One evening the gulls that were not night-flying stood
together on the sand, thinking. Jonathan took all his courage in
hand and walked to the Elder Gull, who, it was said, was soon
to be moving beyond this world.
“Chiang ...” he said, a little nervously.
The old seagull looked at him kindly. “Yes, my son?” Instead
of being enfeebled by age, the Elder had been empowered by
it; he could outfly any gull in the Flock, and he had learned
skills that the others were only gradually coming to know.
“Chiang, this world isn’t heaven at all, is it?”
The Elder smiled in the moonlight. “You are learning again,
Jonathan Seagull,” he said.
“Well, what happens from here? Where are we going? Is
there no such place as heaven?”
“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,
t “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 ...win yellow suns turning overhead.