Chapter 8
Chapter 8 of Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Dale Grothman. After lunch at EHQ, the colonizing administrator took over the review. The colonizing scientists had not been trapped by the obviously favorable aspects of Eden
into neglecting their full duties. No, indeed, they had given the full routine of tests and had come up with exactly nothing that might be unfavorable to man, at least not more so than on Earth. Colonization had followed the usual plan. Fifty professional colonists had been sent out to Eden. They knew their jobs. They were temperamentally suited to the work. As usual,
they were to live there for five years, leaning as lightly as possible on Earth's supplement. Their prime purpose was to adapt primitive ecology to human needs, how it could be done. It was not the job of this first colony to explore, to catalog. They were expected to do only what any pioneer does, endure, exist, and prove it possible. In honesty, the colonizing administrator had to point out that there had been more than the usual dissatisfaction from this colony.
The burden of their complaint was that they found living too easy. They were professionals, accustomed to challenge. They first recommended, then demanded, that they be transferred, and the planet given over to the second phase colonists. They complained that they were dying on the vine,
that easy living was making farmers and storekeepers out of them, that they were getting soft, ruined by disuse of their talents for meeting and coping with hostile conditions. There had even been threats that one of these days they would all pile into their ship and come back home.
So far he had stopped them by threats of his own, that he would personally see they never got another assignment. He had resisted their demands. Five years was a short enough time. Some organisms took longer than that to develop in the human body or mind, to make their inimical
presence known. Some did not show up until the second or third generation, which was the reason for the second phase colonists to live there for three generations before the planet could be opened to young John Smith and his wife Mary, who dreamt of owning a little chicken ranch, out away from it all. He had argued that boredom might be just the very inimicable condition they were having to test. Cal felt a twinge of disappointment here. Perhaps the dissatisfied
colonists had merely gone on strike. Unable to get satisfaction from their administrator, they chose not to communicate as a means of drawing attention, getting an investigation of their plight. Drastic, perhaps, but man had been known to do drastic things before when he felt treated unfairly. This seemed such a likely solution that for a moment he let his disappointment override his interest. Such would be an administrative hassle, nothing to challenge
an E at all, not even a junior. Still, it might not be the solution. He had better listen to the whole of the problem. The colonists had chosen a large island for their first settlement. In the center was a small mountain. It had been given the name Crystal Palace Mountain, because it was crested with an outcropping of amethyst quartz crystal structures in natural pillars, domes, arches, and spires. Like spokes of a wheel radiating out from the hub,
ridges fell away from this mountain, and in between the ridges there lay fertile valleys, watered by perpetual streams. It was in one of these valleys, about halfway between the mountain and the sea that the colonists settled. Some bucolic wit had named the first settlement apple tree because there they would gain knowledge, and everybody knows that the apple was the Garden of Eden's fruit of knowledge. No one quite knew when the name Eden was first
applied to the planet. Suddenly, during the first scientific expedition, everyone was referring to it that way. For exactitude, the administrator said diplomatically, of course we still designated as SETI-2. As was customary, the colony had communicated multitudes of progress pictures over the space jump band. Here was the valley before they had started to fell trees. Here it was in progress of clearing. Here they had converted the trees into lumber for houses.
Here were the first houses, so that some could move out of the living quarters in the ship. Here they were uprooting the stumps, turning the sod, planting earth seeds. These were barns for the cattle and horses sent to them from earth. A collection of community buildings came next, in a series of photographs. And finally, there was the whole village of Appletree, with a collection of small farms surrounding it.
The picture showed it all as ideal for man as a distant view of a rural valley in Ohio, productive, progressive, and peaceful from a distance. But back of the postcard scene, human psychology progressed normally also. The reporting psychologist was almost emphatic on this issue. His department would have been most alarmed had differences in schisms not developed.
That would have been an abnormality calling for investigation. Differences in outlooks became apparent in spite of the common temperament and experience of the group. Little personal enmities developed and grew. Sympathizers drew together in little groups, each group considering its stand to be the right one, and therefore all who disagreed, wrong. The psychologist said he was sure all viewing would remember the classical picture of primitive
earth man at first awareness. He stands upon a hill and looks about him. There comes the astonishing realization that he can see about the same distance in all directions. Why, he exclaims to himself, I must be at the very center of creation.
His awe and wonder was to grow. Wherever he went, he found he was still at the center of things. there could be only one conclusion because i am always at the center of things i must be the most important event in all creation still later comes another realization those who are with me are therefore a part of me and mine are also at the center of things and share my importance those who are not with me and not a part of me and mine are not at the center of things and are therefore of an inferior nature it could readily be seen the psychologist was allowing a note of dryness to enter his comments that the bulk of man's philosophy religion politics social values and yes too often even his scientific conclusions was based upon this egocentric notion
the supreme importance and righteousness of me and mine ascendant at the center of things opposed to those who are not a part of me and mine on the outside and therefore inferior there must have been a signal from bill hayes for the psychologist left the generalities behind and came back to the issue the very ease of living on eden fostered the growth of schisms for there was no common enemy to band the group into one solid me-and-mine organism the audience would recall that when earth was divided into nations it had always been imperative to find a common enemy in some other nation that this was the only cohesive force man had been able to find to keep the nation from disintegrating another nudge factions took shape on eden and clashed in town meetings at last as expected some dissident individuals and family groups would no longer tolerate the irritation of living in the same neighborhood with the rest they broke off from the main colony and migrated across the near ridge to settle in an adjacent valley psychologically it was a most satisfactory development playing out in classical microcosm the massive behavior of total man
for as everyone knew had man ever been able to settle their differences had man been able to get along peacefully with himself he might have developed no civilization at all man's inability to stand the stench of his own kind was the most potent of all forces in driving him out to the stars bill hayes a weary and red-eyed moderator now apparently decided he could no longer stand the stench of the psychologists and abruptly cut him off he himself took over the summation it boiled down to a simple statement the colonists had reported everything that happened of significance or not these reports had all been thoroughly sifted in the normal course of e h q's daily work as they were received they had been collated and extended both by human and machine minds to detect any subtle trends away from norm there had been nothing absolutely nothing the reports might as well have originated somewhere near eugene oregon they were about as unusual as a saturday night bath back on the farm then silence sudden inexplicable silence
End of chapter 8 of Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton. Read by Dale Grothman.
