Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  I looked to Doerniche. He sat on a stone wearing the bearskin, and his face was remote and unreadable. I asked him what he thought of this, and he said, “What passes between you and your woman is no concern of mine, unless I wanted her for myself, which I do not.”

  Wolfing said, “She’s probably more trouble than she’s worth. But I’ll take her if she wants to come.”

  Lanea said to me, “You see how it is, my dear? Go on scribbling in your notebooks; it is all you are good for. Write about this, too. Perhaps it will keep you warm at night!”

  She rose to go, holding her little bundle of possessions in one hand. I seized her ankle. She kicked me in the shoulder with her free foot, and everybody laughed.

  I got to my feet and slapped her in the face as hard as I could. She reeled back, yelling with anger, and then picked up a spear and came at me.

  I sidestepped and kicked her feet out from under her. She went down hard and I threw myself on top of her. I was dimly aware that everyone was laughing and cheering as I hit her in the face. But then her fingernails raked my cheek and I went blind with rage and beat her in the body and face, hitting so hard that I grunted with each blow. She still tried to fight me off, but I could not be stopped, my honor had been violated, and now I was striking heavily.

  I do not know how long I hit her. After a while, I realized that she was offering no resistance, and her head was hanging limp. So I stopped hitting her and splashed water in her face. When her eyes could recognize me, I raped her.

  Our relations have improved considerably since then. Perhaps Lanea does not love me, but she does take care not to anger me. She sleeps with me when I wish it, and she keeps her mouth shut.

  I think she may need another beating or two before she understands who her mate really is. She knows I am thinking this, and she takes care to give me no excuse.

  I don’t know if I will ever again have her love. But love is not important. What counts is that I have her respect, and I have not lost face among the men.

  Last night all of the clans assembled here on this tableland, and you could see campfires in all directions, to the farthest horizons. All of the clans of this region were drawn to this spot by instincts I know nothing of.

  Last night Lanea clung to me inexplicably and wept and would not be consoled. I knew that some special understanding was being called forth from me, but I did not have the knowledge.

  I asked her what the matter was. She said, “It is the end for us, and I am mourning.”

  “But why?” I asked. “What has happened?”

  “Nothing yet,” she said, “but it will.”

  I kissed her and said, “Whatever happens, I will be with you.”

  “No,” she said, “this time it is impossible, this time it is the end for us.”

  I thought she was being hysterical. I said, “Is it another change? I have lived through all of the changes on Kaldor, and I am prepared to live through this one also.”

  “You cannot do the impossible,” she said. “You are not of our stock. You do not share our potentialities.”

  “True, but I’ve done pretty well at adapting to your life.”

  “You have done miraculously well. . . . I am so proud of you! But there are some things that you cannot do.”

  I smiled at her. I was easy and confident. “Don’t be so sure of that. I think that now I am more Kaldorian than Terran.” She looked at me fondly, as if I were a child. “You have been lover and friend, and you have lived our life to the fullest. But now it is at an end.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “It is not finished.”

  “I know,” Lanea said, “and you do not know. This is not a matter of will power, not even a matter of love. We are from different planets! The rhythms of our lives are different. What must be cannot be forestalled. Nor would I change my fate, or yours. It is appropriate for us to live each in accordance with his own nature. To resent that would be to rage against the very nature and meaning of life.”

  All of that made very little sense to me. I knew that a change was imminent, but I had lived through other Kaldorian changes.

  Nevertheless, Lanea insisted that I make love to her for the last time and then kiss her and walk away.

  I did as she asked. I thought that I could change her mind tomorrow.

  All of my clan sought me out. They kissed me and said goodbye. They walked away, each person in his own direction. Then I knew that whatever else happened, it meant the dissolution of my clan, the loss of my family.

  Eliaming was the last to go. He was crying, and he said, “We all had great pleasure with each other, Goldstein, and you were our family as we were yours. But now the law of the universe has been invoked, that like must stay with like, and it is a bitter time for us to go away from you.”

  “For the sake of what we have been to each other,” I said, “tell me what is going to happen.”

  “I cannot tell you,” he said. “I do not know. It is a mystery.”

  “Then how do you know that it is the end for us?”

  “Because I know,” he said. “That is blood-knowledge. It has nothing to do with our heads.”

  “Are you going to die?” I asked. “Is that it?”

  He shook his head. “There is no death on Kaldor. There is only change. Goodbye, Goldstein.”

  “Wait!” I cried. “Is there nothing else you can say to me?”

  “I can tell you a story,” he said. “Once there was a baby mouse who lost its family. It wandered alone over hills and down valleys, lonely and afraid, and it grew weaker and weaker, and at last lay under a tree, near to death. Some grasshoppers came by and felt sorry for the little mouse. They fed it and took care of it, exactly as they would a baby grasshopper of their own. And the baby mouse lived and learned the ways of the grasshoppers and finally came to think that he was a grasshopper. And they were all very happy together, and they lived as one big family. And the mouse swore that he would never leave his family. But then winter came and the grasshoppers died, and the mouse was left alone. It was no one’s fault: Grasshoppers live only a single season, whereas mice live for several.”

  “But you said there is no death on Kaldor!”

  “Not for us who were born here.”

  “But for me there is death?”

  “I do not know. Perhaps there is death for you here, since you are not of this place. But I do not know. Your life and its changes are a mystery to me, a greater mystery than we are to you.”

  “Is something going to happen to me?” I asked him again. “I do not know!” Eliaming said. “You see the trouble with words? Nothing can be explained that you do not already know. I tried to talk about this for your sake, because I love you. But I have said too much, or not enough, and have only caused you anxiety. Keep the memory of our love! Goodbye, Goldstein!”

  So Eliaming, the last of my clan, went away.

  People are scattered all over the hills. They seem to be waiting for some great event. I stay and wait, too. What else can I do?

  It is evening now, and I sit by the fire, the last of my clan. All of the thousands have gone to sleep already, and their fires are burning out. I alone bear witness, but I am tired, too.

  I cannot stay awake. But in the morning I am going to take some kind of action.

  Now I am alone.

  The thousands of people who covered these hillsides are gone. (This mere absence of something familiar is the most astounding sight I have seen in my travels.) They are gone, and they have left behind them only a litter: I am surrounded on these hilltops by burned-out fires, weapons, cooking pots, clothing.

  All of their clothing is here. They left without their clothes.

  For me, this means that they vanished.

  I cannot bring myself to accept what has happened. I suppose they left in the night. One of them may well have given me a drug. Then they all went away. Perhaps they left their clothes for some religious reason.

  The alternative that I must accept is that th
ey vanished.

  I am in deep emotional trouble. I can feel that I am in trouble, and there is no one around here to help me. I am very lonely. There is company of sorts, because all of the animals have returned. This for me is inexplicable. They have been gone since late winter. But now they are back in a fantastic profusion. Birds, beasts, everything that walks or crawls seems to be on these hills.

  I have not written in this journal for a while. There is nothing to write. I live here alone. They abandoned me. I suppose they found me unworthy. God knows, that’s a fair assessment.

  I suppose that is why I was sent away from Earth. I was unworthy to live with humans. They saw me for what I was, and they put me into a spaceship and sent me away to another planet, where I would have another chance.

  But I couldn’t make it here. I fooled them for a while, but ultimately I couldn’t make it. But they were too kind to send me away. So instead they went away themselves, to some other part of the planet, I suppose.

  It is only a matter of time before the animals learn what I am. For now, I have them fooled, too, as I have fooled so many others. They are remarkably tame. I don’t think they have ever been exposed to anyone. They are shy like all animals but friendly. They come up to me and lick my hand. They sleep near me. But I must not grow accustomed to that; they will go away, too.

  The ones who stay longest around me are those of my totem, the owl and the deer. They are the kindest of the animals. In a way, the deer have adopted me. One or more of them always sleep near me. The owls light on my shoulders, the only birds around here to do so.

  Grass is covering the weapons and clothing. Time is passing, it is passing.

  All right, I suppose I can put it together somehow. What the hell is so terrible about saying it?

  All the people turned into animals.

  I didn’t because I wasn’t born here.

  They underwent a metamorphosis—not their first.

  From the time I came here, the strangeness was evident. Their social institutions changed with bewildering speed. Overnight the norms had shifted and entirely different standards were accepted.

  They changed from a formal, evasive culture to a loving, communal culture, to a primitive, distrustful culture.

  But the metamorphoses of their lives go deeper than that. They change again, a physical change, like that of a butterfly or frog. Their births are somehow connected to the life cycle of the planet. To all of its life cycles, I should say.

  It is a planet of reincarnation.

  There is no mysticism here. It is the simplest, most basic truth. Men are reborn as animals.

  And what are the animals reborn as?

  Here, I don’t believe that the cycle of births has any value judgment attached. They do not admit the existence of karma. One birth as one thing is as good as any other birth; for all things living are worthy of being lived. And besides, everyone will in time be born as everything.

  It is reincarnation without death. Here there is only birth and change.

  Naturally enough, there was no way in which I could have joined that cycle.

  It is late in the summer. The days are golden. We are getting more frequent rains.

  I have returned to Morei. Many of the animals have returned with me. They don’t seem to mind the place at all.

  Of course, it isn’t really theirs. It belongs to the next human births.

  Anyhow, the animals are going away. Or, more probably, they are changing. For a new growing season has begun here, and plants are crowding out animals.

  I have moved out of the city again. It is fall now, and I am happiest sleeping among the members of my totem, the pines.

  I do not have much to write. Time is passing, and I am living. I am starting to feel steadier. I am beginning to come together.

  It is winter.

  The animals are all gone. The plants are dead. The only thing alive in this place is me.

  There will be new births in the spring, I am sure of that. Perhaps my friends will be reborn then. But perhaps I will be dead. Because death is always one of my imminent and unique metamorphoses.

  I am going to stay here until spring. This will necessitate some hard decisions: I will have to live off the bodies of my friends, animal and vegetable, or perish myself.

  Perhaps it is an ultimate human selfishness, but I cannot permit myself to die, even at this price. So I eat what I must, and I try to remember that everything eats and is eaten and that someday I will provide sustenance for whatever can use me here.

  I follow the custom. I will not eat those of my clan. I eat as sparingly as I can of anything that once contained life. I wait, I dream. Will they return to me?

  I pray it will be a short winter.

  WHAT IS LIFE?

  he knew that if he answered correctly, instant guruhood was only a few steps away

  MORTONSON RELATES that while he was out strolling in the foothills of the Himalayas one day, a tremendous voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere said to him, “Hey, you.”

  “Me?” Mortonson asked.

  “Yes, you,” the voice boomed. “Can you tell me, what is life?”

  Mortonson stood, frozen in mid stride, pouring perspiration, aware that he was having a genuine mystical experience and that a lot was going to depend on how he answered the question.

  “I’m going to need a moment or two for tills one,” he said.

  “Don’t take too long,” said the voice, reverberating hugely from all sides.

  Mortonson sat down on a rock and considered the situation. The god or demon who had asked the question surely knew that Mortonson—a mere mortal and not too fantastic a specimen, at that—hadn’t the faintest idea of what life was. So his answer should perhaps reveal his understanding of his own mortal limitations but also show his awareness that it was somehow appropriate for the god or demon to ask this question of a potentially divine creature like man, here represented by Mortonson with his stooped shoulders, sunburned nose, orange rucksack and crumpled pack of Marlboros. On the other hand, maybe the implication of the question was that Mortonson himself really did know what life was and could spontaneously state it in a few well-chosen words. But it was already a bit late for spontaneous wisdom.

  “I’ll be light with you.” Mortonson said.

  “OK,” said the tremendous voice, booming off the mountains and rolling through the valleys.

  It was really a drag to be put on the line like this spiritually. And it wasn’t fair. After all, Mortonson hadn’t come to Nepal as a pilgrim, he was only here on a 30-day excursion. He was simply a young American with a sunburned nose chain-smoking Marlboros on a hillside in Nepal, where he had come through a combination of restlessness and an unexpected birthday gill of $500 from his parents. So what could you infer from that, contextwise? “Raw American Encounters Immemorial Eastern Wisdom and Fails Miserably to Get with It.” A bummer!

  Nobody likes to be put on the spot like that. It’s embarrassing and potentially ego damaging to have this vast otherworldly voice come at you with what has to be a trick question. How do you handle it? Avoid the trap, expose the double bind, reveal your knowledge of the metagame by playing it in a spirit of frivolity! Tell the voice: Life is a voice asking a man what life is! And then roar with cosmic laughter.

  But to bring that oil, you need to be sure that the voice understands the levels of your answer. What if it says, “Yeah, that’s what’s happening, but what is life?” And you’re left standing there with ectoplasmic egg on your face as that cosmic laughter is directed at you—great gusty, heroic laughter at your pomposity, your complacency, your arrogance at even attempting to answer the unanswerable.

  “How’s it coming?” the voice asked.

  “I’m still working on it,” Mortonson said.

  Obviously, this was one of those spiritual quickies, and Mortonson was still stalling around and hadn’t even gotten around yet to considering what in hell life was. Quickly, he reviewed some possibilities: Life
is a warm Puppy. Life is Asymmetry. Life is Chance. Life is Chaos shot through with Fatality (remember that one). Life is just a Howl of Cherries. Life is Birdcall and Windsong (nice). Life is What you make it. Life is Cosmic Dance. Life is a Movie. Life is Matter become curious (did Victor Hugo say that?). Life is Whatever the hell you want to call it.

  “This is really a tough one,” Mortonson said.

  “That’s for sure,” the voice said, rolling from peak to peak and filling the air with its presence.

  One should always be prepared for this kind of spiritual emergency, Mortonson thought. Why didn’t NYU have a course in Normative Altitudes Toward the Unexpected? But college never prepared you for anything important, you just went along learning a little here and there, picking up on Chuang-tzu, Thoreau. Norman Brown, Rajnecsh, the Shivapuri Baba and the other insiders who really knew the score. And all their stuff sounded absolutely right on! Hut when you closed the book, that was die end of it, and there you were, scratching your nose and wishing that someone would invite you to a party where you’d meet a beautiful childlike young woman with long straight hair and upright pointy breasts and long slender legs, but now was no time to get into that, because that damned voice was waiting for the answer, the Big Answer, but what in almighty hell was life?

  “I’ve almost got it,” he said.

  What bugged him was the knowledge that he had a lot to gain if he could only come up with the right answer. It was an incredible chance for spiritual advancement, an opportunity to skip a few intermediate steps and get right up to Enlightenment, Moksha, Satori! A really together person could solve this and parlay the ensuing insight into guruhood, maybe even into Buddhadom! You could spend a lifetime going to Esalen or a Gurdjieff group and never get near anything like this! But what was life?

  Mortonson ground out his cigarette and saw that it was his last. No more until he got back to his pension. Christ! He had to get on with this! Life is Hesitation? Desire? Longing? Sorrow? Preparation? Fruition? Coming together? Moving apart?