To the Land of the Living

by Robert Silverberg

  Beyond this building were others, of metal of every color, of stone, of glass. He saw one a few streets away, broad and not so tall as the others, that might have been a temple or a palace: it was of pale gray stone, and not too different in design from the structure that Dumuzi had erected for himself in Afterworld-Uruk, with great arched doorways and twin spires rising above its intricate facade. Beyond that was another tower of shimmering burnished bronze, or so it seemed, so massive that surely the gods themselves would be angered by its size. And beyond that, another, almost as huge, and another, and another—

  There was a fierce roaring in his head.

  Why did they have to build everything so close, and so high? He could never have imagined a city landscape of such brutal intensity. Not a bit of grass in sight, not a tree. And the noise, the frenzied pace, the bleak harried faces he saw all about him—

  Could this place truly be the land of the living? Or had he been deceived, and was this the Pit, the Depths, the Ultimate Abyss, that he had landed in?

  —“Jesus, will you look at the size of him!”

  —“You got the time, mister? Hey, mister? You there, mister?”

  —“For Christ’s sake, don’t just stand there blocking the whole fucking street—”

  —“You want Walkmans, half price? Brand new, still in the original package. We got wristwatches, genuine Rolex, you wouldn’t believe the price, right here—maybe a portable TV, Sony two-inch screen—”

  —“Mommy? Mommy?”

  —“A little spare change to help the homeless?”

  —“Excuse me—”

  —“Excuse me—”

  —“Hey, you big bozo, get outa the fucking way!”

  —“Kosher dog? Polish sausage? Falafel?”

  —“Please take one. All the news of the coming Messiah, and may God bless you—”

  —“Mommy?”

  —“All I need is half a buck for a subway token, maybe you could help out a little—”

  —“Christ, don’t just stand there—”

  If he could, he would have sought out the tree that grows between the worlds, and clambered back down into the familiar realm he had so rashly left behind. But there was no sign of that tree here, nor of any other. Whatever this place might be, Gilgamesh saw no immediate way of escaping from it. Nor either of the companions with whom he had made the crossing.

  He stared into the swarming throngs all about him.

  “Enkidu?”

  Nothing.

  “Enkidu? Can you hear me? Enkidu? Enkidu?”

  That it was another world he had no doubt. Very likely it was indeed the land of the living, transformed beyond all recognition by the passing of the thousands of years since last he had walked it, and not merely some nightmare vision brought on by the Hairy Man’s salve. The sun was yellow, as he remembered it to have been in the other world of his first birth, and not reddish. The vehicles in the street were much like those he knew from the cities of the Later Dead in the Afterworld, although subtly different in style, which was only to be expected. Everyone here was dressed in the same way, more or less: there was none of the wide range of costume and appearance and manner, that random mixture of every era and every nation, that one saw everywhere in the cities of the Afterworld. Above all, everything that was not in motion seemed solid, leaden, fixed securely in its place. The facades of the buildings did not shift about with that dreamlike mutability that he associated with the Afterworld, the streets did not seem likely to alter their paths, everything was firm, rigid, steady.

  Nor did he see any of the demon-creatures, great and small, that flew and slithered and crawled and leaped and danced all through the Afterworld, both in the cities and the countryside. The only animals here seemed to be dogs—dogs of strange breed, nothing much like those he knew from the Afterworld—which, tethered on leashes, accompanied some of the passersby in the streets. One of them, a great dark hound with stiff upturned ears, paused to growl at Gilgamesh and paw the pavement in sudden motiveless rage, and it was all Gilgamesh could do to keep himself from springing at the beast and slashing its throat with his knife.

  But he had no knife. Nor did he have his bow. He was altogether unarmed, he realized; and it made him feel worse than naked.

  The great strange tree had been easier to climb than Helen had expected. Looking up at it, she had thought it would be beyond her strength to clamber from one immense branch to the next, but once she began the ascent she found it almost like floating.

  Very odd, to be floating higher and higher, and yet to seem at the same time to be going down and down some immense staircase—

  Well, it was done. And here she was. No Enkidu, no Gilgamesh—just throngs of ugly little Later Dead people, rushing about in the busy street like madmen. And the air was chilly, with a biting wind blowing. It was windier here even than in Troy, and the air was filthy, too, carrying with it a burden of dust and dirt that she feared would scour and score her skin if she stayed out in it much longer. But the huge buildings were impressive, at any rate, vast shining towers that looked like the dwellings of gods. And she liked the excitement of the place, the tempo, the hard throbbing beat of it. She knew she would be all right here.

  But first she had to find Enkidu, somehow—

  The building nearest her looked like a government house of some kind, or perhaps a holy building. It was a wide low structure of grey stone, rising at the corner of two large avenues on a high plaza-like pedestal set with broad steps. Despite the cold, people were sitting on the steps, reading or talking or simply staring at the passing crowds in the street below. At either side of the plaza she saw stone statues of two idols, lion-gods, mounted on low pedestals of their own.

  Perhaps in here she could find local officials, explain her plight, arrange shelter for herself—

  Someone sitting on the steps called out to her.

  “Hey, baby! Don’t you know you need a coat in this weather?”

  She gave him a quick glance. Poorly dressed, youngish, stringy yellow hair, pale blue eyes, drooping mustache: nobody. But he seemed friendly, at least.

  She said, “Can you tell me—what is the name of this building here—”

  “You got to be kidding. You don’t know the 42nd Street Library?” He rose slowly and ambled toward her. “What planet you from, anyway?”

  Helen smiled. “I’ve—just come to town—”

  “Well, let old Georgie help you out, then.” He stared at her, almost hungrily. His eyes were chilly, glinting. Whistling softly, he murmured, “Hey, what a fox you are, huh? You ought to be in movies, you know? What’s your name?”

  “Helen. I—”

  “Helen. Yeah. Come here, will you? I just want to lend you my jacket, okay? Come on, we can go someplace warm and—”

  He was moving closer to her. Nobody around them seemed to be paying attention.

  “Let me alone,” she said, in the voice that she had used when she was Queen of Sparta.

  He stared. “Oh, fiery, huh! I like that. Come here. Come here.”

  “Keep away from me.”

  He seized her arm. Pulled her close, slipped one arm around her shoulders and up to grasp her breast. He held a knife in his other hand, the tip of the blade barely visible. The people around them on the steps were simply looking away from them. She could not understand that, the way they were ignoring what was happening.

  “Let—me—go!”

  “Oh, baby. Baby, baby, baby!”

  After a time, growing weary of being buffeted by the crowds hurrying past him as he stood before the metal-jacketed building, Gilgamesh began to walk. The sun was visible in front of him, pale and low on the horizon, in the opening that the street made between the buildings. That and the chill of the air told him that the season was late autumn or winter, and so he must surely be heading south, but beyond that he had no idea of where he might be going, or why.

  Crowded though the street was, people stepped out of his way as he approached. Perh
aps it was because of his size, he thought. Or perhaps he looked as strange and disturbing to them as they, so fierce and frantic, did to him.

  He became aware, after a time, that he was hungry. There were metal carts here and there along the streets, and he stopped at one and pointed to a bin of sausages steaming on a metal plate.

  “One of those,” he said.

  “With mustard and sauerkraut?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What language you like me to talk? Mustard, sauerkraut, onion, tell me what you want, okay?”

  “Just give it to me,” said Gilgamesh.

  “Sure, buddy. Sure.” The vendor put the sausage in a kind of folded roll and handed it brusquely to the Sumerian, who began at once to eat. Four bites and it was gone.

  “Another one,” he said.

  “That’s one ninety-five,” the vendor said.

  “Yes. Another one,” said Gilgamesh.

  The vendor stared. “You hear me? One ninety-five!”

  “I don’t understand that. But I am very hungry.”

  “I’m sure you are, buddy. But you pay me for that one first.”

  “Pay—you—?”

  “Pay me, that’s right. You understand. You spikka da English very nice.” He held out his hand. “Come on, schmuck! Buck ninety-five, and stop crappin’ around or I’ll call a cop!”

  Gilgamesh understood now.

  “Ah, you want money. But I have no money!”

  “Jesus H. Christ! What are you, something that escaped from the circus? Officer! Hey, officer! Officer, this guy here don’t wanna pay for the hot dog—!”

  Plainly there was going to be trouble. Gilgamesh saw a man in a peaked cap and coarse-looking dark blue clothing unlike that of anyone else nearby looking at him from farther up the street. A street guardian of some kind, most likely. He began to move away at a steady pace, without looking back.

  The sausage vendor continued to yell, and the guard called out something too. People were staring. After twenty paces Gilgamesh paused and glanced over his shoulder past the heads of the thick crowd behind him to see the man in blue make what seemed like an angry beckoning gesture, then shake his fist at him, and turn away, shrugging. He heard the vendor’s angry cries a moment more, and not again.

  Too much trouble, probably, to pursue him in this crowd over the price of a sausage. But Gilgamesh, moving on swiftly down the street, knew he would have to be careful. Of course they were going to want payment for food here. Yet there was nothing in his pockets that seemed to be the currency of the place. It seemed that the Hairy Man had sent him here unprepared, unskilled in the ways of this other world, forced back on whatever wit and inner resourcefulness he could summon.

  He wondered how adept he was likely to be at coping with the intricacies of this place. He had lived aloof too long, stalking his lonely path through the wilderness; and when he had finally come forth to live among men and women again, it had been as a king. A king does not need to know the skill of buying sausages in the streets. Enkidu, rough boisterous Enkidu, was probably a great deal better suited for making his way here than he was, Gilgamesh realized.

  But how was he to find Enkidu, in this teeming multitude of strangers?

  He walked onward. There were signal-posts at every corner, flashing lights that marked off the time when the cars could go, and when the people. Red light, wait. Green light, go. It was a sensible system—for here, at any rate. But Gilgamesh doubted it would work well in the randomness that was the Afterworld, where the signals most likely would flash both red and green at once to the same side, or green to both sides, or some other colors entirely.

  Vendors selling food out of carts were everywhere. The aromas that came from them put him into an agony of hunger. He was famished; but he forced himself to keep walking. Until he had figured out how to obtain food properly here, he wanted no more dealings with these difficult, snarling-voiced folk.

  Ahead of him now lay a significant-looking intersection, where a second major road crossed the one he was following. On the far side, he saw an imposing building somewhat like the one he had seen a dozen or so streets behind him, stone-gray, set back somewhat from the street, much less monstrous in height than those all around it although it was itself of great size and bulk, and approached by a wide staircase rising upon a plaza. This one had no towers and its facade was not so intricately carved as the other, which must, he thought, have been a holy building, what Herod would call a cathedral. There were two statues in front of it, lions, not particularly ferocious-looking ones: symbols of the local king’s strength and benevolence, perhaps.

  This might well be the palace of government, Gilgamesh supposed. If so, then the thing to do was go inside, explain to one of the viziers that he was the king of a distant land, transported here suddenly by enchantment, and ask for the hospitality of his brother monarch in this place. Doubtless they would not have heard of Uruk here, but all the same he was confident that the court officials were bound to receive him favorably. Surely they would take him seriously, he thought, so kinglike was he in manner and bearing, so sure of himself. And certainly he would be able to obtain warmer clothing from them, a little coinage of the kingdom, the king’s assistance in finding his Enkidu—

  Yes. Yes.

  He started up the steps.

  When he was a little less than halfway up he noticed something odd taking place not much farther up. A dark-haired woman, very lightly dressed for so cold a day, was struggling with a shabbily dressed man. He seemed to be trying to drag her away. Her robe was torn, and she was shrieking angrily and cursing. She had one arm free and was beating him with it, but to very little effect, for he was laughing and talking to her even as he pulled her across the steps.

  The strangest thing was that although there were many people seated on the steps, some of them quite close to the man and the woman, no one was paying the slightest heed to their struggle. Perhaps it was the custom in this land for men to rape women on the steps of public buildings. But did the custom also decree that no one must go to the victim’s aid? Strange. Strange. Gilgamesh paused for a moment, staring, outraged by what he was seeing but uncertain of the appropriate response.

  Then he heard the woman cry out, “Enkidu! Wherever you are, help me, Enkidu, help me!”

  By all the gods! That was Helen!

  Gilgamesh broke instantly into motion, crossing the steps in a moment, seizing the man by one arm, yanking and twisting, pulling him away from Helen with one quick tug.

  He whirled, glaring furiously at Gilgamesh. “Hey, what the fuck—”

  “Gilgamesh! He’s got a knife!”

  “I see it, yes.”

  The blade flashed. Gilgamesh saw the thrust coming as the knife drove upward toward the center of his chest, and caught the other man’s wrist before the weapon could touch him. He bent his attacker’s hand backward. There was a sharp cracking sound and the knife fell. Helen snatched at it and tossed it down the steps. The man did a weird sort of dance in front of Gilgamesh, muttering in pain and astonishment and spitting out a string of incomprehensible curses. Disdainfully Gilgamesh swatted at him as one would swat an annoying insect. The blow lifted the man and sent him tumbling and sprawling down the entire course of steps to the bottom. His head struck the last of the steps above the left-hand lion statue, and he fetched up like a heap of discarded rags against its pedestal. He moaned for a moment and grew still.

  Gilgamesh turned to Helen, who was staring, white-faced, wide-eyed, shivering.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “Did he hurt you?”

  “Frightened me, only. The dirty presumptuous peasant—putting his hands to me, me who was a queen, for whom the greatest war that ever was was fought—” She shook her head. “I don’t know what he was going to do with me. Drag me off to his hut, I suppose. Did you kill him, do you think?”

  “I doubt it. Not that he’d be much of a loss. Is Enkidu with you?”

  “No,” she said. “I thoug
ht he might be with you.” All at once her queenly rage seemed to go from her, and she was just a small chilled woman in a rumpled torn robe. “Where are we, Gilgamesh? What are we going to do?”

  “We are in the land of the living. And Enkidu must be close at hand somewhere. Perhaps if we simply stand here and wait, he’ll come along. Once the three of us are together again, we can—”

  “Oh, look, Gilgamesh. Down there.”

  A crowd was gathering at the foot of the stairs, where Helen’s assailant still lay. Gilgamesh saw one of the blue-clad street guardians kneeling next to the man, and another talking with people in the crowd. They were pointing up toward Gilgamesh and Helen. One of the guards gestured to him.

  “What are you going to do?” Helen asked.

  “Go down and talk to him, I suppose. I’ve done nothing wrong. And these officers may be able to help us find food and shelter.”

  “He’s got a gun, Gilgamesh!”

  The Sumerian nodded. “So I see. But I mean him no harm. I’m unarmed, and he’s bound to realize that.”

  “Be careful. Be careful!”

  “You, there!” the man in blue clothing called. “Come down from there, slowly. No funny stuff. The woman down here, too.”

  Gilgamesh nodded.

  When he was closer, the guard indicated the man on the ground and said, “You the one threw him down these stairs?”

  “That man attacked me,” Helen said fiercely. “I’m a stranger in this city, and I asked for directions, when suddenly that man grabbed me—you see how my clothing is torn—and if my friend hadn’t come along just in time—”