The Past Through Tomorrow

by Robert A. Heinlein

  However the Little People differed from Earthmen only in degree with respect to scientific attainments. In an utterly basic sense they differed from humans in kind.

  They were not individuals.

  No single body of a native housed a discrete individual. Their individuals were multi-bodied; they had group “souls.” The basic unit of their society was a telepathic rapport group of many parts. The number of bodies and brains housing one individual ran as high as ninety or more and was never less than thirty-odd.

  The colonists began to understand much that had been utterly puzzling about the Little People only after they learned this fact. There is much reason to believe that the Little People found the Earthmen equally puzzling, that they, too, had assumed that their pattern of existence must be mirrored in others. The eventual discovery of the true facts on each side, brought about mutual misunderstandings over identity, seemed to arouse horror in the minds of the Little People. They withdrew themselves from the neighborhood of the Families’ settlement and remained away for several days.

  At length a messenger entered the camp site and sought out Barstow. “… we are sorry we shunned you… in our haste we mistook your fortune for your fault… we wish to help you… we offer to teach you that you may become like ourselves…”

  Barstow pondered how to answer this generous overture. “We thank you for your wish to help us,” he said at last, “but what you call our misfortune seems to be a necessary part of our makeup. Our ways are not your ways. I do not think we could understand your ways.”

  The thought that came back to him was very troubled. “… we have aided the beasts of the air and of the ground to cease their strife… but if you do not wish our help we will not thrust it on you…”

  The messenger went away, leaving Zaccur Barstow troubled in his mind. Perhaps, he thought, he had been hasty in answering without taking time to consult the elders. Telepathy was certainly not a gift to be scorned; perhaps the Little People could train them in telepathy without any loss of human individualism. But what he knew of the sensitives among the Families did not encourage such hope; there was not a one of them who was emotionally healthy, many of them were mentally deficient as well—it did not seem like a safe path for humans.

  It could be discussed later, he decided; no need to hurry.

  “No need to hurry” was the spirit throughout the settlement. There was no need to strive, little that had to be done and rarely any rush about that little. The sun was warm and pleasant, each day was much like the next, and there was always the day after that. The Members, predisposed by their inheritance to take a long view of things, began to take an eternal view. Time no longer mattered. Even the longevity research, which had continued throughout their memories, languished. Gordon Hardy tabled his current experimentation to pursue the vastly more fruitful occupation of learning what the Little People knew of the nature of life. He was forced to take it slowly, spending long hours in digesting new knowledge. As time trickled on, he was hardly aware that his hours of contemplation were becoming longer, his bursts of active study less frequent.

  One thing he did learn, and its implications opened up whole new fields of thought: the Little People had, in one sense, conquered death.

  Since each of their egos was shared among many bodies, the death of one body involved no death for the ego. All memory experiences of that body remained intact, the personality associated with it was not lost, and the physical loss could be made up by letting a young native “marry” into the group. But a group ego, one of the personalities which spoke to the Earthmen, could not die, save possibly by the destruction of every body it lived in. They simply went on, apparently forever.

  Their young, up to the time of “marriage” or group assimilation, seemed to have little personality and only rudimentary or possibly instinctive mental processes. Their elders expected no more of them in the way of intelligent behavior than a human expects of a child still in the womb. There were always many such uncompleted persons attached to any ego group; they were cared for like dearly beloved pets or helpless babies, although they were often as large and as apparently mature to Earth eyes as were their elders.

  Lazarus grew bored with paradise more quickly than did the majority of his cousins. “It can’t always,” he complained to Libby, who was lying near him on the fine grass, “be time for tea.”

  “What’s fretting you, Lazarus?”

  “Nothing in particular.” Lazarus set the point of his knife on his right elbow, flipped it with his other hand, watched it bury its point in the ground. “It’s just that this place reminds me of a well-run zoo. It’s got about as much future.” He grunted scornfully. “It’s ‘Never-Never Land.’”

  “But what in particular is worrying you?”

  “Nothing. That’s what worries me. Honest to goodness, Andy, don’t you see anything wrong in being turned out to pasture like this?”

  Libby grinned sheepishly. “I guess it’s my hillbilly blood. ‘When it don’t rain, the roof don’t leak; when it rains, I cain’t fix it nohow,’” he quoted. “Seems to me we’re doing tolerably well. What irks you?”

  “Well——” Lazarus’ pale-blue eyes stared far away; he paused in his idle play with his knife. “When I was a young man a long time ago, I was beached in the South Seas——”

  “Hawaii?”

  “No. Farther south. Damned if I know what they call it today. I got hard up, mighty hard up, and sold my sextant. Pretty soon—or maybe quite a while—I could have passed for a native. I lived like one. It didn’t seem to matter. But one day I caught a look at myself in a mirror.” Lazarus sighed gustily. “I beat my way out of that place shipmate to a cargo of green hides, which may give you some idea how scared and desperate I was!”

  Libby did not comment. “What do you do with your time, Lib?” Lazarus persisted.

  “Me? Same as always. Think about mathematics. Try to figure out a dodge for a space drive like the one that got us here.”

  “Any luck on that?” Lazarus was suddenly alert.

  “Not yet. Gimme time. Or I just watch the clouds integrate. There are amusing mathematical relationships everywhere if you are on the lookout for them. In the ripples on the water, or the shapes of busts—elegant fifth-order functions.”

  “Huh? You mean ‘fourth order.’”

  “Fifth order. You omitted the time variable. I like fifth-order equations,” Libby said dreamily. “You find ‘em in fish, too.”

  “Hummph!” said Lazarus, and stood up suddenly. “That may be all right for you, but it’s not my pidgin.”

  “Going some place?”

  “Goin‘ to take a walk.”

  Lazarus walked north. He walked the rest of that day, slept on the ground as usual that night, and was up and moving, still to the north, at dawn. The next day was followed by another like it, and still another. The going was easy, much like strolling in a park… too easy, in Lazarus’ opinion. For the sight of a volcano, or a really worthwhile waterfall, he felt willing to pay four bits and throw in a jackknife.

  The food plants were sometimes strange, but abundant and satisfactory. He occasionally met one or more of the Little People going about their mysterious affairs. They never bothered him nor asked why he was traveling but simply greeted him with the usual assumption of previous acquaintanceship. He began to long for one who would turn out to be a stranger; he felt watched.

  Presently the nights grew colder, the days less balmy, and the Little People less numerous. When at last he had not seen one for an entire day, he camped for the night, remained there the next day—took out his soul and examined it.

  He had to admit that he could find no reasonable fault with the planet nor its inhabitants. But just as definitely it was not to his taste. No philosophy that he had ever heard or read gave any reasonable purpose for man’s existence, nor any rational clue to his proper conduct. Basking in the sun-shine might be as good a thing to do with one’s life as any other—but it was not for him a
nd he knew it, even if he could not define how he knew it.

  The hegira of the Families had been a mistake. It would have been a more human, a more mature and manly thing, to have stayed and fought for their rights, even if they had died insisting on them. Instead they had fled across half a universe (Lazarus was reckless about his magnitudes) looking for a place to light. They had found one, a good one—but already occupied by beings so superior as to make them intolerable for men… yet so supremely indifferent in their superiority to men that they had not even bothered to wipe them out, but had whisked them away to this—this over-manicured country club.

  And that in itself was the unbearable humiliation. The New Frontiers was the culmination of five hundred years of human scientific research, the best that men could do—but it had been flicked across the deeps of space as casually as a man might restore a baby bird to its nest.

  The Little People did not seem to want to kick them out but the Little People, in their own way, were as demoralizing to men as were the gods of the Jockaira. One at a time they might be morons but taken as groups each rapport group was a genius that threw the best minds that men could offer into the shade. Even Andy. Human beings could not hope to compete with that type of organization any more than a back-room shop could compete with an automated cybernated factory. Yet to form any such group identities, even if they could which he doubted, would be, Lazarus felt very sure, to give up whatever it was that made them men.

  He admitted that he was prejudiced in favor of men. He was a man.

  The uncounted days slid past while he argued with himself over the things that bothered him—problems that had made sad the soul of his breed since the first apeman had risen to self-awareness, questions never solved by full belly nor fine machinery. And the endless quiet days did no more to give him final answers than did all the soul searchings of his ancestors. Why? What shall it profit a man? No answer came back—save one: a firm unreasoned conviction that he was not intended for, or not ready for, this timeless snug harbor of ease.

  His troubled reveries were interrupted by the appearance of one of the Little People. “… greetings, old friend… your wife King wishes you to return to your home… he has need of your advice…”

  “What’s the trouble?” Lazarus demanded.

  But the little creature either could or would not tell him. Lazarus gave his belt a hitch and headed south. “… there is no need to go slowly…” a thought came after him.

  Lazarus let himself be led to a clearing beyond a clump of trees. There he found an egg-shaped object about six feet long, featureless except for a door in the side. The native went in through the door, Lazarus squeezed his larger bulk in after him; the door closed.

  It opened almost at once and Lazarus saw that they were on the beach just below the human settlement. He had to admit that it was a good trick.

  Lazarus hurried to the ship’s boat parked on the beach in which Captain King shared with Barstow a semblance of community headquarters. “You sent for me, Skipper. What’s up?”

  King’s austere face was grave. “It’s about Mary Sperling.”

  Lazarus felt a sudden cold tug at his heart. “Dead?”

  “No. Not exactly. She’s gone over to the Little People. ‘Married’ into one of their groups.”

  “What? But that’s impossible!”

  Lazarus was wrong. There was no faint possibility of interbreeding between Earthmen and natives but there was no barrier, if sympathy existed, to a human merging into one of their rapport groups, drowning his personality in the ego of the many.

  Mary Sperling, moved by conviction of her own impending death, saw in the deathless group egos a way out. Faced with the eternal problem of life and death, she had escaped the problem by choosing neither… selflessness. She had found a group willing to receive her, she had crossed over.

  “It raises a lot of new problems,” concluded King. “Slayton and Zaccur and I all felt that you had better be here.”

  “Yes, yes, sure—but where is Mary?” Lazarus demanded and then ran out of the room without waiting for an answer. He charged through the settlement ignoring both greetings and attempts to stop him. A short distance outside the camp he ran across a native. He skidded to a stop. “Where is Mary Sperling?”

  “… I am Mary Sperling…”

  “For the love of—— You can’t be.”

  “… I am Mary Sperling and Mary Sperling is myself… do you not know me, Lazarus?… I know you…”

  Lazarus waved his hands. “No! I want to see Mary Sperling who looks like an Earthman—like me!”

  The native hesitated. “… follow me, then…”

  Lazarus found her a long way from the camp; it was obvious that she had been avoiding the other colonists. “Mary!”

  She answered him mind to mind: “… I am sorry to see you troubled… Mary Sperling is gone except in that she is part of us…”

  “Oh, come off it, Mary! Don’t give me that stuff! Don’t you know me?”

  “… of course I know you, Lazarus… it is you who do not know me … do not trouble your soul or grieve your heart with the sight of this body in front of you… I am not one of your kind… I am native to this planet…”

  “Mary,” he insisted, “you’ve got to undo this. You’ve got to come out of there!”

  She shook her head, an oddly human gesture, for the face no longer held any trace of human expression; it was a mask of otherness. “… that is impossible… Mary Sperling is gone… the one who speaks with you is inextricably myself and not of your kind…” The creature who had been Mary Sperling turned and walked away.

  “Mary!” he cried. His heart leapt across the span of centuries to the night his mother had died. He covered his face with his hands and wept the unconsolable grief of a child.

  5

  LAZARUS FOUND both King and Barstow waiting for him when he returned. King looked at his face. “I could have told you,” he said soberly, “but you wouldn’t wait.”

  “Forget it,” Lazarus said harshly. “What now?”

  “Lazarus, there is something else you have to see before we discuss anything,” Zaccur Barstow answered.

  “Okay. What?”

  “Just come and see.” They led him to a compartment in the ship’s boat which was used as a headquarters. Contrary to Families’ custom it was locked; King let them in. There was a woman inside, who, when she saw the three, quietly withdrew, locking the door again as she went out.

  “Take a look at that,” directed Barstow.

  It was a living creature in an incubator—a child, but no such child as had ever been seen before. Lazarus stared at it, then said angrily, “What the devil is it?”

  “See for yourself. Pick it up. You won’t hurt it.”

  Lazarus did so, gingerly at first, then without shrinking from the contact as his curiosity increased. What it was, he could not say. It was not human; it was just as certainly not offspring of the Little People. Did this planet, like the last, contain‘ some previously unsuspected race? It was manlike, yet certainly not a man child. It lacked even the button nose of a baby, nor were there evident external ears. There were organs in the usual locations of each but flush with the skull and protected with bony ridges. Its hands had too many fingers and there was an extra large one near each wrist which ended in a cluster of pink worms.

  There was something odd about the torso of the infant which Lazarus could not define. But two other gross facts were evident: the legs ended not in human feet but in horny, toeless pediments—hoofs. And the creature was hermaphroditic—not in deformity but in healthy development, an androgyne.

  “What is it?” he repeated, his mind filled with lively suspicion.

  “That,” said Zaccur, “is Marion Schmidt, born three weeks ago.”

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “It means that the Little People are just as clever in manipulating us as they are in manipulating plants.”

  “What? But they agreed to leave us
alone!”

  “Don’t blame them too quickly. We let ourselves in for it. The original idea was simply a few improvements.”

  “ ‘Improvements!’ That thing’s an obscenity.”

  “Yes and no. My stomach turns whenever I have to look at it… but actually—well, it’s sort of a superman. Its body architecture has been redesigned for greater efficiency, our useless simian hangovers have been left out, and its organs have been rearranged in a more sensible fashion. You can’t say it’s not human, for it is… an improved model. Take that extra appendage at the wrist. That’s another hand, a miniature one… backed up by a microscopic eye. You can see how useful that would be, once you get used to the idea.” Barstow stared at it. “But it looks horrid, to me.”

  “It’d look horrid to anybody,” Lazarus stated. “It may be an improvement, but damn it, I say it ain’t human.”

  “In any case it creates a problem.”

  “I’ll say it does!” Lazarus looked at it again. “You say it has a second set of eyes in those tiny hands? That doesn’t seem possible.”

  Barstow shrugged. “I’m no biologist. But every cell in the body contains a full bundle of chromosomes. I suppose that you could grow eyes, or bones, or anything you liked anywhere, if you knew how to manipulate the genes in the chromosomes. And they know.”

  “I don’t want to be manipulated!”

  “Neither do I.”

  Lazarus stood on the bank and stared out over the broad beach at a full meeting of the Families. “I am——” he started formally, then looked puzzled. “Come here a moment, Andy.” He whispered to Libby; Libby looked pained and whispered back. Lazarus looked exasperated and whispered again. Finally he straightened up and started over.

  “I am two hundred and forty-one years old—at least,” he stated. “Is there anyone here who is older?” It was empty formality; he knew that he was the eldest; he felt twice that old. “The meeting is opened,” he went on, his big voice rumbling on down the beach assisted by speaker systems from the ship’s boats. “Who is your chairman?”