Ishmael

“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