Nebula Maker & Four Encounters by Olaf Stapledon

Author:Olaf Stapledon [Stapledon, Olaf]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Sci-Fi
Publisher: Dodd, Mead & Co
Published: 1983-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

5. A Christian

Second Encounter: A SCIENTIST

I have met a scientist, and now I must tell you about him.

It was at the party, the congested, the conglomerate party, where I was taken "to meet people." If you had been with me, perhaps I could have made con- tact, but the man who had brought me was too soon swept from me by the throng's glacier drift. The few whom he had burdened with me had tried to include me, but we could find no catalytic. I was a goat penned among sheep. The bleating was alien to me, though alas not meaningless. With each new guest's arrival, the flood of sound rose higher. I was a trapped miner, the water rising toward his mouth.

Yet many of these people were individually notable. From press photographs I recognized a cabinet minister, two famous writers, a popular actress, an eminent scientist. Among the bright female silks and the male motley of black and white, there was a high ecclesiastic in purple tunic and breeches. His face was old sandstone, crowned with snow; and under the white cornices of his brows gleamed serpent eyes, of wisdom or of cunning. Individually distinguished, and leaders of my species in this island, why should these creatures seem to me in my loneliness a bunch of chattering monkeys?

Across the room, a young man stood alone in silence. His glass was empty. His cigarette ash dropped unnoticed. Intently, and with a secret smile, he reviewed the huddled flock. I thought of a sparrow hawk on a high branch, watching for prey; then of a mongrel terrier, scruffy, genial, mischievous, none too clean, with mud unnoticed on his muzzle. He was a raw-boned young man, wire-haired, with terrier eyes, and a complexion of uncooked shrimps.

I struck boldly into a current that was setting in his direction. When I had emerged beside him, I waited a little, for decency, and to recover composure; then I said casually, "Do you know these people, mostly? I am told they are all distinguished, all leaders of our society." His response was delayed. Judicially, he replied, "Five percent, perhaps, I know; maybe seven. Leaders? Yes, of stampeding swine, heading for the precipice." There was silence. "These occasions," I ventured, "terrify me. Silly, isn't it!" He answered at once, "Just boring, I call them. When I find myself stranded, I play a game. I study the fauna." Silence fell once more, so I reminded him of my presence by remarking that a crowd of strangers did often strike one as mere fauna.

To my surprise he let loose a flood of fantasy, couched in a jargon that was consciously literary. "First," he said, "I observe that these creatures are all specimens of Homo sapiens, and at bottom palaeolithic savages, though tricked out modernistically in tissues of vegetable fibre or animal hair, or the secretion of caterpillars, with here and there scraps of hide, bits of metal, and a sprinkling of rare crystals. That priest in fancy dress is

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