotes what?"

"Diversity."

"Of course. And what's the good of diversity?"

"I don't know. It's certainly more . . . interesting."

"What's wrong with a global community that consists of nothing but
grass, gazelles, and lions? Or a global community that consists of
nothing but rice and humans?"

I gazed into space for a while. "I'd have to think that a community
like that would be ecologically fragile. It would be highly
vulnerable. Any change at all in existing conditions, and the whole
thing would collapse."

Ishmael nodded. "Diversity is a survival factor _for the community
itself_. A community of a hundred million species can survive almost
anything short of total global catastrophe. Within that hundred
million will be thousands that could survive a global temperature drop
of twenty degrees--which would be a lot more devastating than it
sounds. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could
survive a global temperature rise of twenty degrees. But a community
of a hundred species or a thousand species has almost no survival
value at all."

"True. And diversity is exactly what's under attack here. Every day
dozens of species disappear as a direct result of the way the Takers
compete outside the law."

"Now that you know there's a law involved, does it make a difference
in the way you view what's going on?"

"Yes. I no longer think of what we're doing as a blunder. We're not
destroying the world because we're clumsy. We're destroying the world
because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it."










    -- 3 --


"As you've explained, the community of life would be destroyed if all
species exempted themselves from the rules of competition laid down by
this law. But what would happen if only _one_ species exempted
itself?"

"You mean other than man?"

"Yes. Of course it would have to possess an almost human cunning and
determination. Suppose that you're a hyena. Why should you share the
game with those lazy, domineering lions? It happens again and again:
You kill a zebra, and a lion comes along, drives you off, and helps
himself while you sit around waiting for the leavings. Is that fair?"

"I thought it was the other way around--the lions make the kill and
the hyenas do the harassing."

"Lions make their own kills, of course, but they're perfectly content
to appropriate someone else's if they can."

"Okay."

"So you're fed up. What are you going to do about it?"

"Exterminate the lions."

"And what's the effect of this?"

"Well . . . no more hassles."

"What were the lions living on?"

"The gazelles. The zebras. The game."

"Now the lions are gone. How does this affect you?"

"I see what you're getting at. There's more game for us."

"And when there's more game for you?"

I looked at him blankly.

"All right. I was assuming you knew the ABC's of ecology. In the
natural community, whenever a population's food supply increases, that
population increases. As that population increases, its food supply
decreases, and as its food supply decreases, that population
decreases. This interaction between food populations and feeder
populations is what keeps everything in balance."

"I _did_ know it. I just wasn't thinking."

"Well," Ishmael said with a baffled frown, "think."

I laughed. "Okay. So, with the lions gone, there's more food for
hyenas, and our population grows. It grows to the point where game
becomes scarce, then it begins to shrink."

"It would in ordinary circumstances, but you've changed those
circumstances. You've decided the law of limited competition doesn't
apply to hyenas."

"Right. So we kill off our other competitors."

"Don't make me drag it out of you one word at a time. I want you to
work it out."

"Okay. Let's see. After we kill off our competitors for the game . . .
our population grows until the game begins to get scarce. There are no
more competitors to kill off, so we have to increase the game
population . . . . I can't see hyenas going in for animal husbandry."

"You've killed off your competitors for the game, but your game has
competitors as well--competitors for the grasses. These are your
competitors once removed. Kill them off and there'll be more grass for
your game."

"Right. More grass for the game means more game, more game means more
hyenas, more hyenas means . . . What's left to kill off?" Ishmael just
raised his eyebrows at me. "There's nothing left to kill off."

"Think."

I thought. "Okay. We've killed off our direct competitors and our
competitors once removed. Now we can kill off our competitors twice
removed--the plants that compete with the grasses for space and
sunlight."

"That's right. Then there will be more plants for your game and more
game for you."

"Funny. . . . This is considered almost holy work by farmers and
ranchers. Kill off everything you can't eat. Kill off anything that
eats what you eat. Kill off anything that doesn't feed what you eat."

"It _is_ holy work, in Taker culture. The more competitors you
destroy, the more humans you can bring into the world, and that makes
it just about the holiest work there is. Once you exempt yourself from
the law of limited competition, everything in the world except your
food and the food of your food becomes an enemy to be exterminated."










    -- 4 --


"As you see, one species exempting itself from this law has the same
ultimate effect as all species exempting themselves. You end up with a
community in which diversity is progressively destroyed in order to
support the expansion of a single species."

"Yes. You have to end up where the Takers have ended up--constantly
eliminating competitors, constantly increasing your food supply, and
constantly wondering what you're going to do about the population
explosion. How did you put it the other day? Something about
increasing food production to feed an increased population."

" `Intensification of production to feed an increased population leads
to a still greater increase in population.' Peter Farb said it in
_Humankind_."

"You said it was a paradox?"

"No, _he_ said it was a paradox."

"Why?"

Ishmael shrugged. "I'm sure he knows that any species in the wild will
invariably expand to the extent that its food supply expands. But, as
you know, Mother Culture teaches that such laws do not apply to man."










    -- 5 --


"I have a question," I said. "As we've gone through these things, I
keep wondering if agriculture itself is contrary to this law. I mean,
it seems contrary to the law by definition."

"It is--if the only definition you have is the Taker definition. But
there are other definitions. Agriculture doesn't have to be a war
waged on all life that doesn't support your growth."

"I guess my problem is this. The biological community is an economy,
isn't it? I mean, if you start taking more for yourself, then there's
got to be less for someone else, for some_thing_ else. Isn't that so?"

"Yes. But what are you getting at by taking more for yourself? Why do
it?"

"Well, this is the basis for settlement. I can't have settlement
unless I have agriculture."

"Are you sure that's what you want?"

"What else would I want?"

"Do you want to grow to the point where you can take over the world
and put every square foot of it under cultivation and force everyone
alive to be an agriculturalist?" 

"No."

"That's what the Takers have been doing--and are still doing. That's
what their agricultural system is designed to support: not just
settlement--_growth_. Unlimited growth."

"Okay. But all I want is settlement."

"Then you don't have to go to war."

"But the problem remains. If I'm going to achieve settlement, I have
to have more than I had before, and that more has got to come from
_somewhere_. "

"Yes, that's true, and I see your difficulty. In the first place,
settlement is not by any means a uniquely human adaptation. Offhand I
can't think of any species that is an _absolute_ nomad. There's always
a territory, a feeding ground, a spawning ground, a hive, a nest, a
roost, a lair, a den, a hole, a burrow. And there are varying degrees
of settlement among animals, and among humans as well. Even
hunter-gatherers aren't absolute nomads, and there are intermediate
states between them and pure agriculturalists. There are
hunter-gatherers who practice intensive collection, who collect and
store food surpluses that enable them to be a bit more settled. Then
there are semi-agriculturalists who grow a little and gather a lot.
And then there are near-agriculturalists who grow a lot and gather a
little. And so on."

"But this is not getting to the central problem," I said.

"It _is_ getting to the central problem, but your vision is locked on
seeing the problem in one way and one way only. The point you're
missing is this: When _Homo habilis_ appeared on the scene--when that
particular adaptation that we call _Homo habilis_ appeared on the
scene--something had to make way for him. I don't mean that some other
species had to become extinct. I mean simply that, with his very first
bite, _Homo habilis_ was in competition with _something_. And not with
one thing, with a thousand things--which all had to be diminished in
some small degree if _Homo habilis_ was going to live. This is true of
every single species that ever came into being on this planet."

"Okay. But I still don't see what this has to do with settlement."

"You're not listening. Settlement is a biological adaptation practiced
to some degree by _every_ species, including the human. And _every_
adaptation supports itself in competition with the adaptations around
it. In brief, human settlement isn't _against_ the laws of
competition, it's _subject_ to the laws of competition."

"Ah. Yes. Okay, I see it now."










    -- 6 --


"So, what have we discovered here?"

"We've discovered that any species that exempts itself from the rules
of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support
its own expansion."

"Any species? Including man?"

"Yes, obviously. That's in fact what's happening here."

"So you see that this--at least this--is not some mysterious
wickedness peculiar to the human race. It isn't some imponderable flaw
in man that has made the people of your culture the destroyers of the
world."

"No. The same thing would happen with any species, at least with any
species strong enough to bring it off. Provided that every increase in
food supply is answered by an increase in population."

"Given an expanding food supply, any population will expand. This is
true of any species, including the human. The Takers have been proving
this here for ten thousand years. For ten thousand years they've been
steadily increasing food production to feed an increased population,
and every time they've done this, the population has increased still
more."

I sat there for a minute thinking. Then I said, "Mother Culture
doesn't agree."

"Certainly not. I'm sure she disagrees most strenuously. What does she
say?"

"She says it's within our power to increase food production _without_
increasing our population."

"To what end? Why increase food production?"

"To feed the millions who're starving."

"And as you feed them will you extract a promise that they will not
reproduce?"

"Well . . . no, that's not part of the plan."

"So what will happen if you feed the starving millions?"

"They'll reproduce and our population will increase."

"Without fail. This is an experiment that has been performed in your
culture annually for ten thousand years, with completely predictable
results. Increasing food production to feed an increased population
results in yet another increase in population. Obviously it has to
have this result, and to predict any other is simply to indulge in
biological and mathematical fantasies."

"Even so . . ." I thought some more. "Mother Culture says that, if it
comes to that, birth control will solve the problem."

"Yes. If you're ever so foolish as to get into a conversation on this
subject with some of your friends, you'll find they heave a great sigh
of relief when they remember to make this point. `Whew! Off the hook!'
It's like the alcoholic who swears he'll give up drink before it ruins
his life. Global population control is always something that's going
to happen in the future. It was something that was going to happen in
the future when you were three billion in 1960. Now, when you're five
billion, it's still something that's going to happen in the future."

"True. Nevertheless, it _could_ happen."

"It could indeed--but not as long as you're enacting this story. As
long as you're enacting this story, you will go on answering famine
with increased food production. You've seen the ads for sending food
to starving peoples around the world?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever seen ads for sending contraceptives?"

"No."

"Never. Mother Culture talks out of both sides of her mouth on this
issue. When you say to her _population explosion_ she replies _global
population control_, but when you say to her _famine_ she replies
_increased food production_. But as it happens, increased food
production is an annual event and global population control is an
event that never happens at all."

"True."

"Within your culture as a whole, there is in fact no significant
thrust toward global population control. The point to see is that
there never _will_ be such a thrust so long as you're enacting a story
that says the gods made the world for man. For as long as you enact
that story, Mother Culture will demand increased food production
today--and promise population control tomorrow."

"Yes, I can see that. But I have a question."

"Proceed."

"I know what Mother Culture says about famine. What do _you_ say?" 

"I? I say nothing, except that your species is not exempt from the
biological realities that govern all other species."

"But how does that apply to famine?"

"Famine isn't unique to humans. All species are subject to it
everywhere in the world. When the population of any species outstrips
its food resources, that population declines until it's once again in
balance with its resources. Mother Culture says that humans should be
exempt from that process, so when she finds a population that has
outstripped its resources, she rushes in food from the outside, thus
making it a certainty that there will be even more of them to starve
in the next generation. Because the population is never allowed to
decline to the point at which it can be supported by its own
resources, famine becomes a chronic feature of their lives."

"Yes. A few years ago I read a story in the paper about an ecologist
who made the same point at some conference on hunger. Boy, did he get
jumped on. He was practically accused of being a murderer."

"Yes, I can imagine. His colleagues all over the world understand
perfectly well what he was saying, but they have the good sense not to
confront Mother Culture with it in the midst of her benevolence. If
there are forty thousand people in an area that can only support
thirty thousand, it's no kindness to bring in food from the outside to
maintain them at forty thousand. That just guarantees that the famine
will continue."

"True. But all the same, it's hard just to sit by and let them
starve."

"This is precisely how someone speaks who imagines that he is the
world's divinely appointed ruler: `I will not _let_ them starve. I
will not _let_ the drought come. I will not _let_ the river flood.' It
is the gods who _let_ these things, not you."

"A valid point," I said. "Even so I have one more question on this."
Ishmael nodded me on. "We increase food production in the U.S.
tremendously every year, but our population growth is relatively
slight. On the other hand, population growth is steepest in countries
with poor agricultural production. This seems to contradict your
correlation of food production with population growth."

He shook his head in mild disgust. "The phenomenon as it's observed is
this: `Every increase in food production to feed an increased
population is answered by another increase in population.' This says
nothing about where these increases occur."

"I don't get it."

"An increase in food production in Nebraska doesn't necessarily
produce a population increase in Nebraska. It may produce a population
increase somewhere in India or Africa."

"I still don't get it."

"Every increase in food production is answered by an increase in
population _somewhere_. In other words, _someone_ is consuming
Nebraska's surpluses--and if they weren't, Nebraska's farmers would
stop producing those surpluses, pronto."

"True," I said, and spent a few moments in thought. "Are you
suggesting that First World farmers are fueling the Third World
population explosion?"

"Ultimately," he said, "who else is there to fuel it?"

I sat there staring at him.

"You need to take a step back from the problem in order to see it in
global perspective. At present there are five and a half billion of
you here, and, though millions of you are starving, you're producing
enough food to feed six billion. And _because_ you're producing enough
food for six billion, it's a biological certainty that in three or
four years there _will be_ six billion of you. By that time, however
(even though millions of you will still be starving), you'll be
producing enough food for six and a half billion--which means that in
another three or four years there _will be_ six and a half billion.
But by that time you'll be producing enough food for seven billion
(even though millions of you will still be starving), which again
means that in another three or four years there _will be_ seven
billion of you. In order to halt this process, you must face the fact
that increasing food production doesn't feed your hungry, it only
fuels your population explosion."

"I see that. But how do we stop increasing food production?"

"You do it the same way you stop destroying the ozone layer, the same
way you stop cutting down the rain forests. If the will is there, the
method will be found."










    -- 7 --


"As you see, I left a book beside your chair," Ishmael said.

It was _The American Heritage Book of Indians_.

"While we're on or near the subject of population control, there's a
map of tribal locations there in the front that you may find
illuminating." After I'd studied it for a minute, he asked me what I
made of it.

"I didn't realize there were so many. So many different peoples."

"Not all of them were there at the same time, but most of them were.
What I'd like you to think about is what served to limit their
growth."

"How is the map supposed to help?"

"I wanted you to see that this was far from an empty continent.
Population control wasn't a luxury, it was a necessity."

"Okay."

"Any ideas?"

"You mean from looking at the map? No, I'm afraid not."

"Tell me this: What do the people of your culture do if they get tired
of living in the crowded Northeast?"

"That's easy. They move to Arizona. New Mexico. Colorado. The wide
open spaces."

"And how do the Takers in the wide open spaces like that?"

"They don't. They put bumper stickers on their cars that say, `If you
love New Mexico, go back where you came from.' "

"But they don't go back."

"No, they just keep coming."

"Why can't the Takers of these areas stem the flood? Why can't they
limit the population growth of the Northeast?"

"I don't know. I don't see how they could."

"So what you have is a gushing wellspring of growth in one part of the
country that no one bothers to turn off, because the excess can always
flow into the wide open spaces of the West."

"That's right."

"Yet each of these states has a boundary. Why don't those boundaries
keep them out?"

"Because they're just imaginary lines."

"Exactly. All you have to do to transform yourself into an Arizonan is
to cross that imaginary line and settle down. But the point to note is
that around each of the Leaver peoples on that map was a boundary that
was definitely not imaginary: a cultural boundary. If the Navajo
started feeling crowded, they couldn't say to themselves, `Well, the
Hopi have a lot of wide open space. Let's go over there and be Hopi.'
Such a thing would have been unthinkable to them. In short, New
Yorkers can solve their population problems by becoming Arizonans, but
the Navajo couldn't solve their population problems by becoming Hopi.
Those cultural boundaries were boundaries that no one crossed by
choice."

"True. On the other hand, the Navajo could cross the Hopi's
_territorial_ boundary without crossing their cultural boundary."

"You mean they could invade Hopi territory. Yes, absolutely. But the
point I'm making still stands. If you crossed over into Hopi
territory, they didn't give you a form to fill out, they killed you.
That worked very well. That gave people a powerful incentive to limit
their growth."

"Yes, there is that."

"These were not people limiting their growth for the benefit of
mankind or for the benefit of the environment. They limited their
growth because for the most part this was easier than going to war
with their neighbors. And of course there were some who made no great
effort to limit their growth, because they had no qualms about going
to war with their neighbors. I don't mean to suggest that this was the
peaceable kingdom of a utopian dream. In a world where no Big Brother
monitors everyone's behavior and guarantees everyone's property
rights, it works well to have a reputation for fearlessness and
ferocity--and you don't acquire such a reputation by sending your
neighbors curt notes. You want them to know exactly what they'll be in
for if they don't limit their growth and stay in their own territory."

"Yes, I see. They limited each other."

"But not just by erecting uncrossable territorial boundaries. Their
cultural boundaries had to be uncrossable too. The excess population
of the Narraganset couldn't just pack up and move out west to be
Cheyenne. The Narraganset had to stay where they were and limit their
population."

"Yes. It's another case where diversity seems to work better than
homogeneity."










    -- 8 --


"A week ago," Ishmael said, "when we were talking about laws, you said
that there's only one kind of law about how people should live--the
kind that can be changed by a vote. What do you think now? Can the
laws that govern competition in the community be changed by a vote?"

"No. But they're not absolutes, like the laws of aerodynamics. They
can be broken."

"Can't the laws of aerodynamics be broken?" 

"No. If your plane isn't built according to the law, it doesn't fly."

"But if you push it off a cliff, it stays in the air, doesn't it?"

"For a while."

"The same is true of a civilization that isn't built in accordance
with the law of limited competition. It stays in the air for a while,
and then it comes down with a crash. Isn't that what the people of
your culture are facing here? A crash?"

"Yes."

"I'll ask the question another way. Are you certain that any species
that, as a matter of policy, exempts itself from the law of limited
competition will end by destroying the community to support its own
expansion?"

"Yes."

"Then what have we discovered here?"

"We've discovered a piece of certain knowledge about how people ought
to live. Must live, in fact."

"Knowledge that a week ago you said was unobtainable."

"Yes. But . . ."

"Yes?"

"I don't see how . . . Hold on for a minute."

"Take your time."

"I don't see how to make this a source of knowledge _in general_. I
mean, I don't see any way to apply this knowledge in a general way, to
other issues."

"Do the laws of aerodynamics show you how to repair damaged genes?"

"No."

"Then what good are they?"

"They're good for . . . They enable us to fly."

"The law we've outlined here enables species to live--enables species
to survive, including the human. It won't tell you whether
mood-altering drugs should be legalized or not. It won't tell you
whether premarital sex is good or bad. It won't tell you whether
capital punishment is right or wrong. It _will_ tell you how you have
to live if you want to avoid extinction, and that's the first and most
fundamental knowledge anyone needs."

"True. All the same . . ."

"Yes?"

"All the same, the people of my culture will not accept it."

"You mean the people of your culture will not accept what you've
learned here."

"That's right."

"Let's be clear about what they will and will not accept. The law
itself is beyond argument. It's there, plainly in place in the
community of life. What the Takers will deny is that it applies to
mankind."

"That's right."

"That hardly comes as a surprise. Mother Culture could accept the fact
that mankind's home is not the center of the universe. She could
accept the fact that man evolved from the common slime. But she will
never accept the fact that man is not exempt from the peace-keeping
law of the community of life. To accept that would finish her off."

"So what are you saying? That it's hopeless?"

"Not at all. Obviously Mother Culture _must_ be finished off if you're
going to survive, and that's something the people of your culture can
do. She has no existence outside your minds. Once you stop listening
to her, she ceases to exist."

"True. But I don't think people will let that happen."

Ishmael shrugged. "Then the law will do it for them. If they refuse to
live under the law, then they simply won't live. You might say that
this is one of the law's basic operations: Those who threaten the
stability of the community by defying the law automatically
eliminate themselves."

"The Takers will never accept that."

"Acceptance has nothing to do with it. You may as well talk about a
man stepping off the edge of a cliff not accepting the effects of
gravity. The Takers are in the process of eliminating themselves, and
when they've done so, the stability of the community will be restored
and the damage you've done can begin to be repaired."

"True."

"On the other hand, I think you're being unreasonably pessimistic
about this. I think there are a lot of people out there who know the
jig is up and are ready to hear something new--who _want_ to hear
something new, just like you."

"I hope you're right."










    -- 9 --


"I'm not quite satisfied with the way we've formulated this law," I
said.

"No?"

"We refer to it as a law, but it's actually three laws. Or at any rate
I described it as three laws."

"The three laws are branches. What you're looking for is the trunk,
which is something like, `No one species shall make the life of the
world its own.' "

"Yes, that's what the rules of competition ensure."

"That's one expression of the law. Here's another: `The world was not
made for any one species.' "

"Yes. Then man was certainly not made to conquer and rule it."

"That's too big a leap. In Taker mythology, the world needed a ruler
because the gods had made a mess of it. What they'd created was a
jungle, a howling chaos, an anarchy. But was it that in fact?"


"No, everything was in good order. It was the Takers who introduced
disorder into the world."

"The rule of that law was and is sufficient. Mankind was not needed to
bring order to the world."










    -- 10 --


"The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the
specialness of man. They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf
between man and the rest of creation. This mythology of human
superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world,
just the way Hitler's mythology of Aryan superiority justified his
doing whatever he pleased with Europe. But in the end this mythology
is not deeply satisfying. The Takers are a profoundly lonely people.
The world for them is enemy territory, and they live in it like an
army of occupation, alienated and isolated by their extraordinary
specialness."

"That's true. But what are you getting at?"

Instead of answering my question, Ishmael said, "Among the Leavers,
crime, mental illness, suicide, and drug addiction are great rarities.
How does Mother Culture account for this?"

"I'd say it's because . . .Mother Culture says it's because the
Leavers are just too primitive to have these things."

"In other words, crime, mental illness, suicide, and drug addiction
are features of an advanced culture."

"That's right. Nobody says it that way, of course, but that's how it's
understood. These things are the price of advancement."

"There's an almost opposite opinion that has had wide currency in your
culture for a century or so. An opposite opinion as to why these
things are rare among the Leavers."

I thought for a minute. "You mean the Noble Savage theory. I can't say
I know it in any detail."

"But you have an impression of it. That's what's current in your
culture--not the theory in detail but an impression of it."

"True. It's the idea that people living close to nature tend to be
noble. It's seeing all those sunsets that does it. You can't watch a
sunset and then go off and set fire to your neighbor's tepee. Living
close to nature is wonderful for your mental health."

"You understand that I'm not saying anything like this."

"Yes. But what _are_ you saying?"

"We've had a look at the story the Takers have been enacting here for
the past ten thousand years. The Leavers too are enacting a story. Not
a story told but a story enacted."

"What do you mean by that?"

"If you go among the various peoples of your culture--if you go to
China and Japan and Russia and England and India--each people will
give you a completely different account of themselves, but they are
nonetheless all enacting a single basic story, which is the story of
the Takers. The same is true of the Leavers. The Bushmen of Africa,
the Alawa of Australia, the Kreen-Akrore of Brazil, and the Navajo of
the United States would each give you a different account of
themselves, but they too are all enacting one basic story, which is
the story of the Leavers."

"I see what you're getting at. It isn't the tale you tell that counts,
it's the way you actually live."

"That's correct. The story the Takers have been enacting here for the
past ten thousand years is not only disastrous for mankind and for the
world, it's fundamentally unhealthy and unsatisfying. It's a
megalomaniac's fantasy, and enacting it has given the Takers a culture
riddled with greed, cruelty, mental illness, crime, and drug
addiction."

"Yes, that seems to be so."

"The story the Leavers have been enacting here for the past three
million years isn't a story of conquest and rule. Enacting it doesn't
give them power. Enacting it gives them lives that are satisfying and
meaningful to them. This is what you'll find if you go among them.
They're not seething with discontent and rebellion, not incessantly
wrangling over what should be allowed and what forbidden, not forever
accusing each other of not living the right way, not living in terror
of each other, not going crazy because their lives seem empty and
pointless, not having to stupefy themselves with drugs to get through
the days, not inventing a new religion every week to give them
something to hold on to, not forever searching for something to do or
something to believe in that will make their lives worth living.
And--I repeat--this is not because they live close to nature or have
no formal government or because they're innately noble. This is simply
because they're enacting a story that works well for people--a story
that worked well for three million years and that still works well
where the Takers haven't yet managed to stamp it out."

"Okay. That sounds terrific. When do we get to that story?"

"Tomorrow. At least we'll begin tomorrow."

"Good," I said. "But before we quit today, I have a question. Why
_Mother_ Culture? I personally have no difficulty with it, but I can
imagine some women would, on the grounds that you seem to be 
singling out a figure of _specifically_ female gender to serve as a
cultural villain."

Ishmael grunted. "I don't consider her a _villain_ in any sense
whatever, but I understand what you're getting at. Here is my answer:
Culture is a mother everywhere and at every time, because culture is
inherently a nurturer--the nurturer of human societies and
life-styles. Among Leaver peoples, Mother Culture explains and
preserves a life-style that is healthy and self-sustaining. Among
Taker peoples she explains and preserves a lifestyle that has proven
to be unhealthy and self-destructive."

"Okay. So?"

"So what's your question? If culture is a mother among the Alawa of
Australia and the Bushmen of Africa and the Kayapo of Brazil, then
why wouldn't she be a mother among the Takers?"

















	  --------------------------------------------------
			       N I N E
	  --------------------------------------------------




    -- 1 --


When I arrived the next day, I found that a new plan was in effect:
Ishmael was no longer on the other side of the glass, he was on my
side of it, sprawled on some cushions a few feet from my chair. I
hadn't realized how important that sheet of glass had become to our
relationship: to be honest, I felt a flutter of alarm in my stomach.
His nearness and enormity disconcerted me, but without hesitating for
more than a fraction of a second, I took my seat and gave him my usual
nod of greeting. He nodded back, but I thought I glimpsed a look of
wary speculation in his eyes, as if my proximity troubled him as much
as his troubled me.

"Before we go on," Ishmael said after a few moments, "I want to clear
up a misconception." He held up a pad of drawing paper with a diagram
on it.



[ see figure 1 ]



"Not a particularly difficult visualization. It represents the story
line of the Leavers," he said. 

"Yes, I see." 

He added something and held it up again.



[ see figure 2 ]



"This offshoot, beginning at about 8000 B.C., represents the story
line of the Takers."

"Right."

"And what event does this represent?" he asked, touching the point of
his pencil to the dot labeled 8000 B.C.

"The agricultural revolution."

"Did this event occur at a point in time or over a period of time?"

"I assume over a period of time."

"Then this dot at 8000 B.C. represents what?"

"The beginning of the revolution."

"Where shall I put the dot to show when it ended?"

"Ah," I said witlessly. "I don't really know. It must have lasted a
couple thousand years."

"What event marked the end of the revolution?"

"Again, I don't know. I don't know that any particular event _would_
have marked it."

"No popping champagne corks?"

"I don't know."

"Think."

I thought, and after a while said, "Okay. It's strange that this isn't
taught. I remember being taught about the agricultural revolution, but
I don't remember this."

"Go on."

"It didn't end. It just spread. It's been spreading ever since it
began back there ten thousand years ago. It spread across this
continent during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It's still
spreading across parts of New Zealand and Africa and South America
today."

"Of course. So you see that your agricultural revolution is not an
event like the Trojan War, isolated in the distant past and without
direct relevance to your lives today. The work begun by those
neolithic farmers in the Near East has been carried forward from one
generation to the next without a single break, right into the present
moment. It's the foundation of your vast civilization today in exactly
the same way that it was the foundation of the very first farming
village."

"Yes, I see that."

"This should help you understand why the story you tell your children
about the meaning of the world, about divine intentions in the world,
and about the destiny of man is of such profound importance to the
people of your culture. It's the manifesto of the revolution on which
your culture is based. It's the repository of all your revolutionary
doctrine and the definitive expression of your revolutionary spirit.
It explains why the revolution was necessary and why it must be
carried forward at any cost whatever."

"Yes," I said. "That's quite a thought."










    -- 2 --


"About two thousand years ago," Ishmael went on, "an event of
exquisite irony occurred within your culture. The Takers--or at least
a very large segment of them--adopted as their own a story that seemed
to them pregnant with meaning and mystery. It came to them from a
Taker people of the Near East who had been telling it to their own
children for countless generations--for so many generations that it
had become a mystery even to them. Do you know why?"

"Why it had become a mystery? No."

"It had become a mystery because those who first told the story--their
ancient ancestors--were not Takers but Leavers."

I sat there for a while blinking at him. Then I asked him if he'd mind
running that past me again.

"About two thousand years ago, the Takers adopted as their own a story
that had originated among Leavers many centuries before."

"Okay. What's the irony in that?"

"The irony is that it was a story that had once been told among
Leavers about the origins of the Takers."

"So?"

"The Takers adopted _as their own_ a Leaver story about their
origins."

"I'm afraid I just don't get it."

"What sort of story would a Leaver people tell about the appearance of
the Takers in the world?"

"God, I have no idea."

Ishmael peered at me owlishly. "You seem to have forgotten to take
your brainy pill this morning. Never mind, I'll tell you a story of my
own, and then you'll see it."

"Okay."

Ishmael shifted his mountainous bulk into a new position on his
pillows, and involuntarily I closed my eyes, thinking, _If a stranger
were to open the door and walk in at this moment, what on earth would
he think?_










    -- 3 --


"There is a very special knowledge you must have if you're going to
rule the world," Ishmael said. "I'm sure you realize that."

"Frankly, I've never thought about it."

"The Takers possess this knowledge, of course--at least they imagine
they do--and they're very, very proud of it. This is the most
fundamental knowledge of all, and it's absolutely indispensable to
those who would rule the world. And what do you suppose the Takers
find when they go among the Leavers?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"They find that the Leavers do not have this knowledge. Isn't that
remarkable?"

"I don't know."

"Consider it. The Takers have a knowledge that enables them to rule
the world, and the Leavers lack it. This is what the missionaries
found wherever they went among the Leavers. They were quite astonished
themselves, because they had the impression that this knowledge was
virtually self-evident."

"I don't even know what knowledge you're talking about."

"It's the knowledge that's needed to rule the world."

"Okay, but specifically what knowledge is that?"

"You'll learn that from the story. What I'm looking at right now is
_who has this knowledge_. I've told you that the Takers have it, and
that makes sense, doesn't it? The Takers are the rulers of the world,
aren't they?"

"Yes."

"And the Leavers don't have it, and that too makes sense, doesn't it?"

"I guess so."

"Now tell me this: Who else would have this knowledge, besides the
Takers?"

"I have no idea."

"Think mythologically."

"Okay. . . . The gods would have it."

"Of course. And that's what my story is about: How the gods acquired
the knowledge they needed to rule the world."










    -- 4 --


One day (Ishmael began) the gods were considering the administration
of the world in the ordinary way, and one of them said, "Here's a spot
I've been thinking about for a while--a wide, pleasant savannah. Let's
send a great multitude of locusts into this land. Then the fire of
life will grow prodigiously in them and in the birds and lizards that
will feed on them, and that will be very fine."

The others thought about this for a while, then one said, "It's
certainly true that, if we send the locusts into this land, the fire
of life will blaze in them and in the creatures that feed on them--but
at the expense of all the other creatures that live there." The others
asked him what his point was, and he went on. "Surely it would be a
great crime to deprive all these other creatures of the fire of life
so that the locusts and the birds and the lizards can flourish for a
time. For the locusts will strip the land bare, and the deer and the
gazelles and the goats and the rabbits will go hungry and die. And
with the disappearance of the game, the lions and the wolves and the
foxes will soon be dying too. Won't they curse us then and call us
criminals for favoring the locusts and the birds and the lizards over
them?"

Now the gods had to scratch their heads over this, because they'd
never looked at matters in this particular light before. But finally
one of them said, "I don't see that this presents any great problem.
We simply won't do it. We won't raise a multitude of locusts to send
into this land, then things will go on as before, and no one will have
any reason to curse us."

Most of the gods thought this made sense, but one of them disagreed.
"Surely this would be as great a crime as the other," he said. "For
don't the locusts and the birds and the lizards live in our hands as
well as the rest? Is it never to be their time to flourish greatly, as
others do?"

While the gods were debating this point, a fox came out to hunt, and
they said, "Let's send the fox a quail for its life." But these words
were hardly spoken when one of them said, "Surely it would be a crime
to let the fox live at the quail's expense. The quail has its life
that we gave it and lives in our hands. It would be infamous to send
it into the jaws of the fox!"

Then another said, "Look here! The quail is stalking a grasshopper! If
we don't give the quail to the fox, then the quail will eat the
grasshopper. Doesn't the grasshopper have its life that we gave it and
doesn't it live in our hands as truly as the quail? Surely it would be
a crime _not_ to give the quail to the fox, so that the grasshopper
may live."

Well, as you can imagine, the gods groaned heavily over this and
didn't know what to do. And while they were wrangling over it, spring
came, and the snow waters of the mountains began to swell the streams,
and one of them said, "Surely it would be a crime to let these waters
flood the land, for countless creatures are bound to be carried off to
their deaths." But then another said, "Surely it would be a crime
_not_ to let these waters flood the land, for without them the ponds
and marshes will dry up, and all the creatures that live in them will
die." And once more the gods were thrown into confusion.

Finally one of them had what seemed to be a new thought. "It's clear
that any action we take will be good for some and evil for others, so
let's take no action at all. Then none of the creatures that live in
our hands can call us criminals."

"Nonsense," another snapped. "If we take no action at all, this will
also be good for some and evil for others, won't it? The creatures
that live in our hands will say, `Look, we suffer, and the gods do
nothing!' "

And while the gods bickered among themselves, the locusts swarmed over
the savannah, and the locusts and the birds and the lizards praised
the gods while the game and the predators died cursing the gods. And
because the gods had taken no action in the matter, the quail lived,
and the fox went hungry to its hole cursing the gods. And because the
quail lived, it ate the grasshopper, and the grasshopper died cursing
the gods. And because in the end the gods decided to stem the flood of
spring waters, the ponds and the marshes dried up, and all the
thousands of creatures that lived in them died cursing the gods.

And hearing all these curses, the gods groaned. "We've made the garden
a place of terror, and all that live in it hate us as tyrants and
criminals. And they're right to do this, because by action or inaction
we send them good one day and evil the next without knowing what we
should do. The savannah stripped by the locusts rings with curses, and
we have no answer to make. The fox and the grasshopper curse us
because we let the quail live, and we have no answer to make. Surely
the whole world must curse the day we made it, for we are criminals
who send good and evil by turns, knowing even as we do it that we
don't know what ought to be done."

Well, the gods were sinking right into the slough of despond when one
of them looked up and said, "Say, didn't we make for the garden a
certain tree whose fruit is the knowledge of good and evil?"

"Yes," cried the others. "Let's find that tree and eat of it and see
what this knowledge is." And when the gods had found this tree and had
tasted its fruit, their eyes were opened, and they said, "Now indeed
we have the knowledge we need to tend the garden without becoming
criminals and without earning the curses of all who live in our
hands."

And as they were talking in this way, a lion went out to hunt, and the
gods said to themselves, "Today is the lion's day to go hungry, and
the deer it would have taken may live another day." And so the lion
missed its kill, and as it was returning hungry to its den it began to
curse the gods. But they said, "Be at peace, for we know how to rule
the world, and today is your day to go hungry." And the lion was at
peace.

And the next day the lion went out to hunt, and the gods sent it the
deer they had spared the day before. And as the deer felt the lion's
jaws on its neck, it began to curse the gods. But they said, "Be at
peace, for we know how to rule the world, and today is your day to die
just as yesterday was your day to live." And the deer was at peace.

Then the gods said to themselves, "Certainly the knowledge of good and
evil is a powerful knowledge, for it enables us to rule the world
without becoming criminals. If we had yesterday sent the lion away
hungry without this knowledge, then indeed it would have been a crime.
And if we had today sent the deer into the lion's jaws without this
knowledge, then indeed this too would have been a crime. But with this
knowledge we have done both of these things, one seemingly opposed to
the other, and have committed no crime."

Now it happened that one of the gods was away on an errand when the
others were eating at the tree of knowledge, and when he returned and
heard what the gods had done in the matter of the lion and the deer,
he said, "In doing these two things you have surely committed a crime
in one instance or the other, for these two things are opposed, and
one must have been right to do and the other wrong. If it was good for
the lion to go hungry on the first day, then it was evil to send it
the deer on the second. Or if it was good to send it the deer on the
second day, then it was evil to send it away hungry on the first."

The others nodded and said, "Yes, this is just the way we would have
reasoned before we ate of this tree of knowledge."

"What knowledge is this?" the god asked, noticing the tree for the
first time.

"Taste its fruit," they told him. "Then you'll know exactly what
knowledge it is."

So the god tasted, and his eyes were opened. "Yes, I see," he said.
"This is indeed the proper knowledge of the gods: _the knowledge of
who shall live and who shall die_."










    -- 5 --


"Any questions so far?" Ishmael asked.

I jumped, startled by this break in the narrative. "No. This is
fascinating."

Ishmael went on.










    -- 6 --


When the gods saw that Adam was awakening, they said to themselves,
"Now here is a creature so like us that he might almost be one of our
company. What span of life and what destiny shall we fashion for him?"

One of them said, "He is so fair, let's give him life for the lifetime
of this planet. In the days of his childhood let's care for him as we
care for all others in the garden, so that he learns the sweetness of
living in our hands. But in adolescence he will surely begin to
realize that he's capable of much more than other creatures and will
become restless in our care. Shall we then lead him to the other tree
in the garden, the Tree of Life?"

But another said, "To lead Adam like a child to the Tree of Life
before he had even begun to seek it for himself would deprive him of a
great undertaking by which he may gain an important wisdom and prove
his mettle to himself. As we would give him the care he needs as a
child, let's give him the quest he needs as an adolescent. Let's make
the quest for the Tree of Life the occupation of his adolescence. In
this way he'll discover for himself how he may have life for the
lifetime of this planet."

The others agreed with this plan, but one said, "We should take note
that this might well be a long and baffling quest for Adam. Youth is
impatient, and after a few thousand years of searching, he might
despair of finding the Tree of Life. If this should happen, he might
be tempted to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
instead."

"Nonsense," the others replied. "You know very well that the fruit of
this tree nourishes only the gods. It can no more nourish Adam than
the grasses of the oxen. He might take it into his mouth and swallow
it, but it would pass through his body without benefit. Surely you
don't imagine that he might actually gain our knowledge by eating of
this tree?"

"Of course not," the other replied. "The danger is not that he would
gain our knowledge but rather that he might _imagine_ that he'd gained
it. Having tasted the fruit of this tree, he might say to himself, `I
have eaten at the gods' own tree of knowledge and therefore know as
well as they how to rule the world. I may do as I will do.' "

"This is absurd," said the other gods. "How could Adam ever be so
foolish as to imagine he had the knowledge that enables us to govern
the world and to do what we will do? None of our creatures will ever
be master of the knowledge of who shall live and who shall die. This
knowledge is ours alone, and if Adam should grow in wisdom till the
very eclipse of the universe, it would be as far beyond him as it is
right now."

But the other was not disconcerted by this argument. "If Adam should
eat of our tree," he persisted, "there's no telling how he might
deceive himself. Not knowing the truth, he might say to himself,
`Whatever I can justify doing is good and whatever I cannot justify
doing is evil.' "

But the others scoffed at this, saying, "This is not the knowledge of
good and evil."

"Of course it's not," the other replied, "but how would Adam know
this?"

The others shrugged. "Perhaps in childhood Adam might believe he was
wise enough to rule the world, but what of it? Such arrogant
foolishness would pass with maturity."

"Ah," said the other, "but possessed of this arrogant foolishness,
would Adam _survive_ into maturity? Believing himself our equal, he
would be capable of anything. In his arrogance, he might look around
the garden and say to himself, `This is all wrong. Why should I have
to share the fire of life with all these creatures? Look here, the
lions and the wolves and the foxes take the game I would have for
myself. This is evil. I will kill all these creatures, and this will
be good. And look here, the rabbits and the grasshoppers and the
sparrows take the fruits of the land that I would have for myself.
This is evil. I will kill all these creatures, and this will be good.
And look here, the gods have set a limit on my growth just as they've
set a limit on the growth of all others. This is evil. I will grow
without limit, taking all the fire of life that flows through this
garden into myself, and that will be good.' Tell me--if this should
happen, how long would Adam live before he had devoured the entire
world?"

"If this should happen," the others said, "Adam would devour the world
in a single day, and at the end of that day he would devour himself."

"Just so," the other said, "unless he managed to escape from this
world. Then he would devour the entire universe as he had devoured the
world. But even so he would inevitably end by devouring himself, as
anything must that grows without limit."

"This would indeed be a terrible end for Adam," another said. "But
might he not come to the same end even without having eaten at the
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Might he not be tempted by his
yearning for growth to take the fire of life into his own hands even
without deluding himself that this was good?"

"He might," the others agreed. "But what would be the result? He would
become a criminal, an outlaw, a thief of life, and a murderer of the
creatures around him. Without the delusion that what he was doing was
good--and therefore to be done at any cost--he would soon weary of the
outlaw's life. Indeed this is bound to happen during his quest for the
Tree of Life. But if he should eat of the tree of our knowledge, then
he will shrug off his weariness. He will say, `What does it matter
that I'm weary of living as a murderer of all the life around me? I
know good and evil, and this way of living is good. Therefore I must
live this way even though I'm weary unto death, even though I destroy
the world and even myself. The gods wrote in the world a law for all
to follow, but it cannot apply to me because I'm their equal.
Therefore I will live outside this law and grow without limit. To be
limited is evil. I will steal the fire of life from the hands of the
gods and heap it up for my growth, and that will be good. I will
destroy those kinds that do not serve my growth, and that will be
good. I will wrest the garden from the hands of the gods and order it
anew so that it serves only my growth, and that will be good. And
because these things are good, they must be done at any cost. It may
be that I'll destroy the garden and make a ruin of it. It may be that
my progeny will teem over the earth like locusts, stripping it bare,
until they drown in their own filth and hate the very sight of one
another and go mad. Still they must go on, because to grow without
limit is good and to accept the limits of the law is evil. And if any
say, "Let's put off the burdens of the criminal life and live in the
hands of the gods once again," I will kill them, for what they say is
evil. And if any say, "Let's turn aside from our misery and search for
that other tree," I will kill them, for what they say is evil. And
when at last all the garden has been subjugated to my use and all
kinds that do not serve my growth have been cast aside and all the
fire of life in the world flows through my progeny, still I must grow.
And to the people of this land I will say, "Grow, for this is good,"
and they will grow. And to the people of the next land I will say,
"Grow, for this is good," and they will grow. And when they can grow
no more, the people of this land will fall upon the people of the next
to murder them, so that they may grow still more. And if the groans of
my progeny fill the air throughout the world, I will say to them,
"Your sufferings must be borne, for you suffer in the cause of good.
See how great we have become! Wielding the knowledge of good and evil,
we have made ourselves the masters of the world, and the gods have no
power over us. Though your groans fill the air, isn't it sweeter to
live in our own hands than in the hands of the gods?" ' "

And when the gods heard all this, they saw that, of all the trees in
the garden, only the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil could
destroy Adam. And so they said to him, "You may eat of every tree in
the garden save the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for on the
day you eat of that tree you will certainly die."










    -- 7 --


I sat there dazed for a while, then I recalled seeing a bible in
Ishmael's odd collection of books. In fact, there were three. I
fetched them and after a few minutes of study looked up and said,
"None of these has any comment to make on why this tree should have
been forbidden to Adam."

"Were you expecting them to?"

"Well . . . yes."

"The Takers write the notes, and this story has always been an
impenetrable mystery to them. They've never been able to figure out
why the knowledge of good and evil should have been forbidden to man.
Don't you see why?"

"No."

"Because, to the Takers, this knowledge is the very best knowledge of
all--the most beneficial for man to have. This being so, why would the
gods forbid it to him?"

"True."

"The knowledge of good and evil is fundamentally the knowledge the
rulers of the world must exercise, because every single thing they do
is good for some but evil for others. This is what ruling is all
about, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"And man was born to rule the world, wasn't he?"

"Yes. According to Taker mythology."

"Then why would the gods withhold the very knowledge man needs to
fulfill his destiny? From the Taker point of view, it makes no sense
at all."

"True."

"The disaster occurred when, ten thousand years ago, the people of
your culture said, `We're as wise as the gods and can rule the world
as well as they.' When they took _into their own hands_ the power of
life and death over the world, their doom was assured."

"Yes. Because they are not in fact as wise as the gods."

"The gods ruled the world for billions of years, and it was doing just
fine. After just a few thousand years of human rule, the world is at
the point of death."

"True. But the Takers will never give it up."

Ishmael shrugged. "Then they'll die. As predicted. The authors of this
story knew what they were talking about."










    -- 8 --


"And you're saying this story was written from a Leaver point of
view?"

"That's right. If it had been written from the Taker point of view,
the knowledge of good and evil wouldn't have been forbidden to Adam,
it would have been _thrust _upon him. The gods would have hung around
saying, `Come on, Man, can't you see that you're nothing without this
knowledge? Stop living off our bounty like a lion or a wombat. Here,
have some of this fruit and you'll instantly realize that you're
naked--as naked as any lion or wombat: naked to the world, powerless.
Come on, have some of this fruit and become one of us. Then, lucky
you, you can leave this garden and begin living by the sweat of your
brow, the way humans are supposed to live.' And if people of your
cultural persuasion had authored it, this event wouldn't be called the
Fall, it would be called the Ascent--or as you put it earlier, the
Liberation."

"Very true . . . . But I'm not quite sure how this fits in with
everything else."

"We are furthering your understanding of _how things came to be this
way_. "

"I don't get it."

"A minute ago, you told me that the Takers will never give up their
tyranny over the world, no matter how bad things get. How did they get
to be this way?"

I goggled at him.

"They got to be this way because they've always believed that what
they were doing was _right_--and therefore to be done at any cost
whatever. They've always believed that, like the gods, they know what
is right to do and what is wrong to do, and what they're doing is
_right_. Do you see how they've demonstrated what I'm saying?"

"Not offhand."

"They've demonstrated it by forcing everyone in the world to do what
_they_ do, to live the way _they_ live. Everyone had to be forced to
live like the Takers, because the Takers had the one _right_ way."

"Yes, I can see that."

"Many peoples among the Leavers practiced agriculture, but they were
never obsessed by the delusion that what they were doing was _right_,
that everyone in the entire world had to practice agriculture, that
every last square yard of the planet had to be devoted to it. They
didn't say to the people around them, `You may no longer live by
hunting and gathering. This is wrong. This is evil, and we forbid it.
Put your land under cultivation or we'll wipe you out.' What they said
was, `You want to be hunter-gatherers? That's fine with us. That's
great. We want to be agriculturalists. You be hunter-gatherers and
we'll be agriculturalists. We don't pretend to know which way is
_right_. We just know which way we _prefer_.' "

"Yes, I see."

"And if they got tired of being agriculturalists, if they found they
didn't like where it was leading them in their particular adaptation,
they were _able_ to give it up. They didn't say to themselves, `Well,
we've got to keep going at this even if it kills us, because this is
the _right_ way to live.' For example, there was once a people who
constructed a vast network of irrigation canals in order to farm the
deserts of what is now southeastern Arizona. They maintained these
canals for three thousand years and built a fairly advanced
civilization, but in the end they were free to say, `This is a
toilsome and unsatisfying way to live, so to hell with it.' They
simply walked away from the whole thing and put it so totally out of
mind that we don't even know what they called themselves. The only
name we have for them is one the Pima Indians gave them:
Hohokam--those who vanished.

"But it's not going to be this easy for the Takers. It's going to be
hard as hell for them to give it up, because what they're doing is
_right_, and they have to go on doing it even if it means destroying
the world and mankind with it."

"Yes, that's the way it seems."

"Giving it up would mean . . . what?"

"Giving it up would mean . . . It would mean that all along they'd
been _wrong_. It would mean that they'd _never_ known how to rule the
world. It would mean . . . relinquishing their pretensions to
godhood."

"It would mean spitting out the fruit of that tree and giving the rule
of the world back to the gods."

"Yes."










    -- 9 --


Ishmael nodded to the stack of bibles at my feet. "According to the
authors of that story, the people living between the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers had eaten at the gods' own tree of knowledge. Where
do you suppose they got that idea?"

"What do you mean?"

"Whatever gave the authors of this story the idea that the people
living in the Fertile Crescent had eaten at the gods' tree of
knowledge? Do you suppose they saw it with their own eyes? Do you
suppose they were there when your agricultural revolution began?"

"I suppose that's a possibility."

"Think. If they'd been there to see it with their own eyes, who would
they have been?"

"Oh . . . right. They would have been the people of the Fall. They
would have been the Takers." '

"And if they'd been Takers, they would have told the story a different
way."

"Yes."

"So the authors of this story were not there to see it with their own
eyes. How then did they know it had happened? How did they know that
the Takers had usurped the role of the gods in the world?"

"Lord," I said.

"Who _were_ the authors of this story?"

"Well . . . the Hebrews?"

Ishmael shook his head. "Among the people known as the Hebrews, this
was already an ancient story--and a mysterious story. The Hebrews
stepped into history as Takers--and wanted nothing more than to be
like their Taker neighbors. Indeed, that's why their prophets were
always bawling them out."

"True."

"So, though they preserved the story, they no longer fully understood
it. To find the people who understood it, we have find its authors.
And who were they?"

"Well . . . they were the ancestors of the Hebrews."

"But who were _they_?"

"I'm afraid I have no idea."

Ishmael grunted. "Look, I can't forbid you to say, `I have no idea,'
but I do insist that you spend a few seconds _thinking_ before you say
it."

I spent a few seconds at it, just to be polite, then I said, "I'm
sorry. My grasp of ancient history is frankly negligible."

"The ancient ancestors of the Hebrews were the Semites."

"Oh."

"You knew that, didn't you?"

"Yes, I guess so. I just . . ."

"You just weren't thinking."

"Right."

Ishmael bestirred himself, and to be perfectly honest, my stomach
clenched as the half ton of him brushed past my chair. If you don't
know how gorillas make their way from place to place on the ground,
you can visit the zoo or rent a _National Geographic_ videotape; no
words of mine will make you see it.

Ishmael lumbered or shambled or shuffled over to the bookcase and
returned with an historical atlas, which he handed to me open to a map
of Europe and the Near East in 8500 B.C. A blade like a hand sickle
very nearly cut the Arabian peninsula away from the rest. The words
_Incipient Agriculture_ made it clear that the sickle blade enclosed
the Fertile Crescent. A handful of dots indicated sites where early
farming implements had been found.

"This map, I feel, gives a false impression," Ishmael said, "though it
was not an intended impression. It gives the impression that the
agricultural revolution took place in an empty world. This is why I
prefer my own map." He opened his pad and showed it to me.



[ see figure 3 ]



"As you see, this shows the situation five hundred years later. The
agricultural revolution is well under way. The area in which farming
is taking place is indicated by these hen-scratches." Using a pencil
as a pointer, he indicated the area between the Tigris and the
Euphrates. "This, of course, is the land between the rivers, the
birthplace of the Takers. And what do you suppose all these dots
represent?"

"Leaver peoples?"

"Exactly. They're not designed as a statement about population
density. Nor are they intended to indicate that every available
stretch of land was inhabited by some Leaver people. What they
indicate is that this was far from being an empty world. Do you see
what I'm showing you?"

"Well, I think so. The land of the Fall lay within the Fertile
Crescent and was surrounded by nonagriculturalists."

"Yes, but I'm also pointing out that at this time, at the beginning of
your agricultural revolution, these early Takers, the founders of your
culture, were unknown, isolated, unimportant. The next map in that
historical atlas is four thousand years later. What would you expect
to see on it?"

"I'd expect to see that the Takers have expanded."

He nodded, indicating that I should turn the page. Here a printed
oval, labeled _Chalcolithic Cultures_, with Mesopotamia at its center,
enclosed the whole of Asia Minor and all the land to the north and
east as far as the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf. The oval extended
southward as far as the entrance to the Arabian peninsula, which was a
cross-hatched area labeled _Semites_.

"Now," Ishmael said, "we have some witnesses."

"How so?"

"The Semites were not eyewitnesses to the events described in chapter
three of Genesis." He drew a small oval in the center of the Fertile
Crescent. "Those events, cumulatively known as the Fall, took place
here, hundreds of miles north of the Semites, among an entirely
different people. Do you see who they were?"

"According to the map, they were the Caucasians."

"But now, in 4500 B.C., the Semites are eyewitnesses to an event in
their own front yard: the expansion of the Takers."

"Yes, I see."

"In four thousand years the agricultural revolution that began in the
land between the rivers had spread across Asia Minor to the west and
to the mountains in the north and east. And to the south it seems to
have been blocked by what?"

"By the Semites, apparently."

"Why? Why were the Semites blocking it?"

"I don't know."

"What were the Semites? Were they agriculturalists?"

"No. The map makes it clear that they weren't a part of what was going
on among the Takers. So I assume they were Leavers."

"Leavers, yes, but no longer hunter-gatherers. They had evolved
another adaptation that was to be traditional for Semitic peoples."

"Oh. They were pastoralists."

"Of course. Herders." He indicated the border between the Takers'
Chalcolithic Culture and the Semites. "So what was happening here?"

"I don't know."

Ishmael nodded toward the bibles at my feet. "Read the story of Cain
and Abel in Genesis and then you'll know."

I picked up the one on top and turned to chapter four. A couple
minutes later, I muttered, "Good lord."










    -- 10 --


After reading the story in all three versions, I looked up and said,
"What was happening along that border was that Cain was killing Abel.
The tillers of the soil were watering their fields with the blood of
Semitic herders."

"Of course. What was happening there was what has always happened
along the borders of Taker expansion: The Leavers were being killed
off so that more land could be put under cultivation." Ishmael picked
up his pad and opened it to his own map of this period. "As you see,
the hen-scratches of the agriculturalists have swarmed over the entire
area--except for the territory occupied by the Semites. Here at the
border that separates tillers of the soil from Semitic herders, Cain
and Abel confront each other."



[ see figure 4]



I studied the map for a few moments and then shook my head. "And
biblical scholars don't understand this?"

"I cannot say, of course, that not a single scholar has ever
understood this. But most read the story as if it were set in an
historical never--never land, like one of Aesop's fables. It would
scarcely occur to them to understand it as a piece of Semitic war
propaganda."

"That's what it is, all right. I know it's always been a mystery as to
why God accepted Abel and his offering and rejected Cain and his
offering. This explains it. With this story, the Semites were telling
their children, `God is on our side. He loves us herders but hates
those murderous tillers of the soil from the north.' "

"That's right. If you read it as a story that originated among your
own cultural ancestors, it's incomprehensible. It only begins to make
sense when you realize that it originated among the _enemies_ of your
cultural ancestors."

"Yes." I sat there blinking for a few moments, then looked at
Ishmael's map again. "If the tillers of the soil from the north were a
Caucasians," I said, "then the mark of Cain is _this_." I pointed to
my own fair or maggot-colored face.

"It could be. Obviously we'll never know for sure what the authors of
the story had in mind."

"But it makes _sense_ this way," I insisted. "The mark was given to
Cain as a warning to others: `Leave this man alone. This is a
dangerous man, one who exacts a sevenfold vengeance.' Certainly a lot
of people all over the world have learned that it doesn't pay to mess
with people with white faces."

Ishmael shrugged, unconvinced or perhaps just uninterested.










    -- 11 --


"In the previous map, I went to the trouble of laying down hundreds of
dots to represent Leaver peoples living in the Mideast when your
agricultural revolution began. What do you suppose happened to these
peoples between the time of that map and the time of this map?"

"I would have to say that either they were overrun and assimilated or
they took up agriculture in imitation of the Takers."

Ishmael nodded. "Doubtless many of these peoples had their own tales
to tell of this revolution, their own ways of explaining how these
people from the Fertile Crescent came to be the way they were, but
only one of these tales survived--the one told by the Semites to their
children about the Fall of Adam and the slaughter of Abel by his
brother Cain. It survived because the Takers never managed to overrun
the Semites, and the Semites refused to take up the agricultural life.
Even their eventual Taker descendants, the Hebrews, who preserved the
story without fully understanding it, couldn't work up any enthusiasm
for the peasant life-style. And this is how it happened that, with the
spread of Christianity and of the Old Testament, the Takers came to
adopt as their own a story an enemy once told to denounce them."










    -- 12 --


"So we come again to this question: Where did the Semites get the idea
that the people of the Fertile Crescent had eaten at the gods' own
tree of knowledge?"

"Ah," I said. "I would say it was a sort of reconstruction. They
looked at the people they were fighting and said, `My God, how did
they _get_ this way?' "

"And what was their answer?"

"Well . . . `What's _wrong_ with these people? What's wrong with our
brothers from the north? Why are they doing this to us? They act 
like . . .' Let me think about this for a bit."

"Take your time."

"Okay," I said a few minutes later. "Here's how it would look to the
Semites, I think. `What's going on here is something wholly new. These
aren't raiding parties. These aren't people drawing a line and baring
their teeth at us to make sure we know . they're there. These guys are
saying . . . Our brothers from the north are saying that we've got to
die. They're saying Abel has to be wiped out. They're saying we're not
to be allowed to live. Now that's something new, and we don't get it.
Why can't they, live up there and be farmers and let us live down here
and be herders? Why do they have to murder us?'

" `Something really weird must have happened up there to turn these
people into murderers. What could it have been? Wait a second . . .
Look at the way these people live. Nobody has ever lived this way
before. They're not just saying that _we_ have to die. They're saying
that _everything_ has to die. They're not just killing us, they're
killing _everything_. They're saying, "Okay, lions, you're dead. We've
had it with you. You're out of here." They're saying, "Okay, wolves,
we've had it with you too. You're out of here." They're saying . . .
"Nobody eats but us. All this food belongs to us and no one else can
have any without our permission." They're saying, "What we want to
live lives and what we want to die dies."

" `That's it! They're acting as if they were the gods themselves.
They're acting as if they eat at the gods' own tree of wisdom, as
though they were as wise as the gods and could send life and death
wherever they please. Yes, that's it. That's what must have happened
up there. These people found the gods' own tree of wisdom and stole
some of its fruit.

" `Aha! Right! These are an accursed people! You can see that right
off the bat. When the gods found out what they'd done, they said,
"Okay, you wretched people, that's it for you! We're not taking care
of you anymore. You're out. We banish you from the garden. From now
on, instead of living on our bounty, you can wrest your food from the
ground by the sweat of your brows." And that's how these accursed
tillers of the soil came to be hunting us down and watering their
fields with our blood."'

When I finished, I saw that Ishmael was putting his hands together in
mute applause.

I replied with a smirk and a modest nod.










    -- 13 --


"One of the clearest indications that these two stories were not
authored by your cultural ancestors is the fact that agriculture is
not portrayed as a desirable choice, freely made, but rather as a
curse. It was literally inconceivable to the authors of these stories
that anyone would _prefer_ to live by the sweat of his brow. So the
question they asked themselves was not, `Why did these people adopt
this toilsome life-style?' It was, `What terrible misdeed did these
people commit to deserve such a punishment? What have they done to
make the gods withhold from them the bounty that enables the rest of
us to live a carefree life?' "

"Yes, that's obvious now. In our own cultural history, the adoption of
agriculture was a prelude to ascent. In these stories, agriculture is
the lot of the fallen."










    -- 14 --


"I have a question," I said. "Why did they describe Cain as Adam's
firstborn and Abel as Adam's secondborn?"

Ishmael nodded. "The significance is mythological rather than
chronological. I mean that you'll find this motif in folktales
everywhere: When you have a father with two sons, one worthy and one
unworthy, the unworthy son is almost always the cherished firstborn,
while the worthy son is the secondborn--which is to say, the underdog
in the story."

"Okay. But why would they think of themselves as descendants of Adam
at all?"

"You mustn't confuse metaphorical thinking with biological thinking.
The Semites didn't think of Adam as their biological ancestor." '

"How do you know that?"

Ishmael thought for a moment. "Do you know what _Adam_ means in
Hebrew? We can't know the name the Semites gave him, but presumably it
had the same meaning."

"It means _man_."

"Of course. The human race. Do you suppose the Semites thought that
the human race was their biological ancestor?"

"No, of course not."

"I agree. The relationships in the story have to be understood
metaphorically, not biologically. As they perceived it, the Fall
divided the race of man into two--into bad guys and good guys, into
tillers of the soil and herders, the former bent on murdering the
latter."

"Okay," I said.










    -- 15 --


"But I'm afraid I have another question."

"There's no need to apologize for it. That's what you're here for."

"Okay. My question is, how does Eve figure in all this?"

"Her name means what?"

"According to the notes, it means _Life_."

"Not _Woman_?"

"No, not according to the notes."

"With this name, the authors of the story have made it clear that
Adam's temptation wasn't sex or lust or uxoriousness. Adam was tempted
by _Life_."

"I don't get it."

"Consider: A hundred men and one woman does not spell a hundred
babies, but one man and a hundred women does."

"So?"

"I'm pointing out that, in terms of population expansion, men and
women have markedly different roles. They're by no means equal in this
regard."

"Okay. But I still don't get it."

"I'm trying to put you in the frame of mind of a nonagricultural
people, a people for whom population control is always a critical
problem. Let me put it baldly: A band of herders that consists of
fifty men and one woman is in no danger of experiencing a population
explosion, but a band that consists of one man and fifty women is in
big trouble. People being people, that band of fifty-one herders is
going to be a band of one hundred in no time at all."

"True. But I'm afraid I still don't see how this relates to the story
in Genesis."

"Be patient. Let's go back to the authors of this story, a herding
people being pushed into the desert by agriculturalists from the
north. Why were their brothers from the north pushing?"

"They wanted to put the herder's land under cultivation."

"Yes, but why?"

"Ah, I see. They were increasing food production to support an
expanded population."

"Of course. Now you're ready to do some more reconstruction. You can
see that these tillers of the soil have no sense of restraint when it
comes to expansion. They don't control their population; when there
isn't enough food to go around, they just put some more land under
cultivation."

"True."

"So: Whom did these people say yes to?"

"Mm. Yes, I think I see it. As in a glass, darkly."

"Think of it this way: The Semites, like most nonagricultural peoples,
had to be wary of becoming overbalanced between the sexes. Having too
many men didn't threaten the stability of their population, but having
too many women definitely did. You see that?"

"Yes."

"But what the Semites observed in their brothers from the north was
that it didn't matter to them. If their population got out of hand,
they didn't worry, they just put more land under cultivation."

"Yes, I see that."

"Or try it this way: Adam and Eve spent three million years in the
garden, living on the bounty of the gods, and their growth was very
modest; in the Leaver life-style this is the way it _has_ to be. Like
Leavers everywhere, they had no need to exercise the gods' prerogative
of deciding who shall live and who shall die. But when Eve presented
Adam with this knowledge, he said, `Yes, I see; with this, we no
longer have to depend on the bounty of the gods. With the matter of
who shall live and who shall die in our own hands, we can create a
bounty that will exist for us alone, and this means I can say yes to
Life, and grow without limit.' What you should understand is that
saying yes to Life and accepting the knowledge of good and evil are
merely different aspects of a single act, and this is the way the
story is told in Genesis."

"Yes. It's subtle, but I think I see it. When Adam accepted the fruit
of that tree, he succumbed to the temptation to live without
limit--and so the person who offered him that fruit is named _Life_. "

Ishmael nodded. "Whenever a Taker couple talk about how wonderful it
would be to have a big family, they're reenacting this scene beside
the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They're saying to
themselves, `Of course it's our right to apportion life on this planet
as we please. Why stop at four kids or six? We can have fifteen if we
like. All we have to do is plow under another few hundred acres of
rain forest--and who cares if a dozen other species disappear as a
result?' "










    -- 16 --


There was still something that didn't quite fit together, but I
couldn't figure out how to articulate it.

Ishmael told me to take my time.

After I'd sweated over it for a few minutes, he said, "Don't expect to
be able to work it all out in terms of our present knowledge of the
world. The Semites at this time were completely isolated on the
Arabian peninsula, cut off in all directions either by the sea or by
the people of Cain. For all they knew, they and their brothers to the
north were literally the whole race of man, the only people on earth.
Certainly that's the way they saw the story. They couldn't possibly
have known that it was only in that little corner of the world that
Adam had eaten at the gods' tree, couldn't possibly have known that
the Fertile Crescent was only one of many places where agriculture had
begun, couldn't possibly have known that there were still people all
over the world living the way Adam had lived before the Fall."

"True," I said. "I was trying to make it fit with all the information
we have, and that obviously won't work."










    -- 17 --


"I think it's safe to say that the story of Adam's Fall is by far the
best-known story in the world."

"At least in the West," I said.

"Oh, it's well known in the East as well, having been carried into
every corner of the world by Christian missionaries. It has a powerful
attraction for Takers everywhere."

"Yes."

"Why is that so?"

"I guess because it purports to explain what went wrong here." '

"What _did_ go wrong? How do people understand the story?"

"Adam, the first man, ate the fruit of the forbidden tree."

"And what is that understood to mean?"

"Frankly, I don't know. I've never heard an explanation that made any
sense."

"And the knowledge of good and evil?"

"Again, I've never heard an explanation that made any sense. I think
the way most people understand it, the gods wanted to test Adam's
obedience by forbidding him something, and it didn't much matter what
it was. And that's what the Fall essentially was--an act of
disobedience."

"Nothing really to do with the knowledge of good and evil."

"No. But then I suppose there are people who think that the knowledge
of good and evil is just a symbol of . . . I don't know exactly what.
They think of the Fall as a fall from innocence."

"Innocence in this context presumably being a synonym for blissful
ignorance."

"Yes . . . It's something like this: Man was innocent until he
discovered the difference between good and evil. When he was no longer
innocent of that knowledge, he became a fallen creature."

"I'm afraid that means nothing at all to me."

"To me either, actually."

"All the same, if you read it from another point of view, the story
does explain exactly what went wrong here, doesn't it?"

"Yes."

"But the people of your culture have never been able to understand the
explanation, because they've always assumed that it was formulated by
people just like them--people who took it for granted that the world
was made for man and man was made to conquer and rule it, people for
whom the sweetest knowledge in the world is the knowledge of good and
evil, people who consider tilling the soil the only noble and human
way to live. Reading the story as if it had been authored by someone
with their own point of view, they didn't stand a chance of
understanding it."

"That's right."

"But when it's read another way, the explanation makes perfectly good
sense: Man can never have the wisdom the gods use to rule the world,
and if he tries to preempt that wisdom, the result won't be
enlightenment, it will be death."

"Yes," I said, "I have no doubt about that--that's what the story
means. Adam wasn't the progenitor of our race, he was the progenitor
of our culture."

"This is why he's always been a figure of such importance to you. Even
though the story itself made no real sense to you, you could identify
with Adam as its protagonist. From the beginning, you recognized him
as one of your own."

















	  --------------------------------------------------
				T E N
	  --------------------------------------------------




    -- 1 --


An uncle arrived in town unannounced and expected to be entertained. I
thought it would be a day; it turned out to be two and a half. I found
myself beaming these thoughts at him: "Isn't it getting to be time for
you to move on? Aren't you homesick by now? Wouldn't you rather
explore the city on your own? Doesn't it ever occur to you that I
might have other things to do?" He was not receptive.

A few minutes before I left to take him to the airport, I got a call
and an ultimatum from a client: No more excuses, not one word--do the
work now, or send back the advance. I said I'd do the work now. I took
my visiting relative to the airport, came back, and sat down at the
word processor. It wasn't that big a chore, I told myself--pointless
to make a trip downtown just to tell Ishmael I wasn't going to be
there for another day or two.

But in the water of my bones and bowels there was a tremor of
apprehension.



I pray about teeth--doesn't everyone? I don't have time to floss. You
know. Hang in there, I tell them; I'll get around to you before it's
too late. But during the second night a molar that was way, way in the
back gave up the ghost. The next morning I found a dentist who agreed
to take it out and give it a decent burial. In the chair, while he
gave me shot after shot and fiddled with his equipment and checked my
blood pressure, I found myself thinking, "Look, I don't have time for
this--just yank it out and let me go." But he turned out to be right.
Oh my, what roots that tooth had--and it seemed to be a lot closer to
my spine than my lips. At one point I asked him if it wouldn't be
easier to go in from the back.

When it was over, another side of his personality emerged. He became a
Tooth Policeman, and I had been well and truly pulled over to the
curb. He scolded me, made me feel small, irresponsible, and immature.
I nodded and promised and nodded and promised, thinking, _Please,
Officer, give me one more chance, set me loose on my own
recognizance_. Eventually he did, but when I got home my hands were
shaking and the gauze pads that came out of my jaw weren't pretty. I
spent the day gobbling pain-killers and antibiotics and drinking
myself silly with bourbon.

In the morning I got back to work, but that tremor of apprehension was
still singing in my water.

"One more day," I said to myself. "I'll be able to get this in the
mail tonight, and one more day won't matter."

The gambler who puts his last hundred on odd and watches the ball hop
decisively into slot 18 will tell you he _knew_ it was a losing bet
the instant the chip left his hand. He knew it, _felt_ it. But of
course if it had taken one more hop and landed in 19, he would
cheerfully admit that such presentiments often prove to be wrong.

Mine was not.

From the head of the hallway, I saw an industrial-sized floor scrubber
parked outside Ishmael's half-open door. Before I could get there, a
middle-aged man in a gray uniform backed out and started locking up. I
called to him to wait.

"What are you doing?" I asked, somewhat inelegantly, when he was in
range of a normal tone of voice.

It didn't really deserve an answer, and he didn't give me one.

"Look," I said, "I know it's none of my business, but would you mind
telling me what's going on here?"

He looked at me as if I were a roach he was sure he'd killed a week
ago. Nonetheless, he finally worked his mouth a bit and let a few
words through: "Getting the place ready for a new tenant."

"Ah," I said. "But, uh, what happened to the old tenant?"

He shrugged indifferently. "Got evicted, I guess. Wasn't paying her
rent."

"_Her_ rent?" I had momentarily forgotten that Ishmael was not his own
caretaker.

He gave me a doubtful look. "Thought you knew the lady."

"No, I knew the uh . . . the uh . . ."

He stood there blinking at me.

"Look," I said again, floundering, "there's probably a note in there
for me, or something."

"Ain't nothing' at all in there now, 'cept a bad smell."

"Would you mind if I had a look for myself?"

He turned back to the door and locked it. "You talk to the management
about it, okay? I got things to do."










    -- 2 --


"The management," in the person of a receptionist, couldn't think of
any reason why I should be given access to that office or anything
else, including information of any kind, on any subject, beyond what I
already knew: that the tenant had failed to keep up with the rent and
had accordingly been evicted. I tried to unnerve her with a piece of
truth, but she rejected scornfully my suggestion that a gorilla had
once occupied the premises.

"No such animal has ever been kept--or ever will be kept--on any
property managed by this firm."

I told her that she could at least tell me if Rachel Sokolow had been
the lessor--what harm could that do?

She said, "That's not the point. If your interest was legitimate, you
would already know who the lessor was."

This was not your typical receptionist; if I ever need one of my own,
I hope I find one like her.










    -- 3 --


There were half a dozen Sokolows in the phone, book, but none was
named Rachel. There was a Grace, with the right sort of address for
the widow of a wealthy Jewish merchant. The next morning, early, I
took my car and did a little discreet trespassing to see if the
grounds sported a gazebo; they did. I got the car washed, polished my
serious shoes, and duster off the shoulders of the one suit I maintain
in case of weddings and funerals. Then, to be sure of not running into
lunch or tea, I waited until two o'clock to make my appearance.

The Beaux-Arts style isn't to everyone's taste, but I happen to like
it when it doesn't confuse itself with a wedding cake. The Sokolow
mansion looked cool and majestic yet ever-so-slightly whimsical, like
royalty on a picnic. After ringing the bell, I had plenty of time to
study the front door, a work of art in its own right, a bronze
sculpture depicting the Rape of Europa or the Founding of Rome or some
damn thing like that. After a while it was opened by a man I would
pick for secretary of state just on the basis of his clothes, his
looks, and his bearing. He didn't have to say, "Yeah?" or "Well?" He
asked my business just by twitching an eyebrow. I told him I wanted to
see Mrs. Sokolow. He asked if I had an appointment, knowing full well
that I didn't. I knew this was not a guy I could stiff with a
statement that it was a personal matter--meaning, none of his
business. I decided to open up a little.

"To tell the truth, I'm trying to get in touch with her daughter."

He gave me a leisurely going-over with his eyes. "You're not a friend
of hers," he said at last.

"No, frankly, I'm not."

"If you were, you would know that she died almost three months ago."

His words went through me like a dose of ice water.

He twitched another eyebrow, meaning, "Anything else?"

I decided to open up a little more.

"Were you with _Mr_. Sokolow?"

He frowned, letting me know that he doubted the relevance of my
inquiry.

"The reason I ask is . . . may I ask your name?"

He doubted the relevance of this inquiry as well, but he decided to
humor me. "My name is Partridge."

"Well, Mr. Partridge, the reason I ask is, did you know . . .
Ishmael?"

He narrowed his eyes at me.

"To be completely truthful with you, I'm not looking for Rachel, I'm
looking for Ishmael. I understand that Rachel more or less took charge
of him after her father died."

"How do you come to understand that?" he asked, giving away nothing.

"Mr. Partridge, if you know the answer to that, you'll probably help
me," I said, "and if you don't know the answer to it, you probably
won't."

It was an elegant point, and he acknowledged it with a nod. Then he
asked why I was looking for Ishmael.

"He's missing from his . . . usual place. Evidently he was evicted."

"Someone must have moved him. Helped him."

"Yes," I said. "I don't suppose he walked into Hertz and rented a
car."

Partridge ignored my witticism. "I honestly don't know anything, I'm
afraid."

"Mrs. Sokolow?"

"If she knew anything, I would know it first."

I believed him but said: "Give me a place to start."

"I don't know of any place to start, now. Now that Miss Sokolow is
dead."

I stood there for a while, chewing on it. "What did she die of?"

"You didn't know her at all?"

"Not from Adam."

"Then that's really none of your business," he told me, without
rancor, just stating a plain fact. 










    -- 4 --


I considered hiring a private investigator. Then I rehearsed in my
head the kind of conversation it would take to get started, and
decided to skip it. But because I couldn't just up and quit on it, I
made a phone call to the local zoo and asked if they happened to have
a lowland gorilla in stock. They didn't. I said I happened to have one
I needed to get rid of and did they want it, and they said no. I asked
if they could suggest someone who _might_ want it, and they said no,
not really. I asked them what they'd do if they absolutely had to get
rid of a gorilla. They said there might be a laboratory or two that
would take it as a specimen, but I could tell they weren't really
concentrating.

One thing was obvious: Ishmael had some friends I didn't know
about--perhaps former pupils. The only way I could think of to reach
them was the way _he_ had probably reached them--through an ad in the
personals:


	     FRIENDS OF ISHMAEL: Another friend has lost
	    contact. Please call and tell me where he is.


The ad was a mistake, because it gave me an excuse to turn my brain
off. I waited for it to appear, then I waited for it to run for a
week, then I waited a few more days for a call that didn't come, and
in that way two weeks passed during which I didn't lift a finger.

When I finally faced the fact that I wasn't going to get any response
to the ad, I had to look for a new heading, and it took me about three
minutes to come up with it. I called city hall and was soon talking to
the person who would issue a permit to a traveling show if one turned
up and wanted to squat on a vacant lot for a week.

Was there one in town at the moment?

No.

Had there been any in the past month?

Yes, the Darryl Hicks Carnival, with nineteen rides, twenty-four games,
and a sideshow, had been here and was gone now for a couple weeks or
thereabouts.

Anything like a menagerie?

Don't recollect anything like that being listed.

Maybe an animal or two in the sideshow?

Dunno. Possible.

Next stop on its route?'

No idea at all.

It didn't matter. A dozen calls tracked it to a town forty miles
north, where it had stayed a week and moved on. Assuming it would keep
on moving north, I located its next stop and present location with a
single call. And yes, it now boasted of having "Gargantua, the world's
most famous gorilla"--a critter that I personally knew had been dead
for something like forty years.

For you or anyone with reasonably modern equipment, the Darryl Hicks
Carnival would have been ninety minutes away, but for me, in a
Plymouth that came out the same year as _Dallas_, it was two hours.
When I got there, it was a carnival. You know. Carnivals are like bus
stations: Some are bigger than others, but they're all alike. The
Darryl Hicks was two acres of the usual sleaze masquerading as
merriment, full of ugly people, noise, and the stink of beer, cotton
candy, and popcorn. I waded through it in search of the sideshow.

I have the impression that sideshows as I remember them from boyhood
(or maybe from movies in boyhood) are nearly extinct in the modern
carnival world; if so, the Darryl Hicks has elected to ignore the
trend. When I arrived, a barker was putting a fire-eater through his
paces, but I didn't stay to watch. There was plenty to see inside--the
usual collection of monsters, freaks, and geeks, a bottle-biter, a
pincushion, a tattooed fat lady, all the rest, which I ignored.

Ishmael was in a dim corner as far from the entrance as it was
possible to be, with two ten-year-olds in attendance.

"I'll bet he could tear those bars right out if he wanted to," one
observed.

"Yeah," said the other. "But _he_ doesn't know that."

I stood there giving him a smoldering look, and he sat there placidly
paying no attention to anything until the boys moved off.

As a couple minutes passed, I went on staring and he went on
pretending I wasn't there. Then I gave up and said, "Tell me this. Why
didn't you ask for help? I know you could have. They don't evict
people overnight."

He gave no sign that he'd heard me.

"How the hell do we go about getting you out of here?"

He went on looking through me as if I were just another volume of air.

I said, "Look, Ishmael, are you sore at me or something?"

At last he gave me an eye, but it wasn't a very friendly one. "I
didn't invite you to make yourself my patron," he said, "so kindly
refrain from patronizing me."

"You want me to mind my own business."

"In a word, yes."

I looked around helplessly. "You mean you actually want to _stay_
here?"

Once again Ishmael's eye turned icy.

"All right, all right," I told him. "But what about me?"

"What _about_ you?"

"Well, we weren't finished, were we."

"No, we weren't finished."

"So what are you going to do? Do I just become failure number five, or
what?"

He sat blinking at me sullenly for a minute or two. Then he said,
"There is no need for you to become failure number five. We can go on
as before."

At this point a family of five strolled up to have a look at the most
famous gorilla in the world: mom, dad, two girls, and a toddler
comatose in his mother's arms.

"So we can just go on as before, can we?" I said, and not in a
whisper. "That strikes you as feasible, does it?"

The family of visitors suddenly found me much more interesting than
"Gargantua," who, after all, was just sitting there looking morose.

I said, "Well, where shall we begin? Do you remember where we left
off?"

Intrigued, the visitors turned to see what response this would evoke
from Ishmael. When it came, of course, only I could hear it:

"Shut up."

"Shut up? But I thought we were going to go on just as before."

With a grunt, he shuffled to the rear of the cage and gave us all a
look at his back. After a minute or so the visitors decided I deserved
a dirty look; they gave it to me and ambled off to view the mummified
body of a man shot to death in the Mojave around the end of the Civil
War.

"Let me take you back," I said.

"No thanks," he replied, turning around but not coming back up to the
front of the cage. "Incredible as it may seem to you, I would rather
live this way than on anyone's largess, even yours."

"It would only be largess until we worked out something else."

"Something else being what? Doing stunts on the _Tonight_ show? A
nightclub act?"

"Listen. If I can get in touch with the others, maybe we can work out
some kind of joint effort."

"What the devil are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the people who helped you get this far. You didn't
do it by yourself, did you?"

He stared at me balefully from the shadows. "Go away," he snarled.
"Just go away and leave me alone."

I went away and left him alone.










    -- 5 --


I hadn't planned for this--or for anything at all, in fact--so I
didn't know what to do. I checked into the cheapest motel I could find
and went out for a steak and a couple of drinks to think things over.
By nine o'clock, I hadn't made any progress, so I went back to the
carnival to see what was going on out there. I was in luck, of
sorts--a cold front was moving in, and a nasty light rain was sending
the merrymakers home with their spirits dampened.

Do you suppose they're still called roustabouts? I didn't ask the one
I found closing down the sideshow tent. He looked to be about eighty,
and I offered him a ten for the privilege of communing with nature for
a while in the person of the gorilla who was no more Gargantua than I
was. He didn't appear to consider any of the ethical aspects of the
matter but distinctly sneered at the size of the bribe. I added
another ten, and he left a light burning by the cage when he hobbled
off. There were folding chairs set up on several of the performers'
stages, and I dragged one over and sat down.

Ishmael gazed down at me for a few minutes and then asked where we had
left off.

"You'd just finished showing me that the story in Genesis that begins
with the Fall of Adam and ends with the murder of Abel is not what
it's conventionally understood to be by the people of my culture. It's
the story of our agricultural revolution as told by some of the
earliest victims of that revolution."

"And what remains, do you think?" 

"I don't know. Maybe what remains is to bring it all together for me.
I don't know what it all adds up to yet."

"Yes, I agree. Let me think for a bit."










    -- 6 --


"What exactly is culture?" Ishmael asked at last. "As the word is
commonly used, not in the special sense we've given it for the
purposes of these conversations."

It seemed like a hell of a question to ask someone sitting in a
carnival sideshow tent, but I did my best to give it some thought.
"I'd say it's the sum total of everything that makes a people a
people."

He nodded. "And how does that sum total come into existence?"

"I'm not sure what you're getting at. It comes into existence by
people living."

"Yes, but sparrows live, and they don't have a culture."

"Okay, I see what you mean. It's an accumulation. The sum total is an
accumulation ."

"What you're not telling me is how the accumulation comes into being."

"Oh, I see. Okay. The accumulation is the sum total that is passed
from one generation to the next. It comes into being when . . . When a
species attains a certain order of intelligence, the members of one
generation begin to pass along information and techniques to the next.
The next generation takes this accumulation adds its own discoveries
and refinements, and passes the total on to the next."

"And this accumulation is what is called culture."

"Yes, I'd say so."

"It's the sum total of what's passed along, of course, not just
information and techniques. It's beliefs, assumptions, theories,
customs, legends, songs, stories, dances, jokes, superstitions,
prejudices, tastes, attitudes. Everything."

"That's right."

"Oddly enough, the order of intelligence needed for the accumulation
to begin is not terribly high. Chimpanzees in the wild are already
passing along tool-making and tool-using behaviors to their young. I
see that this surprises you."

"No. Well . . . I guess I'm surprised that you cite chimpanzees."

"Instead of gorillas?"

"That's right."

Ishmael frowned. "To tell the truth, I have deliberately avoided all
field studies of gorilla life. It is a subject I find I do not care to
explore."

I nodded, feeling stupid.

"In any case, if chimpanzees have already begun to accumulate
knowledge about what works well for chimpanzees, when do you suppose
people began to accumulate knowledge about what works well for
people?"

"I'd have to assume it began when people began."

"Your paleoanthropologists would agree. Human culture began with human
life, which is to say with _Homo habilis_. The people who were _Homo
habilis_ passed along to their children all they'd learned, and as
each generation contributed its mite, there was an accumulation of
this knowledge. And who were the heirs to this accumulation?"

"_Homo erectus_?"

"That's right. And the people who were _Homo erectus_ passed along
this accumulation generation after generation, each adding its mite to
the whole. And who were the heirs to this accumulation?"

"_Homo Sapiens_."

"Of course. And the heirs of _Homo sapiens_ were the people of _Homo
sapiens sapiens_, who passed along this accumulation generation after
generation, each adding its mite to the whole. And who were the heirs
to _this_ accumulation?"

"I'd have to say that the various peoples of the Leavers were the
heirs."

"Not the Takers? Why is that?"

"Why is that? I don't know. I'd say it's because . . . Obviously there
was a total break with the past at the time of the agricultural
revolution. There was no break with the past in the various peoples
who were migrating to the Americas at this time. There was no break
with the past in the various peoples who inhabited New Zealand or
Australia or Polynesia."

"What makes you say that?"

"I don't know. It's my impression."

"Yes, but what's the basis for the impression?"

"I think it's this. I don't know what story all these people are
enacting, but I can see that they're all enacting the same one. I
can't spell the story out as yet, but it's clearly there--in
distinction to the story the people of my culture are enacting.
Wherever we encounter them, they're always doing much the same sort of
thing, always living much the same sort of life--just the way that
wherever we encounter _us_, we're always doing much the same sort of
thing, always living much the same sort of life."

"But what's the connection between this and the transmittal of that
cultural accumulation that mankind made during the first three million
years of human life?"

I thought about it for a couple minutes, then said, "This is the
connection. The Leavers are still passing that accumulation along in
whatever form it came to them. But we're not, because ten thousand
years ago the founders of our culture said, `This is all shit. This is
not the way people should live,' and they got rid of it. They
obviously _did_ get rid of it, because by the time their descendants
step into history there's no trace of the attitudes and ideas you
encounter among Leaver peoples everywhere. And then too . . ."

"Yes?"

"This is interesting. I've never noticed this before . . . . Leaver
peoples are always conscious of having a tradition that goes back to
very ancient times. We have no such consciousness. For the most part,
we're a very `new' people. Every generation is somehow new, more
thoroughly cut off from the past than the one that came before."

"What does Mother Culture have to say about this?"

"Ah," I said, and closed my eyes. "Mother Culture says that this is as
it should be. There's nothing in the past for us. The past is dreck.
The past is something to be put behind us, something to be escaped
from."

Ishmael nodded. "So you see: This is how you came to be cultural
amnesiacs."

"How do you mean?"

"Until Darwin and the paleontologists came along to tack three million
years of human life onto your history, it was assumed in your culture
that the birth of man and the birth of your culture were simultaneous
events--were in fact the _same_ event. What I mean is that the people
of your culture thought that man was born _one of you_. It was assumed
that farming is as instinctive to man as honey production is to bees."

"Yes, that's the way it seems."

"When the people of your culture encountered the hunter-gatherers of
Africa and America, it was thought that these were people who had
_degenerated_ from the natural, agricultural state, people who had
_lost_ the arts they'd been born with. The Takers had no idea that
they were looking at what they themselves had been before they became
agriculturalists. As far as the Takers knew, there _was_ no `before.'
Creation had occurred just a few thousand years ago, and Man the
Agriculturalist had immediately set about the task of building
civilization."

"Yes, that's right."

"Do you see how this came about?"

"How what came about?"

"How it came about that the memory loss of your own prerevolutionary
period was total--so total that you didn't even know it existed."

"No, I don't. I feel like I should, but I don't."

"It was your observation that what Mother Culture teaches is that the
past is dreck, is something to be hurried away from."

"Yes."

"And the point I'm making is that apparently this is something she's
been teaching you from the very beginning."

"Yes, I see. It's coming together for me now. I was saying that among
the Leavers you always have the sense of a people with a past
extending back to the dawn of time. Among the Takers you have the
sense of a people with a past extending back to 1963."

Ishmael nodded, but then went on: "At the same time, it should be
noted that ancientness is a great validator among the people of your
culture--so long as it's restricted to that function. For example, the
English want all their institutions--and all the pageantry surrounding
those institutions--to be as ancient as possible (even if they're
not). Nevertheless, they themselves don't live as the ancient Britons
lived, and haven't the slightest inclination to do so. Much the same
can be said of the Japanese. They esteem the values and traditions of
wiser, nobler ancestors and deplore their disappearance, but they have
no interest in living the way those wiser, nobler ancestors lived. In
short, ancient customs are nice for institutions, ceremonies, and
holidays, but Takers don't want to adopt them for everyday living."

"True."










    -- 7 --


"But of course it was not Mother Culture's teaching that _everything_
from the past was to be discarded. What was to be saved? What in fact
_was_ saved?"

"I would say it was information about how to make things, about how to
do things."

"Anything related to production was definitely saved. And that's _how
things came to be this way_."

"Yes."

"Of course the Leavers save information about production too, though
production for its own sake is rarely a feature of their lives. Among
the Leavers, people don't have weekly quotas of pots to make or
arrowheads to turn out. They're not preoccupied with stepping up their
production of hand-axes."

"True."

"So, although they save information about production, most of the
information they save is about something else. How would you
characterize that information?"

"I'd say you gave away the answer to that question a few minutes ago.
I'd say it comes to what works well for them."

"For them? Not for everyone?"

"No. I'm not an anthropology buff, but I've read enough of it to know
that the Zuni don't think their way is the way for everyone, and that
the Navajo don't think their way is the way for everyone. Each of them
has a way that works well for _them_. "

"And that way that works well for them is what they teach their
children."

"Yes. And what we teach our children is how to make things. How to
make more things and better things."

"Why don't you teach them what works well for people?"

"I'd say it's because we don't _know_ what works well for people.
Every generation has to come up with its own version of what works
well for people. My parents had their version, which was pretty well
useless, and their parents had _their_ version, which was pretty well
useless, and we're currently working on _our_ version, which will
probably seem pretty well useless to our own children."










    -- 8 --


"I've let the conversation stray from its course," Ishmael said
grumpily and shifted to a new position, rocking the wagon on its
springs. "What I wanted you to see is that each Leaver culture is an
accumulation of knowledge that reaches back in an unbroken chain to
the beginning of human life. This is why it's no great wonder that
each of them is a way that works well. Each has been tested and
refined over thousands of generations."

"Yes. Something occurs to me."

"Go ahead."

"Give me a minute. This has something to do with . . . the
unavailability of knowledge about how people ought to live."

"Take your time."

"Okay," I said a few minutes later. "Back at the beginning, when I
said that there was no such thing as certain knowledge about how
people ought to live, what I meant was this: _Certain_ knowledge is
knowledge of the _one right way_. That's what _we_ want. That's what
Takers want. We don't want to know a way to live that works well. We
want to know the _one right way_. And that's what our prophets give
us. And that's what our lawgivers give us. Let me think about this . . .
After five or eight thousand years of amnesia, the Takers really
didn't know how to live. They really _must_ have turned their backs on
the past, because all of a sudden, here comes Hammurabi, and everyone
says, `What are these?' and Hammurabi says, `These, my children, are
_laws_!' `Laws? What are laws?' And Hammurabi says, `Laws are things
that tell you the _one right way_ to live.' What am I trying to say?"

"I'm not sure."

"Maybe it's this. When you started talking about our cultural amnesia,
I thought you were being metaphorical. Or maybe exaggerating a little
to make a point. Because obviously you can't know what those neolithic
farmers were thinking. Nevertheless, here's the fact: After a few
thousand years, the descendants of these neolithic farmers were
scratching their heads and saying, `Gee, I wonder how people ought to
live.' But in that very same time period, the Leavers of the world
_hadn't_ forgotten how to live. _They_ still knew, but the people of
my culture had forgotten, had cut themselves off from a tradition that
told them how to live. They _needed_ a Hammurabi to tell them how to
live. They _needed_ a Draco and a Solon and a Moses and a Jesus and a
Muhammad. And the Leavers didn't, because they had a way--had a whole
bunch of ways--that . . . Hold on. I think I've got it."

"Take your time."

"Every one of the Leavers' ways came into being by evolution, by a
process of testing that began even before people had a word for it. No
one said, `Okay, let's form a committee to write up a set of laws for
us to follow.' None of these cultures were _inventions_. But that's
what all _our_ lawgivers gave us--inventions. Contrivances. Not things
that had proved out over thousands of generations, but rather
arbitrary pronouncements about _the one right way_ to live. And this
is still what's going on. The laws they make in Washington aren't put
on the books because they work well--they're put on the books because
they represent _the one right way_ to live. You may not have an
abortion unless the fetus is threatening your life or was put there by
a rapist. There are a lot of people who'd like to see the law read
that way. Why? Because that's _the one right way_ to live. You may
drink yourself to death, but if we catch you smoking a marijuana
cigarette, it's the slammer for you, baby, because that's _the one
right way_. No one gives a damn about whether our laws work well.
Working well is beside the point . . . . Again, I'm not sure what I'm
getting at."

Ishmael grunted. "You're not necessarily getting at one specific
thing. You're exploring a deep complex of ideas, and you can't expect
to get to the bottom of it in twenty minutes."

"True."

"However, there is a point I set out to make here before we go on to
other things, and I would like to make it."

"Okay."

"You see now that the Takers and the Leavers accumulate two entirely
different kinds of knowledge."

"Yes. The Takers accumulate knowledge about what works well for
_things_. The Leavers accumulate knowledge about what works well for
_people_."

"But not for _all_ people. Each Leaver people has a system that works
well for them because it _evolved_ among them; it was suited to the
terrain in which they lived, suited to the climate in which they
lived, suited to the biological community in which they lived, suited
to their own peculiar tastes, preferences, and vision of the world."

"Yes."

"And this kind of knowledge is called what?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Someone who knows what works well for people has what?"

"Well . . . wisdom?"

"Of course. Now, you know that the knowledge of what works well for
production is what's valued in your culture. In the same way, the
knowledge of what works well for people is what's valued in Leaver
cultures. And every time the Takers stamp out a Leaver culture, a
wisdom ultimately tested since the birth of mankind disappears from
the world beyond recall, just as every time they stamp out a species
of life, a life form ultimately tested since the birth of life
disappears from the world beyond recall."

"Ugly," I said.

"Yes," Ishmael said. "It is ugly."










    -- 9 --


After a few minutes of head-scratching and earlobe-tugging, Ishmael
sent me away for the night.

"I'm tired," he explained. "And I'm too cold to think."
















 
	  --------------------------------------------------
			     E L E V E N
	  --------------------------------------------------




    -- 1 --


The drizzle continued, and when I arrived at noon the next day there
wasn't even anyone around to bribe. I had picked up two blankets for
Ishmael at an Army-Navy store--and one for myself to keep him in
countenance. He accepted them with gruff thanks but seemed glad enough
to put them to use. We sat for a while wallowing in our misery, then
he reluctantly began.

"Shortly before my departure--I don't remember what occasioned the
question--you asked me when we were going to get to the story enacted
by the Leavers."

"Yes, that's right."

"Why are you interested in knowing that story?"

The question nonplussed me. "Why wouldn't I be interested in knowing
it?"

"I'm asking what the point is, in your mind. You know that Abel is all
but dead."

"Well . . . yes."

"Then why learn the story he was enacting?"

"Again, why _not_ learn it?"

Ishmael shook his head. "I don't care to proceed on that basis. The
fact that I can't give you reasons for _not_ learning something
doesn't supply me with a reason for teaching it."

He was clearly in a bad mood. I couldn't blame him, but I couldn't
much sympathize either, since it was he who had insisted on having it
this way.

He said: "Is it just a matter of curiosity for you?"

"No, I wouldn't say that. You said in the beginning that two stories
have been enacted here. I now know one of them. It seems natural that
I'd want to know the other one."

"Natural . . ." he said, as if it wasn't a word he much liked. "I wish
you could come up with something that has a bit more heft. Something
that would give me the feeling I wasn't the only one here who was
supposed to be using his brain."

"I'm afraid I don't see what you're getting at."

"I know you don't, and that's what irks me. You've become a passive
listener here, turning your brain off when you sit down and turning it
on when you get up to leave."

"I don't think that's true."

"Then tell me why it isn't just a waste of time for you to learn a
story that is now all but extinguished."

"Well, _I_ don't consider it a waste of time."

"That's not good enough. The fact that something is _not a waste of
time_ does not inspire me to do it."

I shrugged helplessly.

He shook his head, totally disgusted. "You really do think that
learning this would be pointless. That's obvious."

"It's not obvious to me."

"Then you think it has a point?"

"Well . . . yes."

"What point?"

"God . . . I _want_ to learn it, that's the point."

"No. I won't proceed on that basis. I _want_ to proceed, but not if
all I'm doing is satisfying your curiosity. Go away and come back when
you can give me some authentic reason for going on."

"What would an authentic reason _sound_ like? Give me an example."

"All right. Why bother to learn what story is being enacted here by
the people of your own culture?"

"Because enacting that story is destroying the world."

"True. But why bother learning it?"

"Because that's obviously something that should be known."

"Known by whom?"

"By everyone."

"Why? That's what I keep coming back to. Why, why, why? Why should
your people know what story they're enacting as they destroy the
world?"

"So they can _stop_ enacting it. So they can see that they're not just
blundering as they do what they do. So they can see that they're
involved in a megalomaniac fantasy--a fantasy as insane as the
Thousand Year Reich."

"That's what makes the story worth knowing?"

"Yes." 

"I'm glad to hear it. Now go away and come back when you can explain
what makes the other story worth knowing."

"I don't need to go away. I can explain it now."

"Go ahead."

"People can't just _give up_ a story. That's what the kids tried to do
in the sixties and seventies. They tried to stop living like Takers,
but there was no other way for them to live. They failed because you
can't just stop being in a story, you have to have another story to be
in."

Ishmael nodded. "And if there is such a story, people should hear
about it?"

"Yes, they should."

"Do you think they _want_ to hear about it?"

"I don't know. I don't think you can start wanting something till you
know it exists."

"Very true."










    -- 2 --


"And what do you suppose this story is about?"

"I have no idea."

"Do you suppose it's about hunting and gathering?"

"I don't know."

"Be honest. Haven't you been expecting some noble paean to the
mysteries of the Great Hunt?"

"I'm not aware of expecting anything like that."

"Well, you should at least know that it's about the meaning of the
world, about divine intentions in the world, and about the destiny of
man."

"Yes."

"As I've said half a dozen times, man _became_ man enacting this
story. You should remember that."

"Yes, I do."

"How _did_ man become man?"

I examined that one for booby traps and gave it back. "I'm not sure
what the question means," I said. "Or rather I'm not sure what kind of
answer you want. Obviously you don't want me to say that man became
man by evolving."

"That would just mean that he became man by becoming man, wouldn't
it?"

"Yes."

"So the question is still there waiting to be answered: How did man
become man?"

"I suppose it's one of those very obvious things."

"Yes. If I gave you the answer, you'd say, `Oh. Well of course, but so
what?' "

I shrugged, defeated.

"We'll have to approach it obliquely then--but keep it in mind as a
question that needs answering."

"Okay."










    -- 3 --


"According to Mother Culture, what kind of event was your agricultural
revolution?"

"What _kind_ of event . . . I'd say that, according to Mother Culture,
it was a technological event."

"No implication of deeper human resonances, cultural or religious?"

"No. The first farmers were just neolithic technocrats. That's the way
it's always seemed."

"But after our look at chapters three and four of Genesis, you see
there was a great deal more to it than Mother Culture teaches."

"Yes."

"Was and is a great deal more to it, of course, since the revolution
is still in progress. Adam is still chewing the fruit of that
forbidden tree, and wherever Abel can still be found, Cain is there
too, hunting him down, knife in hand."

"That's right."

"There's another indication that the revolution goes deeper than mere
technology. Mother Culture teaches that, before the revolution, human
life was devoid of meaning, was stupid, empty, and worthless.
Prerevolutionary life was ugly. Detestable."

"Yes."

"You believe that yourself, don't you?"

"Yes, I suppose I do."

"Certainly most of you believe it, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes."

"Who would be the exceptions?"

"I don't know. I suppose . . . anthropologists."

"People who actually have some knowledge of that life."

"Yes."

"But Mother Culture teaches that that life was unspeakably miserable."

"That's right."

"Can you imagine any circumstances in which you yourself would trade
your life for that sort of life?"

"No. Frankly, I can't imagine why anyone would, given the choice."

"The Leavers would. Throughout history, the only way the Takers have
found to tear them away from that life is by brute force, by wholesale
slaughter. In most cases, they found it easiest just to exterminate
them."

"True. But Mother Culture has something to say about that. What she
says is that the Leavers just didn't know what they were missing. They
didn't understand the benefits of the agricultural life, and that's
why they clung to the hunting-gathering life so tenaciously."

Ishmael smiled his sneakiest smile. "Among the Indians of this
country, who would you say were the fiercest and most resolute
opponents of the Takers?"

"Well . . . I'd say the Plains Indians."

"I think most of you would agree with that. But before the
introduction of horses by the Spanish, the Plains Indians had been
agriculturalists for _centuries_. As soon as horses became readily
available, they abandoned agriculture and resumed the
hunting-gathering life."

"I didn't know that."

"Well, now you do. Did the Plains Indians understand the benefits of
the agricultural life?"

"I guess they must have."

"What does Mother Culture say?"

I thought about that for a while, then laughed. "She says they didn't
_really_ understand. If they had, they would never have gone back to
hunting and gathering."

"Because that's a detestable life."

"That's right."

"You can begin to see how thoroughly effective Mother Culture's
teachings are on this issue."

"True. But what I don't see is where this gets us."

"We're on our way to discovering what lies at the very root of your
fear and loathing of the Leaver life. We're on our way to discovering
why you feel you must carry the revolution forward even if it destroys
you and the entire world. We're on our way to discovering what your
revolution was a revolution _against_."

"Ah," I said.

"And when we've done all that, I'm sure you'll be able to tell me what
story was being enacted here by the Leavers during the first three
million years of human life and is still being enacted by them
wherever they survive today." 










    -- 4 --


Having spoken of survival, Ishmael shuddered and sank down into his
blankets with a kind of moaning sigh. For a minute he seemed to lose
himself in the tireless drumming of rain on the canvas overhead, then
he cleared his throat and went on.

"Let's try this," he said. "Why was the revolution _necessary_?"

"It was necessary if man was to get somewhere."

"You mean if man was to have central heating and universities and
opera houses and spaceships."

"That's right."

Ishmael nodded. "That sort of answer would have been acceptable when
we began our work together, but I want you to go deeper than that
now."

"Okay. But I don't know what you mean by deeper."

"You know very well that for hundreds of millions of you, things like
central heating, universities, opera houses, and spaceships belong to
a remote and unattainable world. Hundreds of millions of you live in
conditions that most people in this country can only guess at. Even in
this country, millions are homeless or live in squalor and despair in
slums, in prisons, in public institutions that are little better than
prisons. For these people, your facile justification for the
agricultural revolution would be completely meaningless."

"True."

"But though they don't enjoy the fruits of your revolution, would they
turn their backs on it? Would they trade their misery and despair for
the sort of life that was lived in prerevolutionary times?"

"Again, I'd have to say no." 

"This is my impression as well. Takers believe in their revolution,
even when they enjoy none of its benefits. There are no grumblers, no
dissidents, no counterrevolutionaries. They all believe profoundly
that, however bad things are now, they're still infinitely preferable
to what came before."

"Yes, I'd say so."

"Today I want you to get to the root of this extraordinary belief.
When you've done that, you'll have a completely different
understanding of your revolution and of the Leaver life as well."

"Okay. But how do I do that?"

"By listening to Mother Culture. She's been whispering in your ear
throughout your life, and what you've heard is no different from what
your parents and grandparents heard, from what people all over the
world hear daily. In other words, what I'm looking for is buried in
your mind just as it's buried in all your minds. Today I want you to
unearth it. Mother Culture has taught you to have a horror of the life
you put behind you with your revolution, and I want you to trace this
horror to its roots."

"Okay," I said. "It's true that we have something amounting to a
horror of that life, but the trouble is, this just doesn't seem
particularly mysterious to me."

"It doesn't? Why?"

"I don't know. It's a life that leads nowhere."

"No more of these superficial answers. Dig."

With a sigh, I scrunched down inside my blanket and proceeded to dig.
"This is interesting," I said a few minutes later. "I was sitting here
thinking about the way our ancestors lived, and a very specific image
popped into my head fully formed."

Ishmael waited for me to go on.

"It has a sort of dreamlike quality to it. Or nightmarish. A man is
scrabbling along a ridge at twilight. In this world it's always
twilight. The man is short, thin, dark, and naked. He's running in a
half crouch, looking for tracks. He's hunting, and he's desperate.
Night is falling and he's got nothing to eat.

"He's running and running and running, as if he were on a treadmill.
It _is_ a treadmill, because tomorrow at twilight he'll be there
running still--or running again. But there's more than hunger and
desperation driving him. He's terrified as well. Behind him on the
ridge, just out of sight, his enemies are in pursuit to tear him to
pieces--the lions, the wolves, the tigers. And so he has to stay on
that treadmill forever, forever one step behind his prey and one step
ahead of his enemies.

"The ridge, of course, represents the knife-edge of survival. The man
lives on the knife-edge of survival and has to struggle perpetually to
keep from falling off. Actually it's as though the ridge and the sky
are in motion instead of him. He's running in place, trapped, going
nowhere."

"In other words, hunter-gatherers lead a very grim life."

"Yes."

"And why is it grim?"

"Because it's a struggle just to stay alive."

"But in fact it isn't anything of the kind. I'm sure you know that, in
another compartment of your mind. Hunter-gatherers no more live on the
knife-edge of survival than wolves or lions or sparrows or rabbits.
Man was as well adapted to life on this planet as any other species,
and the idea that he lived on the knife-edge of survival is simply
biological nonsense. As an omnivore, his dietary range is immense.
Thousands of species will go hungry before he does. His intelligence
and dexterity enable him to live comfortably in conditions that would
utterly defeat any other primate.

"Far from scrabbling endlessly and desperately for food,
hunter-gatherers are among the best-fed people on earth, and they
manage this with only two or three hours a day of what you would call
work--which makes them among the most leisured people on earth as
well. In his book on stone age economics, Marshall Sahlins described
them as `the original affluent society.' And incidentally, predation
of man is practically nonexistent. He's simply not the first choice on
any predator's menu. So you see that your wonderfully horrific vision
of your ancestors' life is just another bit of Mother Culture's
nonsense. If you like, you can confirm all this for yourself in an
afternoon at the library."

"Okay," I said. "So?"

"So now that you know that it's nonsense, do you feel differently
about that life? Does it seem less repulsive to you?"

"Less repulsive maybe. But still repulsive."

"Consider this. Let's suppose you're one of this nation's homeless.
Out of work, no skills, a wife the same, two kids. Nowhere to turn, no
hope, no future. But I can give you a box with a button on it. Press
the button and you'll all be whisked instantly back to
prerevolutionary times. You'll all be able to speak the language,
you'll all have the skills everyone had then. You'll never again have
to worry about taking care of yourself and your family. You'll have it
made, you'll be a part of that original affluent society."

"Okay."

"So, do you press the button?"

"I don't know. I have to doubt it."

"Why? It isn't that you'd be giving up a wonderful life here.
According to this hypothesis, the life you've got here is wretched,
and it's not likely to improve. So it has to be that the other life
seems even worse. It isn't that you couldn't bear giving up the life
you've got--it's that you couldn't bear embracing that other life."

"Yes, that's right."

"What is it that makes that life so horrifying to you?"

"I don't know."

"It seems that Mother Culture has done a good job on you."

"Yes."

"All right. Let's try this. Wherever the Takers have come up against
some hunter-gatherers taking up space they wanted for themselves,
they've tried to explain to them why they should abandon their
life-style and become Takers. They've said, `This life of yours is not
only wretched, it's wrong. Man was not meant to live this way. So
don't fight us. Join our revolution and help us turn the world into a
paradise for man.' "

"Right."

"You take that part--the part of the cultural missionary--and I'll
take the part of a hunter-gatherer. Explain to me why the life that I
and my people have found satisfying for thousands of years is grim and
revolting and repulsive."

"Good lord."

"Look, I'll get you started . . . . Bwana, you tell us that the way we
live is wretched and wrong and shameful. You tell us that it's not the
way people are meant to live. This puzzles us, Bwana, because for
thousands of years it has seemed to us a good way to live. But if you,
who ride to the stars and send your words around the world at the
speed of thought, tell us that it isn't, then we must in all prudence
listen to what you have to say."

"Well . . . I realize it seems good to you. This is because you're
ignorant and uneducated and stupid."

"Exactly so, Bwana. We await your enlightenment. Tell us why our life
is wretched and squalid and shameful."

"Your life is wretched and squalid and shameful because you live like
animals."

Ishmael frowned, puzzled. "I don't understand, Bwana. We live as all
others live. We take what we need from the world and leave the rest
alone, just as the lion and the deer do. Do the lion and the deer lead
shameful lives?"

"No, but that's because they're just animals. It's not right for
humans to live that way."

"Ah," Ishmael said, "this we did not know. And why is it not right to
live that way?"

"It's because, living that way . . . you have no control over your
lives."

Ishmael cocked his head at me. "In what sense do we have no control
over our lives, Bwana?"

"You have no control over the most basic necessity of all, your food
supply."

"You puzzle me greatly, Bwana. When we're hungry, we go off and find
something to eat. What more control is needed?"

"You'd have more control if you planted it yourself."

"How so, Bwana? What does it matter who plants the food?"

"If you plant it yourself, then you know positively that it's going to
be there."

Ishmael cackled delightedly. "Truly you astonish me, Bwana! We
_already_ know positively that it's going to be there. The whole world
of life is food. Do you think it's going to sneak away during the
night? Where would it go? It's always there, day after day, season
after season, year after year. If it weren't, we wouldn't be here to
talk to you about it."

"Yes, but if you planted it yourself, you could control _how much_
food there was. You'd be able to say, `Well, this year we'll have more
yams, this year we'll have more beans, this year we'll have more
strawberries."

"Bwana, these things grow in abundance without the slightest effort on
our part. Why should we trouble ourselves to plant what is already
growing?" '

"Yes, but . . . don't you ever run out? Don't you ever wish you had a
yam but find there are no more growing wild?"

"Yes, I suppose so. But isn't it the same for you? Don't you ever wish
you had a yam but find there are no more growing in your fields?"

"No, because if we wish we had a yam, we can go to the store and buy a
can of them." 

"Yes, I have heard something of this system. Tell me this, Bwana. The
can of yams that you buy in the store--how many of you labored to put
that can there for you?"

"Oh, hundreds, I suppose. Growers, harvesters, truckers, cleaners at
the canning plant, people to run the equipment, people to pack the
cans in cases, truckers to distribute the cases, people at the store
to unpack them, and so on."

"Forgive me, but you sound like lunatics, Bwana, to do all this work
just to ensure that you can never be disappointed over the matter of a
yam. Among my people, when we want a yam, we simply go and dig one
up--and if there are none to be found, we find something else just as
good, and hundreds of people don't need to labor to put it into our
hands."

"You're missing the point."

"I certainly am, Bwana."

I stifled a sigh. "Look, here's the point. Unless you control your own
food supply, you live at the mercy of the world. It doesn't matter
that there's always been enough. That's not the point. You can't live
at the whim of the gods. That's just not a human way to live."

"Why is that, Bwana?"

"Well . . . look. One day you go out hunting, and you catch a deer.
Okay, that's fine. That's terrific. But you didn't have any control
over the deer's being there, did you?"

"No, Bwana."

"Okay. The next day you go out hunting and there's no deer to be
caught. Hasn't that ever happened?"

"Assuredly, Bwana."

"Well, there you are. Because you have no control over the deer, you
have no deer. So what do you do?"

Ishmael shrugged. "We snare a couple of rabbits."

"Exactly. You shouldn't have to settle for rabbits if what you want is
deer."

"And this is why we lead shameful lives, Bwana? This is why we should
set aside a life we love and go to work in one of your factories?
Because we eat rabbits when it happens that no deer presents itself to
us?"

"No. Let me finish. You have no control over the deer--and no control
over the rabbits either. Suppose you go out hunting one day, and there
are no deer _and_ no rabbits? What do you do then?"

"Then we eat something else, Bwana. The world is full of food."

"Yes, but look. If you have no control over _any_ of it . . ." I bared
my teeth at him. "Look, there's no guarantee that the world is
_always_ going to be full of food, is there? Haven't you ever had a
drought?"

"Certainly, Bwana."

"Well, what happens then?"

"The grasses wither, all the plants wither. The trees bear no fruit.
The game disappears. The predators dwindle."

"And what happens to you?"

"If the drought is very bad, then we too dwindle."

"You mean you _die_, don't you?"

"Yes, Bwana."

"Ha! _That's_ the point!"

"It's shameful to _die_, Bwana?"

"No . . . . I've got it. Look, this is the point. You die because you
live at the mercy of the gods. You die because you think the gods are
going to look after you. That's okay for animals, but you should know
better."

"We should not trust the gods with our lives?"

"Definitely not. You should trust _yourselves_ with your lives. That's
the human way to live."

Ishmael shook his head ponderously. "This is sorry news indeed, Bwana.
From time out of mind we've lived in the hands of the gods, and it
seemed to us we lived well. We left to the gods all the labor of
sowing and growing and lived a carefree life, and it seemed there was
always enough in the world for us, because--behold!--_we are here_!"

"Yes," I told him sternly. "You are here, and look at you. You have
nothing. You're naked and homeless. You live without security, without
comfort, without opportunity."

"And this is because we live in the hands of the gods?"

"Absolutely. In the hands of the gods you're no more important than
lions or lizards or fleas. In the hands of _these_ gods--these gods
who look after lions and lizards and fleas--you're nothing special.
You're just another animal to be fed. Wait a second," I said, and
closed my eyes for a couple minutes. "Okay, this is important. The
gods make no distinction between you and any other creature. No,
that's not quite it. Hold on." I went back to work, then tried again.
"Here it is: What the gods provide is enough for your life as
_animals_--I grant you that. But for your life as humans, _you_ must
provide. The gods are not going to do that."

Ishmael gave me a stunned look. "You mean there is something we need
that the gods are not willing to give us, Bwana?"

"That's the way it seems, yes. They give you what you need to live as
animals but not what you need _beyond that_ to live as humans."

"But how can that be, Bwana? How can it be that the gods are wise
enough to shape the universe and the world and the life of the world
but lack the wisdom to give humans what they need to be human?"

"I don't know how it can be, but it is. That's the fact. Man lived in
the hands of the gods for three million years and at the end of those
three million years was no better off and no farther ahead than when
he started."

"Truly, Bwana, this is strange news. What kind of gods _are_ these?"

I snorted a laugh. "These, my friend, are _incompetent_ gods. This is
why you've got to take your lives out of their hands entirely. You've
got to take your lives into your _own_ hands."

"And how do we do that, Bwana?"

"As I say, you've got to begin planting your own food."

"But how will that change anything, Bwana? Food is food, whether we
plant it or the gods plant it."

"That's exactly the point. The gods plant only what you _need_. You
will plant _more_ than you need."

"To what end, Bwana? What's the good of having more food than we
need?"

"_Damn_!" I shouted. "I get it!"

Ishmael smiled and said, "So what's the good of having more food than
we need?"

"That is the whole goddamned point! When you have more food than you
need, then _the gods have no power over you_!"

"We can thumb our noses at them."

"Exactly."

"All the same, Bwana, what are we to _do_ with this food if we don't
need it?"

"You _save_ it! You save it to thwart the gods when they decide it's
your turn to go hungry. You save it so that when they send a drought,
you can say, `Not _me_, goddamn it! _I'm_ not going hungry, and
there's nothing you can do about it, because my life is in my own
hands now!' "










    -- 5 --


Ishmael nodded, abandoning his hunter-gatherer role. "So your lives
are now in your own hands."

"That's right."

"Then what are you all so worried about?"

"What do you mean?"

"If your lives are in your own hands, then it's entirely up to you
whether you go on living or become extinct. That's what this
expression means, isn't it?"

"Yes. But obviously there are still some things that _aren't_ in our
hands. We wouldn't be able to control or survive a total ecological
collapse."

"So you're not safe yet. When will you finally be safe?"

"When we've taken the _whole world_ out of the hands of the gods."

"When the whole world is in your own, more competent, hands."

"That's right. Then the gods will finally have no more power over us.
Then the gods will have no more power over _anything_. All the power
will be in our hands and we'll be free at last."










    -- 6 --


"Well," Ishmael said, "are we making progress?"

"I think so."

"Do you think we've found the root of your revulsion toward the sort
of life that was lived in prerevolutionary times?"

"Yes. Far and away the most futile admonition Christ ever offered was
when he said, `Have no care for tomorrow. Don't worry about whether
you're going to have something to eat. Look at the birds of the air.
They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, but God takes perfect
care of them. Don't you think he'll do the same for you?' In our
culture the overwhelming answer to that question is, `Hell no!' Even
the most dedicated monastics saw to their sowing and reaping and
gathering into barns."

"What about Saint Francis?"

"Saint Francis relied on the bounty of farmers, not the bounty of God.
Even the most fundamental of the fundamentalists plug their ears when
Jesus starts talking about birds of the air and lilies of the field.
They know damn well he's just yarning, just making pretty speeches."

"So you think this is what's at the root of your revolution. You
wanted and still want to have your lives in your own hands."

"Yes. Absolutely. To me, living any other way is almost inconceivable.
I can only think that hunter-gatherers live in a state of utter and
unending anxiety over what tomorrow's going to bring."

"Yet they don't. Any anthropologist will tell you that. They are far
less anxiety-ridden than you are. They have no jobs to lose. No one
can say to them, `Show me your money or you don't get fed, don't get
clothed, don't get sheltered.' "

"I believe you. Rationally speaking, I believe you. But I'm talking
about my feelings, about my conditioning. My conditioning tells
me--Mother Culture tells me--that living in the hands of the gods has
got to be a never-ending nightmare of terror and anxiety."

"And this is what your revolution does for you: It puts you beyond the
reach of that appalling nightmare. It puts you beyond the reach of the
gods."

"Yes, that's it."

"So. We have a new pair of names for you. The Takers are those who
know good and evil, and the Leavers are . . . ?"

"The Leavers are those who live in the hands of the gods."

















	  --------------------------------------------------
			     T W E L V E
	  --------------------------------------------------




    -- 1 --


Along about three o'clock, the rain stopped and the carnival yawned,
stretched, and went back to work separating the rubes from their
money. At loose ends once again, I hung around for a while, let myself
be separated from a few bucks, and finally had the idea of tracking
down Ishmael's owner. This turned out to be a hard-eyed black man
named Art Owens, who was five and a half feet tall and spent more time
lifting weights than I do at the typewriter. I told him I was
interested in buying his gorilla.

"Is that a fact," he said, not scornful, not impressed, not
interested, not anything.

I told him it was and asked how much it would take.

"Would take about three thousand."

"I'm not that interested."

"How interested are you?" Just curious, not seriously interested
himself.

"Well, more like a thousand."

He sneered--just a little, almost politely. For some reason, I liked
this guy. He was the type who has a law degree from Harvard stuck away
in a drawer somewhere because he never found anything to do with it
that appealed to him.

I told him: "This is a very, very old animal, you know. He's been here
since the thirties."

This got his attention. He asked how I happened to come by that piece
of information.

"I know the animal," I replied briefly, as if I might know thousands
more like him.

"Might go twenty-five hundred," he said.

"Trouble is, I don't _have_ twenty-five hundred."

"See, I already got a painter in New Mexico workin' on a sign for me,"
he said. "Paid him two hundred in advance."

"Uh huh. I could probably raise fifteen hundred."

"Don't see how I could go below twenty-two, that's a fact."

The fact was, if it was right there in my hand, he'd be delighted to
take two thousand. Maybe even eighteen hundred. I said I'd think about
it.










    -- 2 --


It was a Friday night, so the suckers didn't start going home till
after eleven and my senectuous bribee didn't come round to collect his
twenty dollars till midnight. Ishmael was asleep sitting up, still
bundled up in his blankets, and I didn't feel any qualms about waking
him; I wanted him to reassess the charms of the independent life.

He yawned, sneezed twice, cleared his throat of a mass of phlegm, and
fixed me in a bleary, malevolent glare.

"Come back tomorrow," he said in the equivalent of a mental croak.

"Tomorrow's Saturday--hopeless."

He wasn't happy about it, but he knew I was right. He managed to put
off the inevitable by laboriously rearranging himself, his cage, and
his blankets. Then he settled down and gave me a look of loathing.

"Where did we leave off?"

"We left off with a new pair of names for the Takers and the Leavers:
Those who know good and evil and those who live in the hands of the
gods."

He grunted.










    -- 3 --


"What _happens_ to people who live in the hands of the gods?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, what happens to people who live in the hands of the gods that
does _not_ happen to people who build their lives on the knowledge of
good and evil?"

"Well, let's see," I said. "I don't suppose this is what you're
getting at, but this is what comes to mind. People who live in the
hands of the gods don't make themselves rulers of the world and force
everyone to live the way they live, and people who know good and evil
do."

"You've turned the question round back to front," said Ishmael. "I
asked what happens to people who live in the hands of the gods that
_doesn't_ happen to those who know good and evil, and you told me just
the opposite: what _doesn't_ happen to people who live in the hands of
the gods that _does_ happen to those who know good and evil."

"You mean you're looking for something _positive_ that happens to
people who live in the hands of the gods."

"That's right."

"Well, they do tend to let the people around them live the way they
want to live."

"You're telling me something they _do_, not something that _happens_
to them. I'm trying to focus your attention on the effects of this
life-style."

"I'm sorry. I'm afraid I just don't know what you're getting at.

"You do, but you're not used to thinking about it in these terms."

"Okay."

"You remember the question we started out to answer when you arrived
this afternoon: How did man become man? We're still after the answer
to that question."

I groaned, fully and frankly.

"Why do you groan?" Ishmael asked.

"Because questions of that generality intimidate me. How did man
become man? I don't know. He just did it. He did it the way birds
became birds and the way that horses became horses."

"Exactly so."

"Don't do that to me," I told him.

"Evidently you don't understand what you just said."

"Probably not."

"I'll try to clarify it for you. Before you were _Homo_, you were
what?"

"_Australopithecus_. "

"Good. And how did _Australopithecus_ become _Homo_?"

"By waiting."

"Please. You're here to think."

"Sorry."

"Did _Australopithecus_ become _Homo_ by saying, `We know good and
evil as well as the gods, so there's no need for us to live in their
hands the way rabbits and lizards do. From now on _we_ will decide who
lives and who dies on this planet, not the gods.' "

"No."

"_Could_ they have become man by saying that?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because they would have ceased to be subject to the conditions under
which evolution takes place."

"Exactly. Now you can answer the question: What happens to people--to
creatures in general--who live in the hands of the gods?"

"Ah. Yes, I see. They evolve."

"And now you can answer the question I posed this morning: How did man
become man?"

"Man became man by living in the hands of the gods."

"By living the way the Bushmen of Africa live."

"That's right."

"By living the way the Kreen-Akrore of Brazil live."

"Right again."

"Not the way Chicagoans live?"

"No."

"Or Londoners?"

"No."

"So now you know what happens to people who live in the hands of the
gods."

"Yes. They evolve."

"Why do they evolve?"

"Because they're in a _position_ to evolve. Because that's where
evolution takes place. Pre-man evolved into early man because he was
out there competing with all the rest. Pre-man evolved into early man
because he didn't take himself out of the competition, because he was
still in the place where natural selection is going on."

"You mean he was still a part of the general community of life."

"That's right."

"And that's why it all happened--why _Australopithecus_ became _Homo
habilis_ and why _Homo habilis_ became _Homo erectus_ and why _Homo
erectus_ became _Homo sapiens_ and why _Homo sapiens_ became _Homo
sapiens sapiens_. "

"Yes."

"And then what happened?"

"And then the Takers said, `We've had enough of living in the hands of
the gods. No more natural selection for us, thanks very much.' "

"And that was that."

"And that was that."

"You remember I said that to enact a story is to live so as to make it
come true."

"Yes."

"According to the Taker story, creation came to an end with man."

"Yes. So?"

"How would you live so as to make _that_ come true? How would you live
so as to make creation come to an end with man?"

"Oof. I see what you mean. You would live the way the Takers live.
We're definitely living in a way that's going to put an end to
creation. If we go on, there will be no successor to man, no successor
to chimpanzees, no successor to orangutans, no successor to
gorillas--no successor to anything alive now. The whole thing is going
to come to an end with us. In order to make their story come true, the
Takers have to put an end to creation itself--and they're doing a
damned good job of it."










    -- 4 --


"When we began and I was trying to help you find the premise of the
Taker story, I told you that the Leaver story has an entirely
different premise."

"Yes."

"Perhaps you're ready to articulate that premise now."

"I don't know. At the moment I can't even think of the Taker premise."

"It'll come back to you. Every story is a working out of a premise."

"Yes, okay. The premise of the Taker story is _the world belongs to
man_." I thought for a couple of minutes, then I laughed. "It's almost
too neat. The premise of the Leaver story is _man belongs to the
world_."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning--" I barked a laugh. "It's really too much."

"Go on."

"It means that, right from the beginning, everything that ever lived
belonged to the world--and that's _how things came to be this way_.
Those single-celled creatures that swam in the ancient oceans belonged
to the world, and because they did, everything that followed came into
being. Those club-finned fish offshore of the continents belonged to
world, and because they did, the amphibians eventually came into
being. And because the amphibians belonged to the world, the reptiles
eventually came into being. And because the reptiles belonged to the
world, the mammals eventually came into being. And because the mammals
belonged to the world, the primates eventually came into being. And
because the primates belonged to the world, _Australopithecus_
eventually came into being. And because _Australopithecus_ belonged to
the world, man eventually came into being. And for three million years
man belonged to the world--and _because_ he belonged to the world, he
grew and developed and became brighter and more dexterous until one
day he was so bright and dexterous that we had to call him _Homo
sapiens sapiens_, which means that he was _us_. "

"And that's the way the Leavers lived for three million years--as if
they belonged to the world."

"That's right. And that's how _we_ came into being."










    -- 5 --


Ishmael said, "We know what happens if you take the Taker premise,
that the world belongs to man."

"Yes, that's a disaster."

"And what happens if you take the Leaver premise, that man belongs to
the world?"

"Then creation goes on forever."

"How does that sound?"

"It has my vote."










    -- 6 --


"Something occurs to me," I said.

"Yes?"

"It occurs to me that the story I just told is in fact the story the
Leavers have been enacting here 'for three million years. The Takers'
story is, `The gods made the world for man, but they botched the job,
so we had to take matters into our own, more competent hands.' The
Leavers' story is, `The gods made man for the world, the same way they
made salmon and sparrows and rabbits for the world; this seems to have
worked pretty well so far, so we can take it easy and leave the
running of the world to the gods.' "

"That's right. There are other ways to tell it, just as there are
other ways to tell the story of the Takers, but this way of telling it
is as good as any."

I sat there for a while. "I'm thinking about . . . the meaning of the
world, divine intentions in the world, and the destiny of man.
According to this story."

"Go ahead."

"The meaning of the world . . . I think the third chapter of Genesis
had it right. It's a garden--the gods' garden. I say this even though
I myself very much doubt that gods have anything to do with it. I just
find this a wholesome and encouraging way to think of it."

"I understand."

"And there are two trees in the garden, one for the gods and one for
us. The one for them is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,
and the one for us is the Tree of Life. But we can only find the Tree
of Life if we stay in the garden--and we can only stay in the garden
if we keep our hands off the gods' tree."

Ishmael gave me a nod of encouragement.

"Divine intentions . . . It would seem . . . There is a sort of
tendency in evolution, wouldn't you say? If you start with those
ultrasimple critters in the ancient seas and move up step by step to
everything we see here now--and beyond--then you have to observe a
tendency toward . . . complexity. And toward self-awareness and
intelligence. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Yes."

"That is, all sorts of creatures on this planet appear to be on the
verge of attaining that self-awareness and intelligence. So it's
definitely not just humans that the gods are after. We were never
meant to be the only players on this stage. Apparently the gods intend
this planet to be a garden _filled_ with creatures that are self-aware
and intelligent."

"So it would appear. And if this is so, then man's destiny would seem
to be plain."

"Yes. Amazingly enough, it _is_ plain--because man is the first of all
these. He's the trailblazer, the pathfinder. His destiny is to be the
first to learn that creatures like man have a choice: They can try to
thwart the gods and perish in the attempt--or they can stand aside and
make some room for all the rest. But it's more than that. His destiny
is to be the father of them all--I don't mean by direct descent. By
giving all the rest their chance--the whales and the dolphins and the
chimps and the raccoons--he becomes in some sense their progenitor 
. . . . Oddly enough, it's even grander than the destiny the Takers
dreamed up for us."

"How so?"

"Just think. In a billion years, whatever is around then, _whoever is_
around then, says, `Man? Oh yes, _man_! What a wonderful creature he
was! It was within his grasp to destroy the entire world and to
trample all our futures into the dust--but he saw the light before it
was too late and pulled back. He pulled back and gave the rest of us
our chance. He showed us all how it _had to be done_ if the world was
to go on being a garden forever. Man was the role model for us all!' "

"Not a shabby destiny."

"Not a shabby destiny by any means. And it occurs to me that this . . ."

"Yes?"

"This gives a little shape to the story. The world is a very, very
fine place. It wasn't a mess. It didn't need to be conquered and ruled
by man. In other words, the world doesn't need to belong to man--but
it _does_ need man to belong to _it_. _Some_ creature had to be the
first to go through this, had to see that there were two trees in the
garden, one that was good for gods and one that was good for
creatures. _Some_ creature had to find the way, and if that happened,
then . . . there was just no limit to what could happen here. In other
words, man does have a place in the world, but it's not his place to
_rule_. The gods have that in hand. Man's place is to be the first.
Man's place is to be the first _without being the last_. Man's place
is to figure out how it's _possible_ to do that--and then to make some
room for all the rest who are capable of becoming what he's become.
And maybe, when the time comes, it's man's place to be the teacher of
all the rest who are capable of becoming what he's become. Not the
only teacher, not the ultimate teacher. Maybe only the first teacher,
the kindergarten teacher--but even that wouldn't be too shabby. And do
you know what?"

"What?"

"All along, I've been saying to myself, `Yes, this is all very
interesting, but what good is it? This isn't going to change
anything!' "

"And now?"

"_This_ is what we need. Not just _stopping_ things. Not just _less_
of things. People need something positive to work for. They need a
vision of something that . . . I don't know. Something that . . ."

"I think what you're groping for is that people need more than to be
scolded, more than to be made to feel stupid and guilty. They need
more than a vision of doom. They need a vision of the world and of
themselves that inspires them."

"Yes. Definitely. Stopping pollution is not inspiring. Sorting your
trash is not inspiring. Cutting down on fluorocarbons is not
inspiring. But this . . . thinking of ourselves in a new way, thinking
of the world in a new way . . . This . . ."

I let it go. What the hell, he knew what I was trying to say.










    -- 7 --


"I trust you now see a point I made when we first began. The story
being enacted here by the Takers is not in any sense chapter two of
the story that was being enacted here during the first three million
years of human life. The Leaver story has its own chapter two."

"What _is_ its chapter two?"

"You've just outlined it, haven't you?"

"I'm not sure."

Ishmael spent a moment in thought. "We'll never know what the Leavers
of Europe and Asia were up to when the people of your culture came
along to plow them under forever. But we do know what they were up to
here in North America. They were looking for ways to achieve
settlement that were in accord with the way they'd always lived, ways
that left room for the rest of life to go on around them. I don't mean
that they did this out of any sense of high-mindedness. I simply mean
that it didn't occur to them to take the life of the world into their
own hands and to declare war on the rest of the community of life.
Proceeding in this way for another five thousand years or ten thousand
years, a dozen civilizations might have appeared on this continent as
sophisticated as yours is now, each with its own values and
objectives. It's not unthinkable."

"No, it's not. Or rather, yes it is. According to _Taker_ mythology,
every civilization anywhere in the universe must be a _Taker_
civilization, a civilization in which people have taken the life of
the world into their own hands. That's so obvious it doesn't need to
be pointed out. Hell, every alien civilization in the history of
science fiction has been a Taker civilization. Every civilization ever
encountered by the U.S.S. _Enterprise_ has been a Taker civilization.
This is because it goes without saying that any intelligent creature
anywhere will insist on taking his life out of the hands of the gods,
will know that the world belongs to him and not the other way around."

"True."

"Which raises an important question in my mind. What exactly would it
_mean_ to belong to the world at this point? Obviously you're not
saying that only hunter-gatherers truly belong to the world."

"I'm glad you see that. Though if the Bushmen of Africa or the
Kalapalo of Brazil (if there are any left by now) want to go on living
that way for the next ten million years, I can't see how this can be
anything less than beneficial for them and for the world."

"True. But that doesn't answer my question. How can civilized people
belong to the world?"

Ishmael shook his head in what looked like a mixture of impatience and
exasperation. "Civilized has nothing to do with it. How can tarantulas
belong to the world? How can sharks belong to the world?"

"I don't understand."

"Look around you and you'll see some creatures who act as though the
world belongs to them and some creatures who act as though they belong
to the world. Can you tell them apart?"

"Yes."

"The creatures who act as though they belong to the world follow the
peace-keeping law, and because they follow that law, they give the
creatures around them a chance to grow toward whatever it's possible
for them to become. That's how man came into being. The creatures
around _Australopithecus_ didn't imagine that the world belonged to
them, so they let him live and grow. How does being civilized come
into it? Does being civilized mean that you _have_ to destroy the
world?"

"No."

"Does being civilized make you _incapable_ of giving the creatures
around you a little space in which to live?"

"No."

"Does it make you incapable of living as harmlessly as sharks and
tarantulas and rattlesnakes?"

"No."

"Does it make you incapable of following a law that even snails and
earthworms manage to follow without any difficulty?"

"No."

"As I pointed out some time ago, human settlement isn't _against_ the
law, it's _subject_ to the law--and the same is true of civilization.
So what exactly is your question?"

"I don't know, now. Obviously belonging to the world means . . .
belonging to the same club as everyone else. The club being the
community of life. It means belonging to the club and following the
same rules as everyone else."

"And if being civilized means anything at all, it should mean that
you're leaders of the club, not its only criminals and destroyers."

"True," I said, then sat there blinking for a few moments. "Something
you said a moment ago. We'll never know what the Leavers of Europe or
Asia were up to when the people of my culture arrived to plow them
under."

"Yes?"

"I think some information about that _has_ been dug up in recent
years."

Ishmael nodded. "If it's recent, then I might well not have heard of
it."

"An archeologist named Riane Eisler wrote about a widespread Leaver
agricultural society that existed in Europe until it was overrun by
the Takers five or six thousand years ago. Except she didn't call them
Leavers and Takers, of course. I don't know a lot about it, but
evidently the culture the Takers plowed under was based on goddess
worship."

Ishmael nodded. "One of my students was aware of the book you're
talking about but was unable to explain its significance as you've
done. It's called, I believe, _The Chalice and the Blade_."










    -- 8 --


"Returning to the subject of inspiration, it seems to me that these
days you have another promising source of it," Ishmael said.

"What's that?"

"All my other pupils, when they reached this point, said, `Yes, yes,
this is wonderful--but people are not going to relinquish their hold
on the world. It just can't happen. Never. Not in a thousand years.'
And I had nothing I could point to as a hopeful example to the
contrary. Now I do."

It took me about ninety seconds to see it. "I assume you mean what's
been happening in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe in the past few
years."

"That's right. Ten years ago, twenty years ago, anyone predicting that
Marxism would soon be dismantled _from the top_ would have been
labeled a hopeless visionary, an utter fool."

"Yes, that's true."

"But once the people of these countries were inspired by the
possibility of a new way of life, the dismantling took place almost
overnight."

"Yes, I see what you mean. Five years ago I would have said that no
amount of inspiration could accomplish that--or this."

"And now?"

"And now it's just barely thinkable. Improbable as hell but not
unimaginable."










    -- 9 --


"But I do have another question," I added.

"Proceed."

"Your ad said, `Must earnestly desire to save the world.' "

"Yes?"

"What do I do if I earnestly desire to save the world?"

Ishmael frowned at me through the bars for a long moment. "You want a
program?"

"Of course I want a program."

"Then here is a program: The story of Genesis must be reversed. First,
Cain must stop murdering Abel. This is essential if you're to survive.
The Leavers are the endangered species most critical to the world--not
because they're humans but because they alone can show the destroyers
of the world that there is no _one right way_ to live. And then, of
course, you must spit out the fruit of that forbidden tree. You must
absolutely and forever relinquish the idea that you know who should
live and who should die on this planet."

"Yes, I see all that, but that's a program for _mankind_, that's not a
program for _me_. What do I do?"

"What you do is to teach a hundred what I've taught you, and inspire
each of them to teach a hundred. That's how it's always done."

"Yes, but . . . is it _enough_?"

Ishmael frowned. "Of course it's not enough. But if you begin anywhere
else, there's no hope at all. You can't say, `We're going to change
the way people behave toward the world, but we're not going to change
the way they think about the world or the way they think about divine
intentions in the world or the way they think about the destiny of
man.' As long as the people of your culture are convinced that the
world belongs to them and that their divinely-appointed destiny is to
conquer and rule it, then they are of course going to go on acting the
way they've been acting for the past ten thousand years. They're going
to go on treating the world as if it were a piece of human property
and they're going to go on conquering it as if it were an adversary.
You can't change these things with _laws_. You must change people's
_minds_. And you can't just root out a harmful complex of ideas and
leave a void behind; you have to give people something that is as
meaningful as what they've lost--something that makes better sense
than the old horror of Man Supreme, wiping out everything on this
planet that doesn't serve his needs directly or indirectly."

I shook my head. "What you're saying is that someone has to stand up
and become to the world of today what Saint Paul was to the Roman
Empire."

"Yes, basically. Is that so daunting?"

I laughed. "Daunting isn't nearly strong enough. To call it daunting
is like calling the Atlantic damp."

"Is it really so impossible in an age when a stand-up comic on
television reaches more people in ten minutes than Paul did in his
entire lifetime?"

"I'm not a stand-up comic."

"But you're a writer, aren't you?"

"Not that kind of writer."

Ishmael shrugged. "Lucky you. You are absolved of any obligation.
Self-absolved."

"I didn't say that." 

"What were you expecting to learn from me? An incantation? A magic
word that would sweep all the nastiness away?"

"No."

"Ultimately, it would seem you're no different from those you profess
to despise: You just wanted something for yourself. Something to make
you feel better as you watch the end approach."

"No, it isn't that. You just don't know me very well. It's always this
way with me--first I say, `No, no, it's impossible, completely and
utterly impossible,' then I go ahead and do it."

Ishmael humphed, barely mollified.

"One thing I know people will say to me is `Are you suggesting we go
back to being hunter-gatherers?' "

"That of course is an inane idea," Ishmael said. "The Leaver
life-style isn't about hunting and gathering, it's about letting the
rest of the community live--and agriculturalists can do that as well
as hunter-gatherers." He paused and shook his head. "What I've been at
pains to give you is a new paradigm of human history. The Leaver life
is not an antiquated thing that is `back there' somewhere. Your task
is not to reach back but to reach forward."

"But to what? We can't just walk away from our civilization the way
the Hohokam did."

"That's certainly true. The Hohokam had another way of life waiting
for them, but you must be inventive--if it's worthwhile to you. If you
care to survive." He gave me a dull stare. "You're an inventive
people, aren't you? You pride yourselves on that, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Then invent."










    -- 10 --


"I have neglected one small point," Ishmael said, then gave way to a
long, groaning, wheezing sigh, as if he were sorry he'd allowed
himself to be reminded of it.

I waited in silence.

"One of my students was an ex-convict. An armed robber, as it
happened. Have I told you that?"

I said he hadn't.

"I'm afraid our work together was more useful to me than to him.
Primarily what I learned from him is that, contrary to the impression
one receives from prison movies, the prison population is not at all
an undifferentiated mass. As in the outside world, there are the rich
and the poor, the powerful and the weak. And relatively speaking, the
rich and the powerful live very well inside the prison--not as well as
they do on the outside, of course, but much, much better than the poor
and the weak. In fact, they can have very nearly anything they want,
in terms of drugs, food, sex, and service."

I cocked an eyebrow at him.

"You want to know what this has to do with anything," he said with a
nod. "It has this to do with anything: The world of the Takers is one
vast prison, and except for a handful of Leavers scattered across the
world, the entire human race is now inside that prison. During the
last century every remaining Leaver people in North America was given
a choice: to be exterminated or to accept imprisonment. Many chose
imprisonment, but not many were actually capable of adjusting to
prison life."

"Yes, that seems to be the case."

Ishmael fixed me with a drooping, moist eye. "Naturally a well-run
prison must have a prison industry. I'm sure you see why."

"Well . . . it helps to keep the inmates busy, I suppose. Takes their
minds off the boredom and futility of their lives."

"Yes. Can you name yours?"

"Our prison industry? Not offhand. I suppose it's obvious."

"Quite obvious, I would say."

I gave it some thought. "Consuming the world."

Ishmael nodded. "Got it on the first try."










    -- 11 --


"There is one significant difference between the inmates of your
criminal prisons and the inmates of your cultural prison: The former
understand that the distribution of wealth and power inside the prison
has nothing to do with justice."

I blinked at him for a while, then asked him to explain.

"In your cultural prison, which inmates wield the power?"

"Ah," I said. "The male inmates. Especially the white male inmates."

"Yes, that's right. But you understand that these white male inmates
are indeed inmates and not warders. For all their power and
privilege--for all that they lord it over everyone else in the
prison--not one of them has a key that will unlock the gate."

"Yes, that's true. Donald Trump can do a lot of things I can't, but he
can no more get out of the prison than I can. But what does this have
to do with justice?"

"Justice demands that people other than white males have power in the
prison."

"Yes, I see. But what are you saying? That this isn't true?"

"True? Of course it's true that males--and, as you say, especially
white males--have called the shots inside the prison for thousands of
years, perhaps even from the beginning. Of course it's true that this
is unjust. And of course it's true that power and wealth within the
prison should be equitably redistributed. But it should be noted that
what is crucial to your survival as a race is not the redistribution
of power and wealth within the prison but rather the destruction of
the prison itself."

"Yes, I see that. But I'm not sure many other people would."

"No?"

"No. Among the politically active, the redistribution of wealth and
power is . . . I don't know what to call it that would be strong
enough. An idea whose time has come. The Holy Grail."

"Nonetheless, breaking out of the Taker prison is a common cause to
which all humanity can subscribe."

I shook my head. "I'm afraid it's a cause to which almost none of
humanity will subscribe. White or colored, male or female, what the
people of this culture want is to have as much wealth and power in the
Taker prison as they can get. They don't give a damn that it's a
prison and they don't give a damn that it's destroying the world."

Ishmael shrugged. "As always, you're a pessimist. Perhaps you're
right. I hope you're wrong."

"I hope so too, believe me."










    -- 12 --


Even though we'd only been talking an hour or so, Ishmael seemed limp
with exhaustion. I made tentative noises about leaving, but he
evidently had something more on his mind.

At last he looked up and said: "You understand that I'm finished with
you."

I think it would have felt about the same if he'd plunged a knife into
my stomach.

He closed his eyes for a moment. "Pardon me. I'm tired and not
expressing myself well. I didn't mean that the way it came out."

I couldn't answer him, but I managed a nod.

"I mean only that I've finished what I set out to do. As a teacher, I
have nothing more to give you. Even so, I would be pleased to count
you as a friend."

Again, I couldn't manage more than a nod.

Ishmael shrugged and looked around bleary-eyed, as if he'd momentarily
forgotten where he was. Then he reared back and exploded in a
magnificently juicy sneeze.

"Look," I said, getting up, "I'll be back tomorrow."

He gave me a long, dark stare; he was wondering what the devil more I
expected of him but was too weary to ask. He sent me on my way with a
grunt and a valedictory nod. 

















	  --------------------------------------------------
			   T H I R T E E N
	  --------------------------------------------------




    -- 1 --


That night, before falling asleep in my motel bed, I finalized my
plan. It was a bad plan and I knew it, but I couldn't think of
anything better. Whether he liked it or not (and I knew he wouldn't),
I had to rescue Ishmael from that goddamned carnival.

It was a bad plan in another sense, in that it depended entirely on me
and my meager resources. I had only one hole-card, and if I had to
turn it, I figured it would probably be a deuce.

At nine the next morning I was in a small town about halfway home,
driving around in hopes of finding someplace to have breakfast, when a
"too hot" warning lit up on my dashboard, forcing me to pull over. I
popped the hood and checked the oil: oil okay. Checked the water
reservoir: dry. No problem--a canny traveler, I carry extra water. I
topped off the reservoir, got going again, and two minutes later
watched the warning light blink back on. I made it to a filling
station where the sign said "Mechanic on Duty" but where no mechanic
was on duty. Even so, the guy who _was_ on duty knew thirty times as
much as I do about cars and was willing to poke around a little.

"The radiator fan isn't working," he told me after about fifteen
seconds. He showed it to me and explained that ordinarily it only
comes on when start-and-stop city driving makes the engine overheat.

"Could it be a blown fuse?"

"Could be," he said. But he ruled that out by trying a new one, which
did no better than the old one. He said, "Hold on," and fetched a
pen-type probe, which he used to test the plug that connected the fan
to the electrical system. "You got fire to the fan," he told me, "so
it looks like it's the fan itself that's shot."

"Where can I get a new one?"

"Here in town, nowhere," he told me. "Not on a Saturday."

I asked him if I could get home with it as it was.

"I think so," he said, "if you don't have to do a lot of city driving
to get there. Or if you stop and let it cool down whenever it starts
to overheat."

I made it back and got the car into a dealership service garage well
before noon and left it there, even though they assured me that
nothing at all would happen to it before Monday morning. I had only
one errand to run, and that was to visit one of those dear little
money machines, where I proceeded to plunder all my cash
resources--checking, savings, credit cards. When I walked into my
apartment, I was carrying twenty-four hundred dollars--and was
otherwise a pauper.

I didn't intend to think about the problems ahead, because they were
just too tough. How do you get a half-ton gorilla out of a cage that
he doesn't care to vacate? How do you get a half-ton gorilla into the
back seat of a car that he doesn't care to ride in? Would a car with a
half-ton gorilla in the back seat even function?

As this indicates, I'm a one-step-at-a-time kind of guy. An
improvisor. Somehow or another, I would get Ishmael stashed in the
back seat of my car, then I'd figure out what to do next. Presumably
I'd bring him back to my apartment--and then again figure out what to
do next. In my experience, you never really know how you're going to
handle a problem until you actually have it.










    -- 2 --


They called at nine on Monday morning to tell me what was what with
the car. The fan had gone out because it had been overtaxed; it had
been overtaxed because the whole damn cooling system was shot. A lot
of work was needed, about six hundred dollars' worth. I groaned and
told them to carry on. They said it'd probably be ready around two
o'clock, they'd call. I said, skip the call, I'd pick the car up when
I could; the fact is, I'd already abandoned the car. I couldn't afford
the repairs, and the damn thing probably wouldn't be up to carrying
Ishmael anyway.

I rented a van.

You will doubtless wonder why in hell I didn't do that in the first
place. The answer is, I just didn't think of it. I'm limited, okay? I
get used to doing things in a certain way, and that doesn't include
taking trips in rented vans.

Two hours later I pulled up at the carnival lot and said, "Damn."

The carnival had moved on.

Something--maybe a premonition--prompted me to get out and poke
around. The lot seemed much too small to have held nineteen rides,
twenty-four games, and a sideshow. I wondered if I could find the site
of Ishmael's cage without any landmarks to guide me. My feet
remembered enough to get me to the vicinity, and my eyes did the rest,
for there _was_ a visible trace: the blankets I'd bought for him had
been left behind, had been dumped in a messy pile along with other
things I recognized: a few of his books, a pad of drawing paper, still
showing the maps and diagrams he'd made to illustrate the stories of
Cain and Abel, Leavers and Takers, and the poster from his office, now
rolled up and secured by a rubber band.

I was stirring it up and sorting it out in a bewildered way when my
aged bribee turned up. He grinned and held up a big black plastic bag
to show me what he was doing there: clearing away some of the hundreds
of pounds of trash that had been left behind. Then, when he saw the
pile of stuff at my feet, he looked up at me and said, "It was the
pneumonia."

"What?"

"It was the pneumonia that got him--your friend the ape."

I stood there blinking at him, unable to fathom what he was getting
at.

"Vet came Saturday night and shot him full of stuff, but it was too
late. Passed off this morning around seven or eight, I guess."

"Are you telling me that he's . . . dead?"

"Dead is what he is, pardner."

And I, the total egotist, had only vaguely registered the fact that he
seemed a bit wan.

I looked around the vast gray lot, where here and there the wind
raised clumps of paper trash and sometimes sent them tumbling, and
felt one with it--empty, useless, choked with dust, a wasteland.

My ancient pardner waited, plainly interested to see what this friend
of apes would do or say next.

"What did they do with him?" I asked.

"Huh?"

"What did they do with the body?"

"Oh. Called the county, I guess. Took him off to where they cremate
the roadkills. You know."

"Yeah. Thanks."

"No sweat."

"All right if I take this stuff?"

From the look he gave me I could see I'd presented him with a new
high-water mark in human lunacy, but all he said was, "Sure, why not?
Just get dumped otherwise."

I left the blankets, of course, but the rest all fit easily under one
arm.










    -- 3 --


What was to be done? Stand for a moment with lowered gaze outside the
county furnace where they cremate the roadkills? Someone else would
have handled it differently, probably better, revealing a greater
heart, a finer sensibility. Myself, I drove home.

Drove home, turned in the van, picked up my car, and went back to the
apartment. It was empty in a new way, with a new degree of emptiness.

There was a telephone there on an end table, connecting me to a whole
world of life and activity, but who could I call?

Oddly enough, I thought of someone, looked up a number, and dialed it.
After three rings, a low, firm voice answered:

"Mrs. Sokolow's residence."

"Is this Mr. Partridge?"

"Yes, this is Mr. Partridge."

I said, "This is the guy who visited you a couple weeks ago, trying to
locate Rachel Sokolow."

Partridge waited.

I said, "Ishmael is dead."

After a pause: "I'm very sorry to hear it."

"We could have saved him."

Partridge thought about that for a while. "Are you sure he would have
let us?"

I wasn't sure, and said so.










    -- 4 --


It wasn't till I got Ishmael's poster to the framing shop that I
discovered there were messages on both sides. I had it framed so that
both can be seen. The message on one side is the one Ishmael displayed
on the wall of his den:

				   
			    WITH MAN GONE,
			      WILL THERE
			       BE HOPE
			     FOR GORILLA?


The message on the other side reads:

				   
			  WITH GORILLA GONE,
			      WILL THERE
			       BE HOPE
			       FOR MAN?





























			 __ABOUT THE AUTHOR__


Daniel Quinn, the author of _Ishmael_, was born in Omaha, Nebraska, 
in 1935, studied at St. Louis University, the University of Vienna in
Austria, and Loyola University of Chicago. In 1975 he abandoned a 
long career in publishing to become a freelance writer.

The first version of the book that ultimately became _Ishmael_, his
award-winning novel, was written in 1977 and, was followed by six
others before finding its final form, as a novel, in 1990. Quinn went
on to explore the spiritual and experiential origins of _Ishmael_ in a
work of innovative autobiography, _Providence: The Story of a Fifty
Year Vision Quest_.

Of his latest novel, Quinn writes: "For years I worried that I might
never equal (much less surpass) what I achieved in _Ishmael_. This
worry has been erased for me by _The Story of B_. Ishmael would
definitely approve of this book." _The Story of B_ is now available
from Bantam Books.













Contact other readers of Daniel Quinn's books (_Ishmael_, _The
Story of B_, _My Ishmael_, _Providence_, and _Beyond Civilization_) at
http://www.ishmael.org
											



				   
		  Published by Bantam / Turner Books
				   
		   Copyright (c) 1992 Daniel Quinn

	      Cover art copyright (c) 1993 by Tim Jacobs

		     Book design by Maria Carella





			      FOR RENNIE
				   



	  --------------------------------------------------















