To the Land of the Living

by Robert Silverberg

  Gilgamesh nodded. “Thank you. You are ever the expert on these Later Dead details, old friend.” To Magalhaes he said, “Very well. And what did your Drake, your Draco, tell you about Ralegh?”

  “A genius, he said. But unpredictable and unreliable, as most geniuses are. Wonderful projects, always, that he could never quite bring to fulfilment.”

  “Such as trying to find the way to the land of the living?”

  “That would be this Ralegh’s kind of scheme, yes.”

  Bending toward the little Portuguese, Gilgamesh said quietly, “And what do you know on that subject? Is it possible that such a gateway exists, do you think?”

  “It is a fable,” replied Magalhaes at once. “The land of the living is unreachable. I think so, and Draco thinks so, and Cook thinks so, who is another great mariner. These are men I know and trust, Draco and Cook, they both sailed around the world as I did, and one who makes a voyage such as that can never be like ordinary men again. What he sees, he sees truly.”

  “Perhaps so.”

  “Draco has sought it, so he has told me. So has Cook. They have been to the Afterworld’s farthest corners, even into the Great Unending. Would they still be here, if they had found the way to the land of the living? Yet I saw Draco only the other month, and Cook barely five years back, and they said nothing to me of gateways, or of other worlds, though they would surely have told me. If they have not found it, it is not there. Trust me on this, majesty.”

  “If that is the case—” Gilgamesh began, but just then there was a commotion in the hallway outside the throne chamber—a thumping sound, a volley of discordant singing, lusty laughter, some heavy-handed clapping, the usual signs of Enkidu’s approach—and then Enkidu himself came rollicking into the room, flushed and sweaty, his long rank hair unkempt, his robe rumpled. The scent of Helen’s perfume came in with him.

  “My lord Gilgamesh!” he roared. “I have it! The great secret—I’ve found it out!”

  “Why, I could have told him,” Herod murmured, “and I’ve never so much as spoken with the woman. It’s simple: one breast on either side of her chest, that’s how she’s built, and down below there’s a patch of dark hair where her legs meet, and she makes a little soft sound when you touch—”

  Gilgamesh hissed sharply at the Judaean to be silent.

  “What secret is this, brother?” he called, as Enkidu strode toward him, swaying as he walked, the way a sailor would as he walked on deck.

  “The way to the land of the living! I know where it can be found!”

  Gilgamesh frowned and glanced at Magalhaes, who merely shrugged.

  “This mariner here has been telling us that there is no such gateway anywhere in the Afterworld.”

  “This mariner is wrong. I have the location of it on good faith, and let any man deny it and he will have to answer to me for calling me a liar.”

  Magalhaes, looking unworried, turned to stare up at Enkidu, who stood towering over him, seemingly twice his height. “I said only that I think the gateway to be a fable, before you entered here. Those who wish to believe in its existence may go on doing so, and it will not matter to me, nor will I call them liars. There are those who say that the world is flat, and they are not liars either. They are telling the truth as they believe it. One does not have to be lying in order to be speaking that which is not true.”

  “Who is this little man?” Enkidu bellowed, clenching both fists and raising them. “Why is he here, and why do you allow him to mock me? By Enlil, I’ll—”

  “Peace, both of you,” said Gilgamesh, signaling to Vy-otin to step between them. He waited a moment for Enkidu to grow more calm; and then he said, “All right, brother. Tell us what you have learned.”

  Enkidu looked about sullenly. “In front of—?”

  “Herod, Vy-otin, yes. Why not?”

  “Him?” He indicated Magalhaes.

  “He is a great seafarer, a man who knows much concerning the routes of this world and the other one. He is in our service now. We trust him. You can speak, Enkidu.”

  “Well—” Enkidu shook his head. “It was the woman Helen who told me this, she who came here with Ralegh—”

  Herod snickered.

  “Are they all going to mock me today?” Enkidu cried.

  “Be quiet, Herod. Go on,” said Gilgamesh. “What Helen told you—”

  “She and Ralegh, as we know, have been roaming the Outback under commission from Ralegh’s queen, Elizabeth by name, who seeks the way to the land of the living. Ralegh carries a map, or rather the little man Hakluyt who is his guide carries it, and Helen has seen it. It shows plainly where the opening into the other world is located.”

  “And that place is?” Gilgamesh asked.

  Once again Enkidu hesitated, glowering at Magalhaes.

  “Go on, Enkidu! Where is it?”

  “Brasil,” said Enkidu.

  “Brasil?”

  “The isle of Brasil, yes, Simon’s city, where you had the Knowing that led you here, brother.”

  Gilgamesh stared. “I thought Ralegh did indeed look surprised, when I told him that I had once been in Brasil. I merely mentioned the place, and his breath came short, and his eyes went wide. But no, Enkidu, no: how can it be? I have been there. Surely I would have heard.”

  “Did you ask?”

  “Why would I have asked about that? The thought of the land of the living scarcely crossed my mind when I was in Brasil.”

  “You see? You see?”

  Gilgamesh looked toward Herod. “You lived many years in Brasil. What can you say of this? Is the way to the land of the living to be found there, or not?”

  “Well, there were tales, yes,” Herod said in a vague way. “That the tunnels below the city might lead there, and other such fables. I never paid much attention to them. I never believed a tenth part of the fantastic-sounding stories which circulated in that city. Maybe not a hundredth part.”

  Gilgamesh peered into the distance. The image of those dark tunnels beneath Brasil, where Calandola and his band of cannibals lurked, awakened in him at Herod’s words. He too had heard, more than once, yes, that somewhere in those tunnels could be found the path to the land of the living. He recalled that now. But there were age-old tunnels under many of the cities of the Afterworld, tunnels under Nova Roma, under Elektrograd, under Nibelheim, perhaps even tunnels under Uruk, for all he knew. In those cities, too, it was often whispered that one might find a way out of the Afterworld through one of the tunnels. But because a thing is whispered does not make it true. No one remembered who had built the tunnels, or why. They were mere dank caverns, dusty, sinister, dismal, abandoned long ago. Gilgamesh saw no reason to think that they had any magical import. There have always been those who hate the light of day, he thought, and prefer to burrow in the bowels of the earth. Why, though, should he believe that these labyrinths created in antiquity by the forgotten diggers of the Afterworld would lead anywhere except in futile circles?

  He said, after a time, “Where is the Hairy Man? We will ask him about this.”

  “He is in the outer hall,” Herod reported.

  Enkidu said, “Would it not be a grand thing to see the land of the living, brother? Let us set out for it, brother! You and me—and Helen.”

  “And Helen, eh?”

  “She will go with us, yes. She will lead the way, and all obstacles will fall before her.” Enkidu’s eyes were gleaming. “Oh, Gilgamesh, my brother, you have never known a woman like this one! She is a miracle! She is a goddess!”

  “I have embraced goddesses, brother,” said Gilgamesh drily, thinking of his first life, when he was king in the true Uruk and each year was obliged to enter into the Sacred Marriage with the divine Inanna. That had been a stormy thing, his dealings with Inanna, whose envy and love of power had nearly cost him his life far before his time. “They do not always make comforting bed-companions, let me remind you. But look—look, the Hairy Man—”

  “I am here at your command, King G
ilgamesh,” the ancient creature said.

  “We are speaking here of the path to the land of the living,” Gilgamesh said.

  “Ah.” The Hairy Man’s amber eyes burned like lanterns in his fur-shrouded inscrutable face.

  Gilgamesh said, “Word has come to us just now that the entrance to that land is known, and that it is to be found in the isle of Brasil.”

  “Why do you tell this to me?” asked the Hairy Man coolly, in that thick-tongued way of his that made Gilgamesh lean forward to catch every word.

  “Everything that is in Brasil, both in the city and in the tunnels beneath it, is known to you, I think. Therefore you should be able to say if it is so that the gateway to the land of the living is in that city.”

  The Hairy Man was silent for a time.

  “No,” he said, at last. “No, such a gateway is not to be found there. Not in the city, not in the tunnels.”

  Enkidu uttered a hissing sound of disappointment and fury.

  “Are you certain of that?” Gilgamesh asked the Hairy Man.

  “This palace of yours is a palace of stone, King Gilgamesh, and to enter the palace one must pass through a gateway. This city of Uruk is surrounded by a wall of brick, and to enter Uruk one must also pass through a gateway. But the land of the living is not entered the way your palace is entered, or the way the city of Uruk is entered, that is, through a gateway that one can step through, crossing from one side to the other, from a place outside to a place within. You will go up and down the face of the Afterworld and you will not find any such gateway.”

  Enkidu hissed again, more fiercely than before, and turned away, clenching his great fists and banging them against each other again and again.

  Gilgamesh said, “Then is it only a foolish tale, that we can reach the land of the living from this world? A dream, a fable, an idle fantasy?”

  The Hairy Man paused again a long while; and when he spoke he said something so indistinct that Gilgamesh could make out only a broken syllable here and there, and the rest of the lengthy speech was lost in the Hairy Man’s beard.

  “What was it you said?” Gilgamesh asked. “Tell it to me again, if you will.”

  “I said, O king, that the land of the living can indeed be reached. But the path that takes one there is not a path as you understand paths, and it is entered by a gateway that is not a gateway. The path is nowhere and everywhere, it is in Brasil and it is not in Brasil, it is in Uruk and it is not in Uruk, it is in the desert and it is not in the desert.”

  Scowling, Gilgamesh said, “Such words make no sense to me. To me a thing is somewhere or it isn’t. A place can be reached or it can’t be. No, you say. You say that there’s a way to get there, all right, but you have to take a path that isn’t a path, and the path is here but it isn’t here, and—” Gilgamesh shook his head. “I understand you not at all.”

  The Hairy Man said, “These are not easy matters to understand. The path is not an easy path to find. Without the help of one who knows the way, you will never find it at all.”

  “And where can we find one who knows the way?”

  “You have already found one, O king. I can put you on the path you seek.”

  “You? How can you do that?”

  “If you truly wish to visit the land of the living,” the Hairy Man said, “I can send you there. Do you not believe me? There is a way to open the path, and that way is known to me.”

  Enkidu, with a gasp, turned suddenly around again. He seemed to swell to twice his ordinary size. His eyes were wild and blazing.

  “You hear?” he cried, pointing furiously at Magalhaes. “Do you hear?” And to Gilgamesh he said, trembling, “Brother, make him tell us the secret this minute! We must go there, you and I! We must find the way and follow it to its end! Or would you rather sit and grow fat in Uruk for another ten thousand years? Eh, brother? Eh?”

  Gilgamesh stared at the Hairy Man in confusion. “You never said anything to me about this. Why is that, that you never said a thing?”

  Something almost like a smile crossed the Hairy Man’s bestial face.

  “Ah, King Gilgamesh! You never asked!”

  * * *

  TWENTY

  IT was a long somber night, punctuated by quick, abortive coppery-red sunrises and the dancing of unfamiliar yellow moons in the sky. Gilgamesh wandered alone in the streets of Uruk. A sharp, sour wind was blowing. For a time it brought with it gusty squalls of something much like snow, which dusted the white roof-tops with short-lived white flecks; when he picked up a handful of the stuff it was hot against his skin, like fine ash blown from a volcano’s heart, or a delicate pumice.

  Fragile but horrifying night-creatures, as filmy as dreams, fluttered about him in swarms, baring long gleaming teeth that dripped a pale venom. He batted them away as though they were mosquitos. A squat stubby tree with leaves like long greasy feathers seemed to be laughing at him. Doorways opened before him in mid-air, but there was nothing behind them. The paved streets undulated like the surface of a stormy sea.

  One thought, and one only, went through his mind as he roamed the dark city:

  You will be separated from Enkidu yet again, or else you must surrender the throne of Uruk. If you give up the throne you will never regain it. And if you lose Enkidu this time, you will never find him again.

  There had come a time in the old life, Gilgamesh recalled, when Enkidu had become bleak and downcast, and sat scowling and sorrowing all day long; and Gilgamesh went to him and said to him that he knew what troubled him, which was that he had grown restless in their soft life of citified ease, and weary of dallying in idleness in Uruk, and longed to go forth into adventure, into danger, into mighty deeds that would raise up his name before mankind.

  “Yes,” said Enkidu, “that is so, brother.”

  And Gilgamesh had said that it was the same with him, that there was something unsleeping in him also, forever questing, forever unsatisfied. The gods had played a jest on him, said Gilgamesh, fashioning him in such a way that he would yearn always for a peaceful life but never would be satisfied when he had attained it.

  Enkidu laughed then, and said, “We are like two overgrown boys, casting about forever for new diversions.”

  That was the time when they went off into the Land of Cedars to bring back the fine wood that grew in the forest there, and encountered the demon Huwawa, and slew him in his fiery lair, and returned in triumph to the city of Uruk, as joyous as though they had conquered six kingdoms.

  But all that had been in the other life, the old one long ago, before the first of the many deaths that they were destined to die. Now here was Enkidu once again restless for new adventure, and here was Gilgamesh king in Uruk again, settled in his tasks. What was it Enkidu had said, when he had urged Gilgamesh to come away on this quest with him? Would you rather sit and grow fat in Uruk for another ten thousand years? But this time Gilgamesh was uncertain of his way. There was a part of him that yearned to go with Enkidu in search of the land of the living—that part that was forever restless, forever seeking, and which was not yet entirely dead within him—but also there was another aspect of him that had grown within him during his time in the Afterworld, which said, Stay, stay, rule your city, do the tasks that you alone were meant to do. And that voice was as strong in him, or nearly, as the other.

  And yet—

  Stay? For what, he wondered? To play out yet again all that had happened before, in this world and the one that had preceded it? Was there no more to this existence of his than an eternal cycle of wielding power and then renouncing it, of governing and wandering, governing and wandering? Had nothing any end? Had nothing any purpose? When would he ever simply rest?

  He heard the beating of mighty wings overhead, though there was nothing there. He saw the great hill beyond the city’s north wall stirring and slowly beginning to move, lifting itself like the humped back of an awakening dragon. The air grew blood-red and very heavy, and a thick insistent buzzing came from it, as if from a
million million angry flies.

  A voice that spoke without speaking aloud said, “This is your kingdom, Gilgamesh of Uruk. How deeply do you love it?”

  And the buzzing air echoed, “Do you love it? Do you love it? Do you love it?”

  Ninsun said, “So you will go, then.”

  “I must, mother. He leaves me no choice.”

  She shook her head. “It seems a great mistake to me, this journey.”

  “And to me also,” came Vy-otin’s ringing voice from the far side of the hall. “How can you say you have no choice? Are you and he like twins who are joined by a band of flesh at the waist, that you have to follow him wherever he goes?”

  Gilgamesh stared sadly at the Ice-Hunter a long moment.

  “Yes, Vy-otin. That is exactly what we are.”

  “Then tell him you won’t go. He’ll have to give the idea up.”

  “He will go anyway,” said Gilgamesh.

  “Ah,” said Herod. “Then you’re a Siamese twin, but he isn’t? How very peculiar.”

  “No,” said Gilgamesh. “To enter the land of the living is something that he wants more than anything else. Such a need severs all bonds. He died his first death when he went down into the House of Dust and Darkness to bring back the drum that I had lost, the drum that the craftsman Ur-nangar made for me out of the wood of the huluppu-tree—do you remember, mother? That was the drum by whose beating I could send my spirit free to rove in strange realms of gods and monsters, and when I lost it he gave up his life that I could have it back. Ever since that time, I think, he has sought to regain the thing he lost that day. And he is certain now that the Hairy Man’s witchcraft will help him find it.”

  “Then let him go and look for it,” Vy-otin said. “But why must you—”

  “Because I must,” said Gilgamesh.

  Herod laughed. “There’s no reasoning like circular reasoning, is there?”

  Gilgamesh whirled on the little Judaean with such wrath that Herod jumped back five paces. “You understand nothing of this! Nothing!”

  “Forgive me, Gilgamesh,” said Herod in a chastened voice. “But couldn’t you simply forbid Enkidu to do it, if doing it causes you such grief?”