Do Unto Others Part 3

"What is it?" Aunt Mattie asked crisply.

Johnny leaped to his feet again.

"Amazing," he said again. "I'll have to show you. You'll never believe it."

"Young man," Aunt Mattie said sharply. "No one has accused you of untruthfulness, and you are hardly a judge of what we are capable of believing."

He stood looking at her with his mouth open.

"Now ladies," I said, and started closing the door. "If you'll excuse me for two minutes I'll dress and we'll go see what Mr. McCabe wants to show us."

The door clicked on my last words, and I hastily doffed the robe and slid into pants and a shirt. Oddly enough, I knew what he was going to show us. I just knew. I slipped on some shoes without bothering about socks.

"All right," I said. "I'm ready."

They had started down the hall, and we quickly overtook them. Johnny went ahead, led us out of the hotel, around its side, and when we came around the corner of the outbuilding which obscured the view, there before us, through the bubble wall, we saw what I had expected.

As far as the eye could see, dotted here and there like poppies on snow, the natives lay in the early sun, each dressed in flaring cloth like that Aunt Mattie had designed the night before.

"You see?" Johnny cried out. "It's the same as with the lighter. One liked it, so they all have it!"

By now we were up against the plastic barrier. The two subordinates were gasping such words as "Fantastic, amazing, astounding, incredible, wondrous, weird".

Aunt Mattie took it all in, and her face lit into a beatific smile.

"You see, young man," she said to Johnny. "They needed only to be shown right from wrong. Let this be a lesson to you."

"But how did they do it?" Mrs. Waddle gasped.

"Give them some credit for diligence and ingenuity," Aunt Mattie almost snapped at her a.s.sistant. "I always say we underrate the intelligence and ingenuity of the lesser orders, and that it saps their strengths if we are overprotective. I admire self-reliance, and these have shown they have it. So we will not have to do the sewing after all. Come girls, we must pack and be on our way back to Earth.

Our mission here is accomplished."

The two ladies obeyed their leader without question. The three of them, in their st.u.r.dy walking shoes and their tweed suits, crunched off across the salt back to their rooms to start packing.

Johnny and I walked along more slowly behind.

"The incredible Matthewa H. Tombs!" he breathed. "She's a legend, you know, Hap. But I never believed it before." Then, in a complete and sudden change of mood he snickered. Or, at least, it was the nearest thing to a small boy snicker I'd heard since prep school. The snicker turned into a roar of laughter, a grown man's laughter. "If they only knew!" he shouted, apparently feeling secure because they'd turned the corner and gone out of sight.

"Knew what?" I asked.

"Why," he said, and doubled up with laughter again. "They've covered up all the innocent parts and left the reprehensible part, which is right behind the eye, fully exposed."

"Johnny, my boy," I said with a chuckle. "Do you really believe there are innocent parts and reprehensible parts of any creature in the universe?"

He stood stock still and stared at me.

"It takes a nasty, salacious mind to make that kind of separation," I said.

"But your aun ... the Daughters of...."

"I know my aunt and the Daughters of Terra," I said. "I've lived with them for years. I know their kind of mind. Who would know it better?"

"But you...."

"The human race," I said, "is very young. It's only in the last few thousand years that it has discovered s.e.x as a concept. So like little kids in kindergarten it goes around being embarra.s.sed and snickering.

But we'll grow up. Give us time."

"But you...." he said again. "But they.... That's the kind of organization that keeps us from growing up, Hap. Don't you see that?

They've kept us mentally r.e.t.a.r.ded for generations, centuries. How can we make progress when...."

"What's the hurry, Johnny? We've got millions of years, billions, eternity."

He looked at me again, sharply, shrewdly.

"I've underestimated you, Hap," he said. "I'm afraid I always did. I had no idea you...."

I shrugged and pa.s.sed it off. I'd had no idea either, not until this morning, last night, yesterday evening when that eye had turned on me--and I'd winked back.

I didn't know how to tell him, or any reason why I should, that there couldn't be anything right or wrong, good or bad; that nothing could happen, nothing at all, excepting through the working of the law of nature. Could one say that water running down hill is good, and water being pumped up hill is bad? Both are operating within known physical laws. With millions of years to go, wasn't it likely we would go on discovering the laws governing how things worked? Until one by one we had to give up all notion of good and bad happenings? Understood them as only the operation of natural law? In all the universe, how could there be any such thing as unnatural happenings?

"Don't worry about it, Johnny," I said as we started walking again.

"And don't worry about your career, either. Aunt Mattie likes you, and she's mighty pleased with the results of her work out here. Certain people in the State Department may consider her a bit of a meddlesome pest, but make no mistake about it, every politician in the universe trembles in his boots at the very mention of the D.T.'s. And she likes you, Johnny."

"Thanks, Hap," he said as we came to a stop before the doorway of the hotel. "I'll see you before your ship takes off. Oh--ah--you won't tell her she covered up the wrong--well what she would think was the wrong part?"

"I could have told her that last night," I said.

He walked away with that startled, incredulous look he'd worn ever since our arrival.

On Earth Aunt Mattie had to rush off to a convention of D.T.'s, where I had no doubt her latest exploit in combating ignorance and sin would be the main topic of conversation and add to the triumph of her lionization. To give her credit, I think this lionization bothered her, embarra.s.sed her a little, and she probably wondered at times if it were all sincere. But I also think she would have been lonely and disappointed without it. When one is doing all he can to make the universe we have inherited a better place for our posterity to inherit one likes it to be appreciated.

For two or three weeks after she came back home, she was immersed in administrative duties for the D.T., setting wheels in motion to carry out all the promises she'd made at the convention.

I spent the time in my own suite in the south wing of our house.

Mostly, I just sat. No one bothered me except the servants necessary to eating, dressing, sleeping, and they were all but mute about it. My psychiatrist called once, but I sent word that I didn't need any today. I called none of my regular friends and did not answer their messages.

I did send to the Library of Science in Washington for the original science survey report on Capella IV. It told me little, but allowed me to surmise some things. Apparently the original scientists were singularly uncurious about the octopoids, perhaps because they didn't have five years to hang around and wait for one to blink an eye, as Johnny had. As always, they were overworked and understaffed, they did their quick survey and rushed on to some new planet job. If one hoped that someday somebody might go back and take another look at the octopoids I found no burning yearning for it in the dry reports.

As far as they went, their surmise was accurate. Some millions, many millions of years ago, the planet had lost the last of its ocean water. Apparently, as they failed to adapt to the increasing salinity of the little left, one by one the original life forms died out.

Something in the octopoid metabolism (or mentality?) allowed them to survive, to become land instead of water animals. Something in their metabolism (or mentality?) allowed them to subsist on the air and sunlight. (Really now? Did they even need these?) That was as far as the reports went.

They did not draw the picture of highly developed mentalities who lay there for millions of years and thought about the nature of being.

Such things as how mental manipulation of force fields can provide each of them with a cigarette lighter that burns without any fluid in it and any oxygen around its wick, or such things as mother hubbards which had caught their fancy, or perhaps gave them some kind of sensual kick caused by heat filtering through red cloth.

But mostly I just sat.

I went to see Aunt Mattie when she came back from the convention, of course. She had the west wing where her sitting room looked out upon her flora collection--and the gardeners who were supposed to keep busy. Our greeting was fond, but brief. She did look at me rather quizzically, rather shrewdly, but she made no comment. She did not return my visit.