Robert Sheckley - On an Experiencw in a Cornfield And Its Bearing On Some Fragments Of Heraclitus

I have done a lot of things in this lifetime. But the strangest of them is what I am doing now. I am going to be to be your reporter on one of the great current mysteries perplexing mankind.

You all know how fields all over the world are turning up, apparently overnight, to have patterns cut into them; sometimes very complicated patterns that have been compared to Julia sets, and to even stranger mathematical notions.

Always the questions: are these peculiar and painstaking patterns in fields the work of hoaxers, human beings who, perhaps out of love of inflicting mystification on others have been doing this secretly? Or are they the work of extraterrestrial intelligences, seeking perhaps to tell us something?

The crop mystery seems to have started in England, but it swiftly began to happen worldwide. The conjectures are endless. People have set up with cameras and sound recording equipment, trying to capture what is happening. The results haven't been convincing.

I decided to look into it myself, and come to my own conclusions. I expected to be believed no more than the others who had looked into the mystery. But at least I would be able to satisfy my own curiosity. I decided to set out my findings in the form of a story, a fictional story, and let the reader make of it what he wished.

I went to Otis, Iowa, for the purpose of witnessing what was happening in a field of corn. The field in question, owned by Mr. Salton Ames, had never been disturbed by such a manifestation, though other farms in the area had. I figured Ames was due.

Farmer Ames put me up at Bed and Breakfast rates. He gave me a comfortable second floor room. My bed had a gingham bedspread, a rocking chair in one corner, a small closet, a bed and a chair. Although this farm was not far from Des Moines, its look and atmosphere put it close to the English Glastonbury, with its ancient, mystical associations.

The English breakfast they served me was pretty good. That first day I wandered around the land, and selected my first site for the coming night.

That night, around midnight, I left the house and walked slowly down the lane to the cornfields.

It was a dark and misty night, with a hint of rain in it. There was a thin new moon, hanging in the air like a symbol of Islam. It was all in all a spooky sort of a night. When I passed the barns nearby, I could hear the soft movement of cows. Mr. Ames' collie came running up, sniffed me, and went back to his kennel. We had met earlier. Apparently I was OK in his view.

I went down the lane, and came out on one side of the field.

I stood very still for a while and listened. For a while I could hear nothing but the soft voice of the wind. Then, after a while, I heard someone or something moving around. I heard the corn rustling. I knew I was going to find something.

Very quietly I entered the field, walking down one of the rows toward the middle. For a while I could see nothing but corn on all sides of me. And then, suddenly, I saw someone moving through the rows of corn. Careless of my own safety, I hurried to catch up with him. In a rush I came on him, coming up behind him.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

He straightened and turned. He was very tall and skinny, and he was wearing what looked like shiny nylon clothing. His face had the usual number of noses, eyes and mouth, but it wasn't a human face.

"I am bending down these stalks," he said.

I watched. He walked slowly forward down the row, waving his hand at the corn, his fingers set in a particular way. The corn bent. His hand gestures cut a wide swath through the field. He didn't actually touch the corn.

The first question had been easy. The second one required some thought. Finally I asked, "What are you doing this for?"

"I was assigned to it."

He continued moving. I had a feeling this field was almost complete. I was sure he would vanish on me suddenly, leaving me with a story, but not the story I had come for.

"Hey, look," I said, "I'd like to get some answers to this thing. Why are you or your people doing this? Why do you keep your activities secret? And what makes this time different from other times?"

He straightened and looked at me. "Why not ask, instead, why I should answer any of your questions? Why not ask why I have allowed you to find me? Why not ask what I want you to know rather than insisting on what you want to know?"

"I'd like to know that very much," I said. "Why are you talking to me?"

"Every once in a while," he said, "we decide it's time for us to talk to someone on the planet where we're doing this sort of thing. We tell some simple home truths to someone, in the sure knowledge that they won't be believed when they tell it to others of their kind. But at least some things will have been stated. If no one else, at least the person we talk to will know. Something. Not that he can be certain of his knowledge. It doesn't work that way. Deceit and truth are thin alternating layers. Furthermore, the purpose of things is never simple, plain, obvious, and unequivocal. That's not how it works. A while back I talked with one of your fellow humans. His name was Heraclitus. He said, 'You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.' Don't take intentions for truth."

"But why are you doing this?" I asked.

"Maybe this whole thing was for the purpose of supplying you with a story. Maybe the reason for that story is no business of yours. Your purpose is to write the story. And keep some food in your stomach."

"They'll never believe me. How can I expect anyone to believe that I met an alien who quoted Heraclitus?"

"Whether people believe you or not is not your concern. Truth is not your necessity."

"Then what is?"

"Your concern is trying to find out what is your concern. Your job is not even to find it, it is to keep on searching. It is not even that. It is to keep on, to continue."

"Until I'm dead?"

"Who ever said that death is the end of searching?"

He moved on in the field. I followed.

He said, "The great process can do anything. It is not bound by rules of reason. It is not tied to human ideas of how things ought to be. I appear before you in this form. But who is to say this is my true form, or that what I do is my true work?"

I had no answer for that. After a while he said, "No truth holds for all circumstances. Nothing explains the peculiarity of life, its apparent determination not to be bound by human reason. The world is not only stranger than you think it is, it is even stranger than you can imagine."

I looked up Heraclitus when I got home. He said a number of good things. Among them, "Most men do not understand such things as they are wont to meet with; nor by learning do they come to know them, though they think they do."

And he said, "The Lord at Delphi neither speaks nor conceals, but gives a sign."

He made other good utterances. Check them out for yourself.

As for me, I have done what it was given me to do. I have written this story, the truth of which I neither affirm nor deny.