THE PURE OBSERVERS

BY B. J. ROGERS

The history of space-flight begins before

man. While our planet still lay wrapped in

its dream of isolation, other intelligences

watched from above—minds pure, undying,

noble—and pathetically vulnerable....

From Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1958.

"Oh, he is dead!" my mind cried out.

Novna, my dear, I am writing this as a release for my conscience. Those things which trouble me are not such as one exchanges with vigil companions, or indeed with anyone not bound by ties like ours.

If I were at home with you I would exchange with your soul in a moment the feeling of my own, but distance permits no such consolation and it is not suitable for me to exchange so familiarly with my colleagues.

I find myself questioning the value of our customary refusal to communicate thoughts of a delicate and sensitive nature. The Earth people, who speak their thoughts, perhaps are less primitive than we like to imagine. They seem to have no sense of the danger of overwhelming the soul of another with unwanted confidences. The purely vocal nature of their communication does not admit an excessive degree of emotion to their relationships. They do not have to erect any artificial barriers between each other, as we must who exchange on a mental level.

These doubts of mine never could have arisen if we men of Hainos had not presumed to observe the alien ways of those creatures on the third Earth, so like ourselves and yet so remote, though we have hovered above them, listening and watching, for twelve of their generations.

This vigil, though it is to last but one journey around the sun, has seemed longer and less fruitful than all the others. I think I shall not come again, but leave such work to those who can remain efficient and disinterested Observers, unmoved by doubt and anxiety. Novna, you must begin to think what we two shall do with the rest of our eternity, for now that I have spent some small portion of mine in fifty vigils, I find they have become distasteful. We might go to the Palace of Art and study to be poet-priests. My last vigil has convinced me that I am more fitted for that life than this.

When our mission left Hainos for the third Earth, there was aboard our ship the poet-priest Gven. You must remember the many nights we sat beneath the rocks by the ocean, listening as his soul gave ours his songs. Innocent they were, and filled with talk of purity and light, though Gven is as old as the rest of us, even if he is as different from you and me as the Earth child is from its parents.

You have never seen him, I think. He is smaller than I, slight of build and tender-faced. How out of place he looked among the ship's sturdy men of science, with their ages of discipline and austerity written indelibly into their features. They did not want him. They told the commissioner that they did not want him.

"Let him stay at home," they said, "and sing his songs to those who wish to listen."

But the commissioner himself, and, I suspect, the commissioner's wife, was as fond as any of Gven and his songs, so he said Gven was to come if he liked.

Poor Gven tried hard enough to make us like him. He offered us the only gift he had, that of his songs, but no one cared to hear them except me, and I was ashamed to say so. In the end he was reduced to sitting for hours, looking out into the night through which the ship bore us, saying nothing to anyone, for fear of our scorn. He would have liked us to tell him about the Earth people, for his studies at the Palace fitted him sadly for a scientific expedition.

Of the Earth people, however, we hesitated to speak freely, even among ourselves, for all of us feel strongly about them, in one way or another. Our exchanges on the matter have always been burdened with emotion; and we find we cannot share easily our thoughts about Earth people, unless we banter lightly and say little of what we really feel.

When our long-ship drew near the third Earth, we were transferred into the round-ship in which we were to carry on our observations. I could see Gven was limp with excitement, but as always, I would not exchange with him for fear of the others, not even to drain off that excess of feeling which was to prove so dangerous to him.

Perhaps he thought it would be different, once we had established ourselves in our designated area of observation. Then we might warm toward him, giving him the comforts of our experience. If such were his expectations, he was disappointed. Whatever he gathered from us was purely accidental, information that we exchanged among ourselves as we worked. Only in this way did he learn of those few bonds we had forged with the Earth people.

It is our custom, as you know, for each man to select one of the Earth people as his subject. This is not part of our work, it is only a device to drive away the tedium that descends upon men far from home and bound to exacting work in a confined place. We begin to feel quite passionately concerned with our subjects, and occasionally find it difficult to return to our primary concerns.

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For some time I had been spending my free hours in the world of a gentle old merchant named Jacobs. I lived his life with him briefly, seeing his wife and children as he saw them, going with him to his store. His memories were good ones, filled with hard work and simple pleasures. One day, when I had left the computing tables to prepare for dinner, I sought the mind of Jacobs. He was crossing the street and as he turned his head, he saw the shining lights of an automobile just before it struck him. I withdrew from his mind in a shower of pain and darkness.

"Oh, he is dead," my mind cried out to my vigil companions before I could smother the shock and emotion in it. They looked up at me, questioning. Then I exchanged with them more coolly, "My man Jacobs has been killed crossing the street."

Keven, the fuel technician, reached my mind first. "A pity, I lost a subject myself that way not long ago. It is a bad death for them, poor things. They might build overpasses, mightn't they? A pity."

It has never failed to unsettle me, the way my companions have come to accept the idea of death so easily. To me it is always a horror, unnatural and alien. You cannot quite see how it is, Novna, for you have never been in the mind of one who dies.

I withdrew for a little while to mourn my man Jacobs, for my sorrow was not to be shared with the others. It was while I sat thinking of the dead Jacobs that Gven approached hesitantly and sat near me.

"Is it possible," he asked, "that one can read the soul of an Earth man? Could I? Or perhaps that would not be permitted to me?"

His eagerness made me ashamed of the silence I had maintained between us. "It is certainly possible for you to try, though it cannot always be done. You need ask no one for permission."

The delight in his eyes made me forget Jacobs a little. "I may try anyone at all?"

"I advise you to search about a little. Don't seize on the first one you contact as a subject. You have less time than the rest of us for this sort of thing."

Gven thanked me shyly and went away. Later I saw him sitting at the open panels, looking down at the cloud-topped mountains and sandy valleys over which we circled. His face was still and pale as he concentrated.

The next day at dinner, Gven sat playing with his food, looking up at the rest of us frequently, as if his fear of our coldness were contending with his wish to open his mind to us. I was not the only one to notice his excitement, but the rest sat looking at their plates stonily. They liked Gven even less than they had at first, and preferred to ignore his presence altogether. At last I lifted my head defiantly and my thought streamed across the table into the mind of Gven with such energy and violence that the others raised their eyes from their food in quick surprise.

"It must be that you have found a subject. I should like to hear about it."

At once Gven let his thoughts explode in undisciplined profusion. The men drew back a little, shocked by the unfamiliar impact of another's passion on their minds.

"The very first mind I sought was that of a girl who calls herself Maria Dolores. Often her mind turns in upon itself and she reflects like this, 'Maria Dolores, you have behaved badly to your papa today. Now you must go and ask him to forgive you and give him a kiss.' In this way she scolds herself for small misdemeanors. Her world is composed of happy, innocent trivialities, though as her purity touches on them and causes them to glow briefly before they are left behind, it seems that there are no more divine and lovely things in existence than those in the world of my Maria Dolores."

Gven blushed and paused for a moment, then rushed on. "I sense that her father and mother have barricaded her from everyone else. They are strict with Maria Dolores and sometimes she wishes she could go out to dances as the other girls do. But she is not sad for long, and goes to gather flowers for the dinner table. She sets them in long silver dishes, that reflect the pink and red glow of the sunset slanting through the window. This pleases Maria Dolores and she stands watching for a long time."

Gven would have said more, but all at once Corven, the cultural researcher, interrupted, looking at me. "Noven, what have you brought upon us by your curiosity? We are being buried in an avalanche of poetic fancies."

After this, Gven sat silent, his face burning, and the rest of us began to talk of the relation between the sites of mines and the locations of proving grounds.

For many days, I watched Gven covertly. He no longer seemed to care about our rebuffs, nor did he show any desire to ask us questions. He only sat by the panels, his expression withdrawn and intent, while the rest of us hustled busily and a little self-consciously around him. I came to notice a certain perplexity in his face after a time, and felt that I should ask if he needed any assistance. But I was awkward and unsure of myself, so I only watched him and said nothing. At last he came to me, having built up a powerful reserve of feeling that overflowed with the more violence for having been repressed so long.

"There is something that is to happen in the life of my Maria Dolores," Gven began directly.

Unaccountably, I tensed and tried to suppress the warmth I felt toward him. "Well, what is it then?" I answered.

He seemed not to notice the strain I was under. "They have told her she is to be married to a young man whom they have chosen for her. She is unhappy, but cannot tell them. Now they are making many preparations. Maria Dolores spends her time with her mother, sewing dresses and packing them away. Then her mother speaks to her of things that frighten her and me, things that seem to happen when men and women are alone at night. She does not understand and lies awake when her mother has gone, afraid and wondering. We are uneasy, Maria Dolores and I."

Here, Novna, I must attempt to explain the marriage of Earth people. While with us marriage is the spiritualized union of masculine and feminine natures in one soul, it is to them a more concrete thing. Their junction is not only one of minds, but one of bodies as well.

The union seems not to be unpleasant for those who take part in it, but for us, who so jealously guard our bodies from another's touch, the marriage of Earth people is difficult to contemplate without revulsion.

I was rescued from having to answer Gven by the laughter of Corven, who had overheard the last of the poet's words. "Well then, poet, if she is unhappy, you must take her away, mustn't you? That's what you want, it seems, to take her away to Hainos and make her your Gvna."

Gven stood up and glared angrily at Corven. "Would it be so bad a thing to carry back one person of Earth? Why shouldn't we?" he flung at the other man.

Corven turned away in disgust. "You know we have no authority to intervene in their affairs. This is what comes of letting a poet-priest meddle in the concerns of science."

A sullenness came over Gven's face, and he withdrew from us again, turning back to the panels. I knew he was with Maria Dolores. Though I was uneasy over his ignorance, I could not help feeling relieved that I had not been forced to enlighten him.

My anxiety proved to be well-founded. It was only a few weeks later that we reaped the results of our long-cultivated conspiracy of silence against the poet-priest. We were deeply engrossed in our work at the computing tables when our nerves were shattered by a cry of anguish from the mind of Gven. In a moment we were standing around him, avoiding each other's eyes and scarcely daring to look at the man shuddering before us, his face in his hands.

"It is done." Gven cast his anger at us like a stone. "It is as though she had been killed. Why couldn't you tell me? You, Noven, I asked you. Why couldn't you have spared me this?"

The men looked uneasily at me and back at Gven. Shaken, they drifted away, back to their work, still ashamed to meet each other's eyes. Gven sat there, grinding his fist into his palm, staring straight ahead.

He has been gone for some time now. At his request, a long-ship stopped for him on its homeward cruise. I have not tried to reach another subject, nor have any of the others. At least, if they have, they do not speak of it. We are reluctant to attempt any communion with these creatures whose alien nature has been so strikingly demonstrated to us. The game of Observation itself has become less a game, and we go about our work with a vague sense of unrest, as though the descent of catastrophe upon us were imminent.

Gven gave us one last gift before he left. He sang us a song that made us want to bend our heads to the ground in shame. If his songs are bitter now, and if there is no innocence in them, one needs not look far to find the reason.