The White Bull Read Online Free PDF Page B

discussed, and obviously the dearest to the Bull's heart, was the establishment of a school.
    "I mean it to be such a school, Dae-dal-us, as this island and this world have never be-fore seen. I hope that you your-self will be among its very first pu-pils."
    I had not known what to expect when a new project was first mentioned; but certainly I had never expected this. And I protested. "There are many demands upon my time already, White Bull. Besides, I think I am too old to go to school."
    The creature moved his head and shoulders strangely. By now I had come to understand such movements meant that he was irritated. He said to me: "That is an att-i-tude that must be ex-punged. No one is too old to learn."
    "I must agree with that, sir." Perhaps this sounded to the Bull like an immediate reversal of my position, but it was not; what I had originally meant was that going to school and learning were not necessarily the same thing.
    But the White Bull did not choose to ask me what I meant.
    "Dae-dal-us."
    "Sir?"
    "I hope we can be friends. That we can work to-ge-ther. We are both exiles here."
    "You are an exile too, White Bull?" If true, this was surprising news.
    He signed assent. "I, too, know what it is to be far from home. And far from the com-pan-ion-ship of my own kind. But some things are more im-por-tant still." And with that he went back to talking about the proposed school.
    When I was informed of the nature of the second project, I thought at first that I had failed to understand the explanation. But when the explanation was repeated, it turned out that I had basically understood it after all. On realizing that, I felt a foreboding of great evil. Hoping that I was wrong, I asked for still further clarification.
    "Hear me, Dae-dal-us. If a jackass mates with a mare, what is born of the two species' un-i-on?"
    "A mule, sir. I do not know if there are any mules here in Crete, but I have seen them elsewhere, used as beasts of burden."
    "That is cor-rect."
    Listening, I began to wonder if this creature ever asked a question to which it did not know the answer, or at least believe it knew.
    The Bull was going on: "And if a bull were to mate with a mare, or a stallion with a cow, what off-spring would re-sult?"
    "None at all, in my experience. No, it would be more accurate to put it this way: I have never heard of such matings as you describe. But if they were to take place, I would not expect any issue from them at all. Or if there were issue, surely it would be monstrous." And only at this point did my mind, engaged with the problem as it had been stated formally, hit on the rather obvious suspicion that the Bull himself was quite possibly the offspring of some similar mismatch.
    But my would-be teacher was not in the least offended. "Very good, Dae-dal-us! But go back a mom-ent to the mule. Here we see the poss-i-bil-i-ty of producing a hy-brid that is in some ways su-perior to either parent."
    "In some ways," I agreed cautiously.
    "It is the pro-per ob-jec-tive of sci-ence to find new poss-ibil-i-ties. Do you grasp what I mean by 'sci-ence,' Dae-dal-us?"
    "By science we mean knowing—knowledge."
    "Ve-ry good. And we mean al-so the sys-tem by which true knowledge is ex-pan-ded. It is ess-en-tial that my know-ledge—our knowledge—about hu-man-i-ty be ex-pan-ded. You, hu-man-i-ty, are more im-portant to the universe than you can yet be-gin to re-al-ize."
    "The universe?"
    "The en-tire world, seen and unseen. The world is al-most in-finite-ly larger than you can guess, Dae-dal-us."
    I wondered if he could know how extravagant some of my guesses on that subject had been. It seemed to me that ever since my earliest childhood thoughts I had been speculating in one way or another upon infinity. To me it seemed only natural that men should do so when they lived in the continuous presence of the sea and sky. And since meeting this creature of the gods I had been waiting, hoping, to hear some words of natural philosophy from