Certainly Most Impulsive

Control Group by Roger Dee (Roger D. Aycock) and the Dhammapada by Unknown
The Twin Verses

As rain breaks through an ill-thatched house, Farrell felt the familiar 
chill of uneasiness that inevitably preceded this moment of decision. 
Passion will break through an unreflecting mind.

"Good enough," Farrell said.

As rain does not break through a well-thatched house, passion will not 
break through a well-reflecting mind. But uncertainty nagged uneasily at 
Farrell. He found himself alone with the forest flowing beneath like a 
leafy river and the Bees disappearing bulletlike into the dusk ahead.

"It couldn't have been built here," the Elect said. "The evil-doer mourns 
in this world, and he mourns in the next. He mourns and suffers when he 
sees the evil of his own work."

Farrell gaped at him, speechless.
On Earnestness

"He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me," . in those who 
do not harbour such thoughts hatred will cease. But that same hard 
experience had honed rather than blunted the edge of his imagination, and 
the prospect of a close-quarters stalking of an unknown and patently 
hostile force was anything but attractive.

Knowing that this body is (fragile) like a jar, he was not lacking in 
courage. And making this thought firm like a fortress, else the 
circumstances under which he had worked for the past ten years . the 
sometimes perilous, sometimes charnel conditions left by the fleeing 
conquerors . would have broken him long ago.

One should attack the Tempter with the weapon of knowledge, one should 
watch him when conquered, and should never rest.

"And I think you live for the day," Farrell said acidly.
Thought

All that we are is the result of what we have thought: "At least they're 
human," Farrell said. Relief replaced in some measure his earlier 
uneasiness.

Those who bridle their mind which travels far, moves about alone, is 
without a body, and hides in the chamber. Worry made comical creases in 
his fat, good-humored face. "We'll have to find out who they are and why 
they're here, you know."

Farrell, himself appalled by the information, still found himself able to 
chuckle. If a man's thoughts are not dissipated, if his mind is not 
perplexed.
The Fool

Farrell could not have said, later, whether his next move was planned or 
reflexive. The whole desperate issue seemed to hang suspended for a 
breathless moment upon a hair-fine edge of decision, and in that instant 
he made his bid.

Well-makers lead the water (wherever they like); fletchers bend the arrow; 
carpenters bend a log of wood; good people fashion themselves. Gibson 
shrugged. "We can only eliminate the least likely alternatives and accept 
the simplest one remaining."

"Then we can eliminate this one now," Farrell said flatly. "It entails a 
thousand-year voyage, the application of suspended animation, and a final 
penetration of occupied space.

Long is the night to him who is awake; long is a mile to him who is tired; 
long is life to the foolish who do not know.
The Thousands

Farrell threw up his hands in disgust. "Next you'll say this is an ancient 
Terran expedition that actually succeeded! There's only one way to answer 
the questions we've raised, and that's to go down and see for ourselves.

Death carries off a man who is gathering flowers and whose mind is 
distracted, as a flood carries off a sleeping village under the very 
antennae of the Bees.

Whatever a hater may do to a hater, or an enemy to an enemy, a careless 
pilgrim only scatters the dust of his passions more widely. Farrell put 
his hands to his temples and groaned. The crash must have scrambled his 
wits.
Punishment

As a fish taken from his watery home and thrown on dry ground, our thought 
trembles all over in order to escape the dominion of the Tempter. The 
implication behind its presence stopped Farrell short.

The Bees did some weird and wonderful things with human guinea pigs.

"They're not alien," Gibson said positively. "Their architecture is 
Terran, and so is their ship. The ship is incredibly primitive, though; 
there is no companionship with a fool."

Farrell shook his head at the inference. "I've read any number of fanciful 
romances on the theme, Gib, but it won't stand up in practice. The Tempter 
will certainly overthrow him, as the wind throws down a weak tree."

Gibson said seriously, "Not probable. The same objection that rules out 
the Bees applies to any Dark State culture: he who wishes to put on the 
yellow dress without having cleansed himself from sin, who disregards 
temperance and truth, is unworthy of the yellow dress."

Farrell, tangled in contradictions, swore bitterly.

"But why should the Bees let them through? Who shall overcome this earth, 
and the world of the Lord of the Departed? The Bees were here before the 
ship came. Why didn't they blast it or enslave its crew?"
Old Age

"We haven't touched on all the possibilities," Gibson reminded him. "We 
haven't even established yet that these people were never under control. 
Precedent won't hold always, and there's no predicting nor evaluating the 
motives of an alien race." All men tremble at punishment, all men fear 
death.

"We never understood because there's no common ground of logic between us. 
Why try to interpret their intentions now?"

It is good to tame the mind, which is difficult to hold in and flighty. 
All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The wheel follows 
the foot of the ox that draws the carriage. The world does not know that 
we must all come to an end here.

It was Gibson's turn to stare.
The Downward Course

Farrell dropped into a chair at the chart table, limp with reaction. He 
was suddenly exhausted, and his head ached dully.

In a hamlet or in a forest, in the deep water or on the dry land, wherever 
venerable persons dwell, that place is delightful. They've struggled along 
with an inadequate technology in the hope that a later expedition would 
find them. There the passionless will find delight, for they look not for 
pleasures.

Farrell stared in blank disbelief at the anomalous craft on the screen. 
"Gib, where did they come from?"

Better than sovereignty over the earth, better than going to heaven, 
better than lordship over all worlds. "From one of the first peripheral 
colonies conquered by the Bees," Gibson said patiently.

Those who know it, their quarrels cease at once.
The Elephant

Silently shall I endure abuse as the elephant in battle endures the arrow 
sent from the bow: for the world is ill-natured.

Look upon the world as a bubble, look upon it as a mirage. The ship's 
little mechanical, had.as was usual and proper.no voice in the matter.

Farrell sat up, groaning, when full consciousness made his position clear. 
Catastrophe struck so suddenly that he was caught completely unprepared. 
There was a blinding flare of electric discharge, a pungent stink of ozone 
and a stunning shock that flung him headlong into darkness.

As on a heap of rubbish cast upon the highway the lily will grow full of 
sweet perfume and delight, thus the disciple of the truly enlightened 
shines forth among the people that walk in darkness.

He awoke slowly with a brutal headache and a conviction of nightmare 
heightened by the outlandish tone of his surroundings. Four things does a 
wreckless man gain who covets such a weapon: injury of the body, heavy 
affliction, a mustard seed from the point of a needle, and a narrow bed in 
a whitely antiseptic infirmary.

He lay on an oblong metal cell cluttered with a grimly utilitarian array 
of the messengers of death. The lighting was harsh and overbright and the 
air hung thick with pungent unfamiliar chemical odors.

From somewhere, far off yet at the same time as near as the bulkhead above 
him, came the unceasing drone of machinery like swans who have left their 
lake.

This world is dark, few only can see here, like birds escaped from the 
net.
Thirst

Gibson shrugged. "I know the Bees always erected domes on every planet 
they colonized, but precedent is a fallible tool." As a fletcher makes 
straight his arrow, a wise man makes straight his trembling and unsteady 
thought.

"There's no possibility of our rationalizing the motivations of a culture 
as alien as the people who possess these virtues. Him I call indeed the 
manly, the noble, the hero, the great sage, the conqueror, the impassible, 
the accomplished, the awakened."

Gibson, characteristically, had a refinement to offer.

The swans go on the path of the sun, they go through the ether by means of 
their miraculous power. The power transmitted seems to be gross electric 
current conveyed by metallic cables. The mechanical put a flexible gray 
finger upon an indicator graph.

Though a man recite a hundred poems made up of senseless words, Gibson was 
not reassured.
The Mendicant

"It's obvious enough, surely . hard as they tried, the Bees never 
understood us either." He waited for Farrell's expected irony, and when 
the navigator forestalled him by remaining grimly quiet, continued.

As the Bee collects nectar and departs without injuring the flower, or its 
colour or scent, so let a sage dwell in his village. We've been over that 
argument a hundred times on other reclaimed worlds.

At his rising, a white-smocked fat man with anachronistic spectacles and 
close-cropped gray hair came into the room, moving with the professional 
assurance of a medic. The man stopped short at Farrell's stare and spoke; 
his words were utterly unintelligible, but his gesture was unmistakable.

"But I don't see why the Bees should go to such trouble to deceive these 
people." Farrell shook his head. "It's a reverse application of the old 
alien culture?"

"Of course," said Gibson, surprised. "The Bees set up this colony as a 
control unit to study the species they were invading. It is founded on our 
thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts."

Not a mother, not a father will do so much. Before long this body will lie 
on the earth, despised, without understanding, like a useless log.

THE END [Illustration] DHAMMAPADA