And then: "F(e,m) = 0": There is a general unspecified relationship between energy and matter.
He slapped his hand down on the sand in frustration.
"All right," he said. "You've made your point. And it means about as much as if I said to the turkey, 'All you have to do is fly'."
There was a stir behind him. He turned his head and saw Louie. A deep sigh, almost a sob came from Louie as he stared down at the symbols in the sand.
"They talked to you," Louie said brokenly. "I wanted only to serve Them, but it was to you They talked."
And all the tragedy of his life was contained therein.
Cal sprang to his feet, and put his arms around the other man's shoulders. The two of them, the bitter and the sympathetic, looked down at the sand. The symbols were still changing, and now read "There is an infinity of relationships between matter and energy, an infinity of forms to be taken by matter as you control the energy."
The signs were wiped out, and the sense of Their presence was gone. Cal felt the withdrawal, the sense of a lesson being over. He did not regret it, he had enough to think about. But first, there was Louie, racked with broken sobbing.
Here was a man whose life had been a search for certainties, absolutes that would not shift under the weight of his questioning. No doubt in his youth he had turned to the religions of the day—and found them a tissue of rationalizations without contact in reality. Then to science—and found it, too, constantly shifting in its interpretations, making new evaluations as evidence discounted the old. The shock of landing on Eden to drive him back into childhood interpretations again—at last, the clear evidence that had been denied his belief in youth.
Wholehearted in his belief of Them, yet it was not to him They had talked.