Part 9 (1/2)
”Mythology contains many a mention of it, though few regard it as the disaster it was. You see, only one of these forces has been fully operating on earth. The other is crippled, subdued.”
”What happened?”
Morgan wrinkled her brow. ”First, let me explain what the effect of this imbalance is. If you put a cup on a table, and extend your hand to pick it up, you are moving directly toward an established aim. If you shove your arm all the way, as far as it will go, you'll push the cup all the way across and send it cras.h.i.+ng to the floor on the other side. Yet no one can deny that your force was applied to the desired end, in the right direction, with the correct motivations.
”There is nothing evil or dangerous or harmful on this planet except excess. There's no such thing as a deadly poison; there's just too much of a poison. Too much pleasure is pain; too much fear (a fine survival characteristic) or too much anger (and that's another) means madness.”
”I think I see. Then which of these powers was crippled?”
”The power of darkness-destruction-anabolism.”
”You're out of your head! This planet's loaded with it!”
She shook her head sagely. ”It's building-building gone out of control. It's the cause of technology's outstripping the spirit. Every nation that smashes every other nation does it through a desire to construct something-a political philosophy, an empire, a personal fortune or a personal power. It's construction that's killing us off. It's cancer!”
”I never thought of it that way.”
”Humans don't. How can they? They're born to it. But that can all be changed. It's up to you.”
”Me?”
”You. Only you have the power to give the Grail to Merlin.”
”What has that to do with it?”
”Remember your reading about him? What was his parentage?”
”He was-he was born of a virgin.”
”That's right. That is the way the guidances are placed on a planet. Merlin's the antichrist-yes. But don't recoil from that word. I tell you it has nothing to do with evil-everything to do with balance.”
”What would the world be like with that force in it?”
”That requires a whole new system of thought. It's hard to put into human language. Have you ever heard of someone committing a crime for his own benefit?”
”All the time.”
”Well, try to imagine a culture in which it would be impossible to construct that sentence, because 'crime' and 'benefit' couldn't exist in the same idea-sequence!”
He was quiet for a long time. At last he said, ”Mankind as a unit of free things, eh? Each with the full consciousness of the whole species?”
She shrugged. ”Action is a light force, inhibition a dark one. The name you have for rational inhibition is conscience. Imagine all mankind with a cohesive conscience, and you'll get the picture.”
Guinn wet his lips. ”And what about you? And the Druids?”
”There's a long word for me. I'm a metempsychotic. I get transferred complete from one body to another, with complete memory. That's how I can do the things I do. None of it's magic. It's just that for me there have been no dark ages. It's all soundly scientific. The money in your wallet? A kind of teleportation. The chair that moved by itself? Telekinesis.
”The same thing's true of the Druids. 'Druid' isn't the name of a religious sect, by the way; it's a t.i.tle, like 'chancellor' or 'minister'. They're metempsychotics too, but for the dark powers. I'm neutral. I imagine I'm a sort of recording device for the Great Ones.”