Ishmael

“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 be 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 me a step closer to being out of Ishmael’s life.

What’s the best bad 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.

EIGHT

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?”