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For while Fishhook used machines, they were not machines as such — not machines that could be accepted by the common mass of mankind. For they had no pistons and no wheels, no gears, no shafts, no levers, not a single button — they had nothing of the component parts of a commonplace machine. They were strange and alien and they had no common touch.
So Man had lost his cultural hero and since his nature was so fashioned that he must have some abstract hero-worship, because he must always have an ideal and a goal, a vacuum was created that screamed aloud for filling.
Paranormal kinetics, for all its strangeness, for all its alien concept, filled the bill exactly. For here, finally, were all the crackpot cults completely justified; here, at last, was the promise of ultimate wish-fulfillment; here was something exotic enough, or that could be made exotic, to satisfy the depth of human emotion such as a mere machine never had been able.
Here, so help us God, was magic!
So the world went off on a magic jag.
The pendulum had swung too far, as always, and now was swinging back, and the horror of intolerance had been loosed upon the land.
So Man once again was without a cultural hero, but had acquired instead a neosuperstition that went howling through the dark of a second Middle Ages.
“I have puzzled much upon the matter,” said Father Flanagan. “It is something which naturally must concern even so unworthy a servant of the Church as I. For whatever may concern the souls and the minds of men is of interest to the Church and to the Holy Father. It has been the historic position of Rome that we must so concern ourselves.”
Blaine bowed slightly in recognition of the sincerity of the man, but there was a fleck of bitterness in his voice when he answered: “So you’ve come to study me. You are here to question me.”
There was sadness in the old priest’s voice. “I prayed you would not see it in this light. I have failed, I see. I came to you as to someone who could help me and, through me, the Church. For, my son, the Church at times needs help. It is not too proud to say so, for all that it has been charged, through all its history, with excessive pride. You are a man, an intelligent man, who is a part of this thing which serves to puzzle us. I thought that you might help me.”
Blaine sat silent, and the priest sat looking at him, a humble man who sought a favor, and yet with a sense of i
“I would not mind,” said Blaine. “Not that I think for a moment it would do any good. You’re a part of what is in this town.”
“Not so, my son. We neither sanction nor condemn. We do not have facts enough.”
“I’ll tell you about myself,” said Blaine, “if that is what you want to know. I am a traveler. My job is to go out to the stars. I climb into a machine — well, not exactly a machine, rather it’s a symbolic contrivance that helps me free my mind, that possibly even gives my mind a kick in the right direction. And it helps with the navigation — Look, Father, this is hard to say in simple, common terms. It sounds like gibberish.”
“I am following you with no difficulty.”
“Well, this navigation. That’s another fu
“Magic?”
“Hell, no — pardon me, Father. No, it isn’t magic. Once you understand it, once you get the feel of it, it is clear and simple and it becomes a part of you. It is as natural as breathing and as easy as falling off a log. I would imagine—”
“I would think,” said Father Flanagan, “that it is u
“Why,” Blaine told him, “no different than sitting here with you. At first — the first few times, that is — you feel obscenely naked, with just your mind and not your body. . . .”
“And your mind wanders all about?”
“Well, no. It could, of course, but it doesn’t. Usually you stuff yourself inside the machine you took along with you.”
“Machine?”
“A monitoring contraption. It picks up all the data, gets it down on tape. You get the entire picture. Not just what you see yourself — although it’s not actually seeing; it’s sensing — but you get it all, everything that can possibly be caught. In theory, and largely in practice, the machine picks up the data, and the mind is there for interpretation only.”
“And what do you see?”
Blaine laughed. “Father, that would take longer than either of us have.”
“Nothing like on Earth?”
“Not often, for there are not too many Earth-like planets. Proportionately, that is. There are, in fact, quite a lot in number. But we’re not limited to Earth-like planets. We can go anywhere it is possible for the machine to function, and the way those machines are engineered, that means almost anywhere. . . .”
“Even to the heart of another sun?”
“Not the machine. It would be destroyed. I imagine that the mind could. But it’s not been done. So far as I know, that is.”
“And your feelings? What do you think?”
“I observe,” said Blaine. “That is what I go for.”
“You do not get the feeling that you’re lord of all creation? You do not have the thought that Man holds all the universe in the hollow of his hand?”
“If it’s the sin of pride and vanity you’re thinking of, no, never. You sometimes get a thrill at knowing where you are. You’re often filled with wonder, but more often you are puzzled. You are reminded, again and yet again, of how insignificant you are. And there are times when you forget that you are human. You’re just a blob of life — brother to everything that ever existed or ever will exist.”
“And you think of God?”
“No,” said Blaine. “I can’t say I ever do.”
“That is too bad,” said Father Flanagan. “It is rather frightening. To be out there alone. . . .”
“Father, at the very start I made it plain to you that I was not inclined to be a religious sort of man — not in the accepted sense, that is. And I played square with you.”
“So you did,” said Father Flanagan.
“And if your next question is going to be: Could a religious man go out to the stars and still retain his faith; could he go out and come back full of faith; would traveling to the stars take away something of the true belief he held? Then I’d have to ask you to define your terms.”
“My terms?” asked Father Flanagan, amazed.
“Yes, faith, for one thing. What do you mean by faith? Is faith enough for Man? Should he be satisfied with faith alone? Is there no way of finding out the truth? Is the attitude of faith, of believing in something for which there can be no more than philosophic proof, the true mark of a Christian? Or should the Church long since—”
Father Flanagan raised a hand. “My son!” he said. “My son!”
“Forget it, Father. I should not have said it.”
They sat for a moment, regarding one another; neither understanding. As if we were two aliens, thought Blaine. With viewpoints that did not come within a million miles of coinciding, and yet they both were men.
“I am truly sorry, Father.”
“No need to be. You said it. There are others who believe it, or think it, but would never say it. You at least are honest.”
He reached out and patted Blaine slowly on the arm.
“You are a telepath?” he asked.
“And a teleporter. But limited. Very limited.”
“And that is all?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never dug around.”
“You mean you may have other abilities you are not aware of?”
“Look, Father, in PK you have a certain mental capacity. First, you are the simple things, the easy things — the telepath, the teleport, the huncher. You go on from there — or there are some who do. You grow. Some stop growing after a time and others keep on growing. Each of these abilities is not a separate ability; the abilities themselves are simply manifestations of a wholeness of the mind. They are, lumped together, the mind working as it always should have worked, even from the very first, if it had had its chance.”