“No, Jonathan, there is no such place. Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect.” He was silent for a moment. “You are a very fast flier, aren’t you?”
“I . . . I enjoy speed,” Jonathan said, taken aback but proud that the Elder had noticed.
“You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.”
Without warning, Chiang vanished and appeared at the water’s edge fifty feet away, all in the flicker of an instant. Then he vanished again and stood, in the same millisecond, at Jonathan’s shoulder. “It’s kind of fun,” he said.
Jonathan was dazzled. He forgot to ask about heaven. “How do you do that? What does it feel like? How far can you go?”
“You can go to any place and to any time that you wish to go,” the Elder said. “I’ve gone everywhere and everywhen I can think of.” He looked across the sea. “It’s strange. The gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go anywhere, instantly. Remember, Jonathan, heaven isn’t a place or a time, because place and time are so very meaningless. Heaven is . . .”
“Can you teach me to fly like that?” Jonathan Seagull trembled to conquer another unknown.
“Of course, if you wish to learn.”
“I wish. When can we start?”
“We could start now, if you’d like.”
“I want to learn to fly like that,” Jonathan said, and a strange light glowed in his eyes. “Tell me what to do.”
Chiang spoke slowly and watched the younger gull ever so carefully. “To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is,” he said, “you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.”
The trick, according to Chiang, was for Jonathan to stop seeing himself as trapped inside a limited body that had a forty-two-inch wingspan and performance that could be plotted on a chart. The trick was to know that his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number, everywhere at once across space and time.
• • •
Jonathan kept at it, fiercely, day after day, from before sunrise till past midnight. And for all his effort he moved not a feather-width from his spot.
“Forget about faith!” Chiang said it time and again. “You didn’t need
faith to fly, you needed to understand flying. This is just the same. Now try again . . .”
Then one day Jonathan, standing on the shore, closing his eyes, concentrating, all in a flash knew what Chiang had been telling him. “Why, that’s true! I am a perfect, unlimited gull!” He felt a great shock of joy.
“Good!” said Chiang, and there was victory in his voice.
Jonathan opened his eyes. He stood alone with the Elder on a totally different seashore—trees down to the water’s edge, twin yellow suns turning overhead.
“At last you’ve got the idea,” Chiang said, “but your control needs a little work . . .”
Jonathan was stunned. “Where are we?”
Utterly unimpressed with the strange surroundings, the Elder brushed the question aside. “We’re on some planet, obviously, with a green sky and a double star for a sun.”
Jonathan made a scree of delight, the first sound he had made since he had left Earth. “IT WORKS!”
“Well, of course it works, Jon,” said Chiang. “It always works, when you know what you’re doing. Now about your control . . .”
• • •
By the time they returned, it was dark. The other gulls looked at Jonathan with awe in their golden eyes, for they had seen him disappear from where he had been rooted for so long.
He stood their congratulations for less than a minute. “I’m the newcomer here! I’m just beginning! It is I who must learn from you!”
“I wonder about that, Jon,” said Sullivan, standing near. “You have less fear of learning than any gull I’ve seen in ten thousand years.” The Flock fell silent, and Jonathan fidgeted in embarrassment.
“We can start working with time if you wish,” Chiang said, “till you can fly the past and the future. And then you will be ready to begin the most difficult, the most powerful, the most fun of all. You will be ready to begin to fly up and know the meaning of kindness and of love.”