The Default of Adam and Eve

75:3.1Adam had just fin­ished his first one hun­dred years on earth when Ser­a­p­ata­tia, upon the death of his fa­ther, came to the lead­er­ship of the west­ern or Syr­ian con­fed­er­a­tion of the Nod­ite tribes. Ser­a­p­ata­tia was a brown-tinted man, a bril­liant de­scen­dant of the one­time chief of the Dala­ma­tia com­mis­sion on health mated with one of the mas­ter fe­male minds of the blue race of those dis­tant days. All down through the ages this line had held au­thor­ity and wielded a great in­flu­ence among the west­ern Nod­ite tribes.

75:3.2Ser­a­p­ata­tia had made sev­eral vis­its to the Gar­den and had be­come deeply im­pressed with the righ­teous­ness of Adam’s cause. And shortly af­ter as­sum­ing the lead­er­ship of the Syr­ian Nod­ites, he an­nounced his in­ten­tion of es­tab­lish­ing an af­fil­i­a­tion with the work of Adam and Eve in the Gar­den. The ma­jor­ity of his peo­ple joined him in this pro­gram, and Adam was cheered by the news that the most pow­er­ful and the most in­tel­li­gent of all the neigh­bor­ing tribes had swung over al­most bod­ily to the sup­port of the pro­gram for world im­prove­ment; it was de­cid­edly heart­en­ing. And shortly af­ter this great event, Ser­a­p­ata­tia and his new staff were en­ter­tained by Adam and Eve in their own home.

75:3.3Ser­a­p­ata­tia be­came one of the most able and ef­fi­cient of all of Adam’s lieu­tenants. He was en­tirely hon­est and thor­oughly sin­cere in all of his ac­tiv­i­ties; he was never con­scious, even later on, that he was be­ing used as a cir­cum­stan­tial tool of the wily Cali­gas­tia.

75:3.4Pres­ently, Ser­a­p­ata­tia be­came the as­so­ciate chair­man of the Edenic com­mis­sion on tribal re­la­tions, and many plans were laid for the more vig­or­ous pros­e­cu­tion of the work of win­ning the re­mote tribes to the cause of the Gar­den.

75:3.5He held many con­fer­ences with Adam and Eve—es­pe­cially with Eve—and they talked over many plans for im­prov­ing their meth­ods. One day, dur­ing a talk with Eve, it oc­curred to Ser­a­p­ata­tia that it would be very help­ful if, while await­ing the re­cruit­ing of large num­bers of the vi­o­let race, some­thing could be done in the mean­time im­me­di­ately to ad­vance the needy wait­ing tribes. Ser­a­p­ata­tia con­tended that, if the Nod­ites, as the most pro­gres­sive and co-op­er­a­tive race, could have a leader born to them of part ori­gin in the vi­o­let stock, it would con­sti­tute a pow­er­ful tie bind­ing these peo­ples more closely to the Gar­den. And all of this was soberly and hon­estly con­sid­ered to be for the good of the world since this child, to be reared and ed­u­cated in the Gar­den, would ex­ert a great in­flu­ence for good over his fa­ther’s peo­ple.

75:3.6It should again be em­pha­sized that Ser­a­p­ata­tia was al­to­gether hon­est and wholly sin­cere in all that he pro­posed. He never once sus­pected that he was play­ing into the hands of Cali­gas­tia and Dali­gas­tia. Ser­a­p­ata­tia was en­tirely loyal to the plan of build­ing up a strong re­serve of the vi­o­let race be­fore at­tempt­ing the world-wide up­step­ping of the con­fused peo­ples of Uran­tia. But this would re­quire hun­dreds of years to con­sum­mate, and he was im­pa­tient; he wanted to see some im­me­di­ate re­sults—some­thing in his own life­time. He made it clear to Eve that Adam was of­ten­times dis­cour­aged by the lit­tle that had been ac­com­plished to­ward up­lift­ing the world.

75:3.7For more than five years these plans were se­cretly ma­tured. At last they had de­vel­oped to the point where Eve con­sented to have a se­cret con­fer­ence with Cano, the most bril­liant mind and ac­tive leader of the near-by colony of friendly Nod­ites. Cano was very sym­pa­thetic with the Adamic regime; in fact, he was the sin­cere spir­i­tual leader of those neigh­bor­ing Nod­ites who fa­vored friendly re­la­tions with the Gar­den.

75:3.8The fate­ful meet­ing oc­curred dur­ing the twi­light hours of the au­tumn evening, not far from the home of Adam. Eve had never be­fore met the beau­ti­ful and en­thu­si­as­tic Cano—and he was a mag­nif­i­cent spec­i­men of the sur­vival of the su­pe­rior physique and out­stand­ing in­tel­lect of his re­mote pro­gen­i­tors of the Prince’s staff. And Cano also thor­oughly be­lieved in the righ­teous­ness of the Ser­a­p­ata­tia project. (Out­side of the Gar­den, mul­ti­ple mat­ing was a com­mon prac­tice.)

75:3.9In­flu­enced by flat­tery, en­thu­si­asm, and great per­sonal per­sua­sion, Eve then and there con­sented to em­bark upon the much-dis­cussed en­ter­prise, to add her own lit­tle scheme of world sav­ing to the larger and more far-reach­ing di­vine plan. Be­fore she quite re­al­ized what was tran­spir­ing, the fa­tal step had been taken. It was done.