Isaac Asimov - Gold - The Final Science Fiction Collection

Sam laughed, and shouted, “Stop! Stop! Don’t use me. I don’t know a cow well enough. I’ve only seen pictures. You’re getting it all wrong.”

It looked more like a caricature than a real animal and, as he cried out, the outline wavered and thinned. The smoke remained but it was as though an unseen hand had passed across the air to erase what had been written.

Then a new shape began to take form. At first, Sam couldn’t quite make out what it was intended to represent, but it changed and sharpened quickly. He stared in surprise, his mouth hanging open and his hamper bumping emptily against his shoulder blade.

The smoke was forming a human being. There was no mistake about it. It was forming accurately, as though it had a model it could imitate, and of course it did have one, for Sam was standing there.

It was becoming Sam, clothes and all, even the outline of the hamper and the strap over his shoulder. It was another Sam Chase.

It was still a little vague, wavering a bit, insubstantial, but it firmed as though it were correcting itself, and then, finally, it was steady.

It never became entirely solid. Sam could see the vegetation dimly through it, and when a gust of wind caught it, it moved a bit as if it were a tethered balloon.

But it was real. It was no creation of his mind. Sam was sure of that.

But he couldn’t just stand there, simply facing it. Diffidently, he said, “Hello, there.”

Somehow, he expected the Other Sam to speak, too, and, indeed, its mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. It might just have been imitating the motion of Sam’s mouth.

Sam said, again, “Hello, can you speak?”

There was no sound but his own voice, and yet there was a tickling in his mind, a conviction that they could communicate.

Sam frowned. What made him so sure of that? The thought seemed to pop into his mind.

He said, “Is this what has appeared to other people, human people-my kind-on this world?” No answering sound, but he was quite sure what the answer to his question was. This had appeared to other people, not necessarily in their own shape, but something. And it hadn’t worked.

What made him so sure of that? Where did these convictions come from in answer to his questions?

Yes, of course, they were the answers to his questions. The Other Sam was putting thoughts into his mind. It was adjusting the tiny electric currents in his brain cells so that the proper thoughts would arise.

He nodded thoughtfully at th at thought, and the Other Sam must have caught the significance of the gesture, for it nodded, too.

It had to be so. First a cow had formed, when Sam had thought of a cow, and then it had shifted when Sam had said the cow was imperfect. The Other Sam could grasp his thoughts somehow, and if it could grasp them, then it could modify them, too, perhaps.

Was this what telepathy was like, then? It was not like talking. It was having thoughts, except that the thoughts originated elsewhere and were not created entirely of one's own mental operations. But how could you tell your own thoughts from thoughts imposed from outside?

Sam knew the answer to that at once. Right now, he was unused to the process. He had never had practice. With time, as he grew more skilled at it, he would be able to tell one kind of thought from another without trouble.

In fact, he could do it now, if he thought about it. Wasn't he carrying on a conversation in a way?

He was wondering, and then knowing. The wondering was his own question, the knowing was the Other

Sam's answer. Of course it was.

There! The “of course it was,” just now, was an answer.

“Not so fast, Other Sam,” said Sam, aloud. “Don't go too quickly. Give me a chance to sort things out, or I'll just get confused.”

He sat down suddenly on the grass, which bent away from him in all directions. The Other Sam slowly tried to sit down as well.

Sam laughed. “Your legs are bending in the wrong place.”

That was corrected at once. The Other Sam sat down, but remained very stiff from the waist up. “Relax,” said Sam.

Slowly, the Other Sam slumped, flopping a bit to one side, then correcting that.

Sam was relieved. With the Other Sam so willing to follow his lead, he was sure good will was involved. It was! Exactly!

“No,” said Sam. “I said, not so fast. Don't go by my thoughts. Let me speak out loud, even if you can't hear me. Then adjust my thoughts, so I'll know it's an adjustment. Do you understand?”

He waited a moment and was then sure the Other Sam understood.

Ah, the answer had come, but not right away. Good! “Why do you appear to people?” asked Sam. He stared earnestly at the Other Sam, and knew that the Other Sam wanted to communicate with people, but had failed.

No answer to that question had really been required. The answer was obvious. But then, why had they failed?

He put it in words. “Why did you fail? You are successfully communicating with me.”

Sam was beginning to learn how to understand the alien manifestation. It was as if his mind were adapting itself to a new technique of communication, just as it would adapt itself to a new language. Or was Other Sam influencing Sam’s mind and teaching him the method without Sam even knowing it was being done?

Sam found himself emptying his mind of immediate thoughts. After he asked his question, he just let his eyes focus at nothing and his eyelids droop, as though he were about to drop off to sleep, and then he knew the answer. There was a little clicking, or something, in his mind, a signal that showed him something had been put in from outside.

He now knew, for instance, that the Other Sam’s previous attempts at communication had failed because the people to whom it had appeared had been frightened. They had doubted their own sanity. And because they feared, their minds…tightened. Their minds would not receive. The attempts at communication gradually diminished, though they had never entirely stopped. “But you’re communicating with me,” said Sam.

Sam was different from all the rest. He had not been afraid.

“Couldn’t you have made them not afraid first? Then talked to them?“

It wouldn’t work. The fear-filled mind resisted all. An attempt to change might damage. It would be wrong to damage a thinking mind. There had been one such attempt, but it had not worked. “What is it you are trying to communicate, Other Sam?”

A wish to be left alone. Despair!

Despair was more than a thought; it was an emotion; it was a frightening sensation. Sam felt despair wash over him intensely, heavily-and yet it was not part of himself. He felt despair on the surface of his mind, keenly, but underneath it, where his own mind was, he was free of it.

Sam said, wonderingly, “It seems to me as though you’re giving up. Why? We’re not interfering with you?”

Human beings had built the Dome, cleared a large area of all planetary life and substituted their own. And once the neutron star had its power station-once floods of energy moved outward through hyperspace to power-thirsty worlds-more power stations would be built and still more. Then what would happen to Home. (There must be a name for the planet that the Other Sam used but the only thought Sam found in his mind was Ho me and, underneath that, the thought: ours-ours-ours-)

This planet was the nearest convenient base to the neutron star. It would be flooded with more and more people, more and more Domes, and their Home would be destroyed.

“But you could change our minds if you had to, even if you damaged a few, couldn’t you?”

If they tried, people would find them dangerous. People would work out what was happening. Ships would approach, and from a distance, use weapons to destroy the life on Home, and then bring in