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                          THE PURE OBSERVERS

                            BY B. J. ROGERS

              _The history of space-flight begins before
              man. While our planet still lay wrapped in
              its dream of isolation, other intelligences
               watched from above--minds pure, undying,
                noble--and pathetically vulnerable...._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1958.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


"_Oh, he is dead!" my mind cried out._

Novna, my dear, I am writing this as a release for my conscience.
Those things which trouble me are not such as one exchanges with vigil
companions, or indeed with anyone not bound by ties like ours.

If I were at home with you I would exchange with your soul in a moment
the feeling of my own, but distance permits no such consolation and it
is not suitable for me to exchange so familiarly with my colleagues.

I find myself questioning the value of our customary refusal to
communicate thoughts of a delicate and sensitive nature. The Earth
people, who speak their thoughts, perhaps are less primitive than
we like to imagine. They seem to have no sense of the danger of
overwhelming the soul of another with unwanted confidences. The purely
vocal nature of their communication does not admit an excessive degree
of emotion to their relationships. They do not have to erect any
artificial barriers between each other, as we must who exchange on a
mental level.

These doubts of mine never could have arisen if we men of Hainos had
not presumed to observe the alien ways of those creatures on the third
Earth, so like ourselves and yet so remote, though we have hovered
above them, listening and watching, for twelve of their generations.

This vigil, though it is to last but one journey around the sun, has
seemed longer and less fruitful than all the others. I think I shall
not come again, but leave such work to those who can remain efficient
and disinterested Observers, unmoved by doubt and anxiety. Novna, you
must begin to think what we two shall do with the rest of our eternity,
for now that I have spent some small portion of mine in fifty vigils, I
find they have become distasteful. We might go to the Palace of Art and
study to be poet-priests. My last vigil has convinced me that I am more
fitted for that life than this.

When our mission left Hainos for the third Earth, there was aboard our
ship the poet-priest Gven. You must remember the many nights we sat
beneath the rocks by the ocean, listening as his soul gave ours his
songs. Innocent they were, and filled with talk of purity and light,
though Gven is as old as the rest of us, even if he is as different
from you and me as the Earth child is from its parents.

You have never seen him, I think. He is smaller than I, slight of
build and tender-faced. How out of place he looked among the ship's
sturdy men of science, with their ages of discipline and austerity
written indelibly into their features. They did not want him. They told
the commissioner that they did not want him.

"Let him stay at home," they said, "and sing his songs to those who
wish to listen."

But the commissioner himself, and, I suspect, the commissioner's wife,
was as fond as any of Gven and his songs, so he said Gven was to come
if he liked.

Poor Gven tried hard enough to make us like him. He offered us the only
gift he had, that of his songs, but no one cared to hear them except
me, and I was ashamed to say so. In the end he was reduced to sitting
for hours, looking out into the night through which the ship bore us,
saying nothing to anyone, for fear of our scorn. He would have liked
us to tell him about the Earth people, for his studies at the Palace
fitted him sadly for a scientific expedition.

Of the Earth people, however, we hesitated to speak freely, even among
ourselves, for all of us feel strongly about them, in one way or
another. Our exchanges on the matter have always been burdened with
emotion; and we find we cannot share easily our thoughts about Earth
people, unless we banter lightly and say little of what we really feel.

When our long-ship drew near the third Earth, we were transferred into
the round-ship in which we were to carry on our observations. I could
see Gven was limp with excitement, but as always, I would not exchange
with him for fear of the others, not even to drain off that excess of
feeling which was to prove so dangerous to him.

Perhaps he thought it would be different, once we had established
ourselves in our designated area of observation. Then we might warm
toward him, giving him the comforts of our experience. If such were his
expectations, he was disappointed. Whatever he gathered from us was
purely accidental, information that we exchanged among ourselves as we
worked. Only in this way did he learn of those few bonds we had forged
with the Earth people.

It is our custom, as you know, for each man to select one of the Earth
people as his subject. This is not part of our work, it is only a
device to drive away the tedium that descends upon men far from home
and bound to exacting work in a confined place. We begin to feel quite
passionately concerned with our subjects, and occasionally find it
difficult to return to our primary concerns.

For some time I had been spending my free hours in the world of a
gentle old merchant named Jacobs. I lived his life with him briefly,
seeing his wife and children as he saw them, going with him to his
store. His memories were good ones, filled with hard work and simple
pleasures. One day, when I had left the computing tables to prepare
for dinner, I sought the mind of Jacobs. He was crossing the street and
as he turned his head, he saw the shining lights of an automobile just
before it struck him. I withdrew from his mind in a shower of pain and
darkness.

"Oh, he is dead," my mind cried out to my vigil companions before
I could smother the shock and emotion in it. They looked up at me,
questioning. Then I exchanged with them more coolly, "My man Jacobs has
been killed crossing the street."

Keven, the fuel technician, reached my mind first. "A pity, I lost a
subject myself that way not long ago. It is a bad death for them, poor
things. They might build overpasses, mightn't they? A pity."

It has never failed to unsettle me, the way my companions have come
to accept the idea of death so easily. To me it is always a horror,
unnatural and alien. You cannot quite see how it is, Novna, for you
have never been in the mind of one who dies.

I withdrew for a little while to mourn my man Jacobs, for my sorrow was
not to be shared with the others. It was while I sat thinking of the
dead Jacobs that Gven approached hesitantly and sat near me.

"Is it possible," he asked, "that one can read the soul of an Earth
man? Could I? Or perhaps that would not be permitted to me?"

His eagerness made me ashamed of the silence I had maintained between
us. "It is certainly possible for you to try, though it cannot always
be done. You need ask no one for permission."

The delight in his eyes made me forget Jacobs a little. "I may try
anyone at all?"

"I advise you to search about a little. Don't seize on the first one
you contact as a subject. You have less time than the rest of us for
this sort of thing."

Gven thanked me shyly and went away. Later I saw him sitting at the
open panels, looking down at the cloud-topped mountains and sandy
valleys over which we circled. His face was still and pale as he
concentrated.

The next day at dinner, Gven sat playing with his food, looking up
at the rest of us frequently, as if his fear of our coldness were
contending with his wish to open his mind to us. I was not the only
one to notice his excitement, but the rest sat looking at their
plates stonily. They liked Gven even less than they had at first, and
preferred to ignore his presence altogether. At last I lifted my head
defiantly and my thought streamed across the table into the mind of
Gven with such energy and violence that the others raised their eyes
from their food in quick surprise.

"It must be that you have found a subject. I should like to hear about
it."

At once Gven let his thoughts explode in undisciplined profusion. The
men drew back a little, shocked by the unfamiliar impact of another's
passion on their minds.

"The very first mind I sought was that of a girl who calls herself
Maria Dolores. Often her mind turns in upon itself and she reflects
like this, 'Maria Dolores, you have behaved badly to your papa today.
Now you must go and ask him to forgive you and give him a kiss.' In
this way she scolds herself for small misdemeanors. Her world is
composed of happy, innocent trivialities, though as her purity touches
on them and causes them to glow briefly before they are left behind, it
seems that there are no more divine and lovely things in existence than
those in the world of my Maria Dolores."

Gven blushed and paused for a moment, then rushed on. "I sense that
her father and mother have barricaded her from everyone else. They are
strict with Maria Dolores and sometimes she wishes she could go out to
dances as the other girls do. But she is not sad for long, and goes
to gather flowers for the dinner table. She sets them in long silver
dishes, that reflect the pink and red glow of the sunset slanting
through the window. This pleases Maria Dolores and she stands watching
for a long time."

Gven would have said more, but all at once Corven, the cultural
researcher, interrupted, looking at me. "Noven, what have you brought
upon us by your curiosity? We are being buried in an avalanche of
poetic fancies."

After this, Gven sat silent, his face burning, and the rest of us began
to talk of the relation between the sites of mines and the locations of
proving grounds.

For many days, I watched Gven covertly. He no longer seemed to care
about our rebuffs, nor did he show any desire to ask us questions. He
only sat by the panels, his expression withdrawn and intent, while the
rest of us hustled busily and a little self-consciously around him.
I came to notice a certain perplexity in his face after a time, and
felt that I should ask if he needed any assistance. But I was awkward
and unsure of myself, so I only watched him and said nothing. At last
he came to me, having built up a powerful reserve of feeling that
overflowed with the more violence for having been repressed so long.

"There is something that is to happen in the life of my Maria Dolores,"
Gven began directly.

Unaccountably, I tensed and tried to suppress the warmth I felt toward
him. "Well, what is it then?" I answered.

He seemed not to notice the strain I was under. "They have told her she
is to be married to a young man whom they have chosen for her. She is
unhappy, but cannot tell them. Now they are making many preparations.
Maria Dolores spends her time with her mother, sewing dresses and
packing them away. Then her mother speaks to her of things that
frighten her and me, things that seem to happen when men and women are
alone at night. She does not understand and lies awake when her mother
has gone, afraid and wondering. We are uneasy, Maria Dolores and I."

Here, Novna, I must attempt to explain the marriage of Earth people.
While with us marriage is the spiritualized union of masculine and
feminine natures in one soul, it is to them a more concrete thing.
Their junction is not only one of minds, but one of bodies as well.

The union seems not to be unpleasant for those who take part in it, but
for us, who so jealously guard our bodies from another's touch, the
marriage of Earth people is difficult to contemplate without revulsion.

I was rescued from having to answer Gven by the laughter of Corven, who
had overheard the last of the poet's words. "Well then, poet, if she is
unhappy, you must take her away, mustn't you? That's what you want, it
seems, to take her away to Hainos and make her your Gvna."

Gven stood up and glared angrily at Corven. "Would it be so bad a thing
to carry back one person of Earth? Why shouldn't we?" he flung at the
other man.

Corven turned away in disgust. "You know we have no authority to
intervene in their affairs. This is what comes of letting a poet-priest
meddle in the concerns of science."

A sullenness came over Gven's face, and he withdrew from us again,
turning back to the panels. I knew he was with Maria Dolores. Though I
was uneasy over his ignorance, I could not help feeling relieved that I
had not been forced to enlighten him.

My anxiety proved to be well-founded. It was only a few weeks later
that we reaped the results of our long-cultivated conspiracy of
silence against the poet-priest. We were deeply engrossed in our work
at the computing tables when our nerves were shattered by a cry of
anguish from the mind of Gven. In a moment we were standing around
him, avoiding each other's eyes and scarcely daring to look at the man
shuddering before us, his face in his hands.

"It is done." Gven cast his anger at us like a stone. "It is as though
she had been killed. Why couldn't you tell me? You, Noven, I asked you.
Why couldn't you have spared me this?"

The men looked uneasily at me and back at Gven. Shaken, they drifted
away, back to their work, still ashamed to meet each other's eyes. Gven
sat there, grinding his fist into his palm, staring straight ahead.

He has been gone for some time now. At his request, a long-ship stopped
for him on its homeward cruise. I have not tried to reach another
subject, nor have any of the others. At least, if they have, they do
not speak of it. We are reluctant to attempt any communion with these
creatures whose alien nature has been so strikingly demonstrated to
us. The game of Observation itself has become less a game, and we go
about our work with a vague sense of unrest, as though the descent of
catastrophe upon us were imminent.

Gven gave us one last gift before he left. He sang us a song that made
us want to bend our heads to the ground in shame. If his songs are
bitter now, and if there is no innocence in them, one needs not look
far to find the reason.