PAGE 19
Oomphel In The Sky
by
“I’m not. You’re doing that.”
“Huh?” She looked at him in amazement. “Me?”
“Yes, you. You know better than to believe in magic, so you expect them to know better, too. Well, they don’t. You know that under the macroscopic world-of-the senses there exists a complex of biological, chemical and physical phenomena down to the subnucleonic level. They realize that there must be something beyond what they can see and handle, but they think it’s magic. Well, as a race, so did we until only a few centuries pre-atomic. These people are still lower Neolithic, a hunting people who have just learned agriculture. Where we were twenty thousand years ago.
“You think any glib-talking Kwann can hang a lot of rags, bones and old iron onto himself, go through some impromptu mummery, and set up as shoonoo? Well, he can’t. The shoonoon are a hereditary caste. A shoonoo father will begin teaching his son as soon as he can walk and talk, and he keeps on teaching him till he’s the age-equivalent of a graduate M.D. or a science Ph. D.”
“Well, what all is there to learn–?”
“The theoretical basis and practical applications of sympathetic magic. Action-at-a-distance by one object upon another. Homeopathic magic: the principle that things which resemble one another will interact. For instance, there’s an animal the natives call a shynph. It has an excrescence of horn on its brow like an arrowhead, and it arches its back like a bow when it jumps. Therefore, a shynph is equal to a bow and arrow, and for that reason the Kwanns made their bowstrings out of shynph-gut. Now they use tensilon because it won’t break as easily or get wet and stretch. So they have to turn the tensilon into shynph-gut. They used to do that by drawing a picture of a shynph on the spool, and then the traders began labeling the spools with pictures of shynph. I think my father was one of the first to do that.
“Then, there’s contagious magic. Anything that’s been part of anything else or come in contact with it will interact permanently with it. I wish I had a sol for every time I’ve seen a Kwann pull the wad out of a shot-shell, pick up a pinch of dirt from the footprint of some animal he’s tracking, put it in among the buckshot, and then crimp the wad in again.
“Everything a Kwann does has some sort of magical implications. It’s the shoonoo’s business to know all this; to be able to tell just what magical influences have to be produced, and what influences must be avoided. And there are circumstances in which magic simply will not work, even in theory. The reason is that there is some powerful counter-influence at work. He has to know when he can’t use magic, and he has to be able to explain why. And when he’s theoretically able to do something by magic, he has to have a plausible explanation why it won’t produce results–just as any highly civilized and ethical Terran M.D. has to be able to explain his failures to the satisfaction of his late patient’s relatives. Only a shoonoo doesn’t get sued for malpractice; he gets a spear stuck in him. Under those circumstances, a caste of hereditary magicians is literally bred for quick thinking. These old gaffers we have aboard are the intellectual top crust among the natives. Any of them can think rings around your Government school products. As for preying on the ignorance and credulity of the other natives, they’re only infinitesimally less ignorant and credulous themselves. But they want to learn–from anybody who can gain their respect by respecting them.”
Edith Shaw didn’t say anything in reply. She was thoughtful during the rest of the meal, and when they were back on the observation deck he noticed that she seemed to be looking at the shoonoon with new eyes.
In the screen-views of Bluelake, Beta had already set, and the sky was fading; stars had begun to twinkle. There were more fires–one, close to the city in the east, a regular conflagration–and fighting had broken out in the native city itself. He was wishing now, that he hadn’t thought it necessary to use those screens. The shoonoon were noticing what was going on in them, and talking among themselves. Travis, after one look at the situation, hurried back to the bridge to make a screen-call. After a while, he returned, almost crackling with suppressed excitement.