To the Land of the Living

by Robert Silverberg

  Night had begun to fall by the time they were finally out of there. A cold wind was coming off the river behind them, and lights were glowing like a million little suns in the towering buildings that rose all about. There was noise everywhere, an unbelievable cacophony of screeching and honking. Gilgamesh felt a savage pounding behind his forehead. This world that Enkidu had brought him to was like a joke, a very bad joke that went on and on, that threatened never to end.

  If this is the land of the living, he thought, give me the Afterworld. He wondered what would happen if he jumped under one of those onrushing vehicles. Perhaps he would die in an instant and return to the place where he belonged. Or perhaps not. Perhaps once you left the Afterworld you could never return, and he was condemned for his impiety to spend the rest of eternity here. That would be Hell indeed. They would patch him together and send him out into this ghastly hateful land of the living again, and again and again, forever and ever, world without end.

  Is it my fate, he thought, always to be restless and discontented, whichever world I may find myself in? Will I never know peace again?

  Gallagher said, “Well, here we are, free as birds. It only took five times as long as it needed to, getting you guys sprung.” He shook his head. “Shit, half past four, now, and we’re way the hell over here on First Avenue, and pretty soon I’ve got to start opening up the club—”

  Who is this man, Gilgamesh wondered, whom Enkidu has found?

  Gallagher was still talking, not seeming to care whether they were listening, or understood anything he said. “Well, so we open a little late today. At least your friends are loose, Hinky, and that’s the important thing. Scared the crap out of me when that wimp of a psychiatrist started in wanting to know my sister’s phone number right at the end when I thought we were all done, and the address of the Iranian-American Friendship League—”

  “But you gave him the phone number,” Enkidu said.

  “My sister lives in Los Angeles. That was the number of a girl I used to know, graduate student at Columbia.”

  “What about the address you gave him?”

  “Of the Iranian-American Friendship League? Christ, I don’t even know if such an outfit exists. I made it all up. But what the hell, Gil, you’re out of there, and that’s what counts.” Gallagher thrust out his hand. “I’m pleased to have been of service. Any friend of Hinkadoo’s a friend of mine. I’m Bill Gallagher, manager of the Club Ultra Ultra on West Fifty-fourth.”

  Gilgamesh accepted the handshake.

  “Gilgamesh, son of Lugalbanda,” he said. “Formerly king of Uruk.”

  “Very nice to meet you, Gil. And this is Helen of Troy?”

  “My name is Helen, yes.”

  “A real pleasure, Helen. Here, let’s turn west on Thirty-fourth. We’re never going to find a cab, this hour, but maybe we have a better chance here than the little streets.” Gallagher laughed. “Just one illegal alien wasn’t enough for me, I guess. Hell with it. Listen, all three of you can stay at the club for a while, if you like, but I’ve only got the one room for all three of you, so you’ll need to get a hotel pretty fast, or something, okay? And some kind of jobs. We don’t really need two bouncers at the club, but maybe you two could take turns at it, Gil, Hinky, day on day off, and the other one can help out in back, maybe. Won’t anybody get out of line, with a couple of guys the size of you two on the premises. Is that all right with you, Gil, Number Two bouncer at the Ultra Ultra?”

  “Is he speaking to me?” Gilgamesh asked.

  “They speak very quickly here,” said Enkidu. “But I am starting to understand what they say.” He turned to Gallagher. “He will be pleased to have the job, yes, Bill. Very pleased.”

  “Good. And you, Helen—you need some work too. Can you do topless, you think?”

  “Topless?”

  “You know. Strip. Show the skin. Bare the boobs.”

  Helen looked at him. “Do I understand? You mean, take my clothing off in front of others? This is what you mean by topless?” She laughed. “In the poem they wrote about me, it was the towers that were topless, not me.”

  “What?”

  “The towers. The topless towers of Ilium.”

  Gallagher said, “Help me out, Hinkadoo. What’s she talking about?”

  Helen said, “You know. ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships—’”

  “Oh. The poem,” said Gallagher doubtfully. “It’s about you, is it?” He thought a moment. “‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships—’ The poem’s talking about Helen of Troy?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you are—”

  “It is a joke,” Enkidu said. “She likes to pretend to be Helen of Troy. Just as my Gilgamesh pretends that he is Gilgamesh the king, who ruled long ago in Sumer. A joke, do you see, Bill? Only a joke.”

  “Right,” Gallagher said.

  How easily Enkidu picks up the way of speaking here, Gilgamesh thought. How glibly he tells the lies!

  It is all noise, he thought. Everything that is said and done in this world is mere noise without meaning. And the noise was growing more intense every moment. The roaring, the booming, the honking, the screaming—he thought his heart would burst from the utter madness of it. Yet Enkidu took no notice of it, nor Helen. They went babbling merrily on and on, speaking with this Gallagher, saying things he could not understand and speaking so quickly that the words themselves became a blur of noise. He gave Enkidu a desperate look, but Enkidu merely smiled, and went on talking. Gilgamesh trembled. There was a drumming now in his ears, in his head, in his chest. The lights of the big buildings were blinking crazily, like beacons gone berserk. Voices rose and fell all about him, now thundering like waterfalls, now dropping to a sinister, oily whisper. Strangers in the street were pointing at him, nudging one another, laughing.

  I am going mad, Gilgamesh thought.

  Gods, is there no way I can depart from here? I have had enough. It is time to move on. I must escape this place or perish. I will fall down and do obeisance—yes, I will pray for my deliverance—

  Once he had wanted to live forever, and that had been denied him, for at the end of his time in the first Uruk he had died, full of years and beloved by his people; but that death had led only to a new birth, in a world where indeed it did seem that he would live forever, and when he had attained the life eternal that he had sought so badly it seemed to lose its savor for him, and he could not remain content. Whereupon he had chosen to return to the land of the living. And here he was. But, he told himself, if only he could be discharged of his voyage, he would be restless no longer, he would gladly be still, he would make an end of his questing and seeking. Yes. Yes.

  Now prayer rose and coursed in him like a river. He who had not prayed in the thousands of years of his life after life now humbled himself before the gods he once had worshipped.

  Enki, spare me! Enlil, great one, set me free.

  Lugalbanda—father—grant me peace!

  For an answer there was only the lunatic cacophony of the traffic, and the vile fumes that choked the air, and the buzzing chatter of Gallagher and Enkidu and Helen.

  Once again he closed his eyes and made entreaty to the great gods of Sumer and to the god his father, Lugalbanda. And opened his eyes again, and looked out without hope into the squalid ugly jumble that was the land of the living.

  Then he beheld something before him that kindled a great strangeness in his soul, as though the earth were about to erupt and explode, and everything whirled about him. He blinked and caught his breath. And said, pointing down the street, “Enkidu? Do you see that man there?”

  “Which, brother? There are so many.”

  “The one with the red face, the big chest, down there. Surely we’ve seen him before—in the Afterworld—”

  “I’m not sure which one you—”

  “There. There. He was at the court of Prester John, do you remember? The ambassador from King Henry, he was. He and the other one, the one wit
h the strange long face—Howard was this one’s name, I remember now, Robert Howard—”

  “Here? How can it be? This is the land of the living, brother.”

  “I tell you, he is the man,” said Gilgamesh. “Or else his twin.”

  Shaken, he looked off into the deepening dusk. Could it be? Perhaps his eyes were deceiving him. How could the man Robert Howard possibly be here, possibly be on the very same street he was, of all the teeming myriad chaotic streets of this city in this teeming chaotic world? A trick of the darkness, he thought. Or of his memory.

  But no—no—the red-faced man was pointing, too, staring, looking dumbstruck at Gilgamesh—running wildly toward him, now, pushing people aside—

  “Conan!” he cried. “By Crom, it is you, Lord Conan! Here—here!”

  * * *

  TWENTY-TWO

  GILGAMESH stood still, scarcely even breathing. Everything seemed quite different, suddenly. The street about him was growing misty and insubstantial. The towering buildings were wavering and flickering like the frail plants that grow beneath the water and dance in the current. The frantic noise of the traffic died away. He could barely see Gallagher now, and even Enkidu and Helen seemed remote and indistinct.

  The strange red-faced man Howard kneeled before him as he had done once before long ago in the Outback, sobbing and babbling.

  Then the other one appeared, the lantern-jawed one, gaunt and pale—Lovecraft was his name, Gilgamesh remembered, King Henry’s other ambassador. Putting his hand on Howard’s shoulder, he said gently, “Up, Bob. You know that this is not your Conan. This is Gilgamesh the king.”

  “So he is. Yes. Yes.”

  “Come. Let him be.”

  “Why are you here?” Gilgamesh asked. “Is this not the land of the living?”

  “We all came to visit you,” a new but familiar voice said. Gilgamesh glanced to his side and saw Herod of Judaea, clad now not in Roman robes but in a suit of Later Dead style. Vy-otin was with him, majestic in a bulky overcoat and a narrow-brimmed hat pushed down low over his forehead on the side where the eye was missing. They were smiling at him. The buildings were all but invisible, now. The cars that still streamed by in the street were ghost-cars, silent, mysterious. Herod slipped an arm through one of Gilgamesh’s, and Vy-otin took the other.

  “You two should be in Uruk,” Gilgamesh said uncertainly. “I left you in charge of the city.”

  “The city can look after itself for a while,” Vy-otin said. “This was more important. Let’s go, Gilgamesh.”

  “Wait,” he said. “Enkidu—Helen—”

  “Come on,” Herod said. “This is New York! We have to live it up! First the Natural History Museum—Vy-otin wants to show us the mammoth bones, and some paintings his friends did a long time ago—and then maybe I ought to stop in the synagogue for the services—it’s Friday night, you know—but you can come along, they won’t mind—”

  “And the Museum of Modern Art,” said Picasso, stepping out of the mists. “The Metropolitan. You should not forget those. He has much to learn about the great painters. Let him see Cezanne. Let him see Velasquez. Y pues, carajos, let him see Picasso!”

  “Are all of you here?” Gilgamesh said softly. “Every one of you?”

  Yes. All of them. There was that kindly old German doctor—Schweitzer, was he?—smiling and twisting the ends of his immense mustache. There was Simon Magus, holding out a flask of wine. And there? Caesar, was that? Yes. And Walter Ralegh, in full gleaming armor, making a courtly bow? Yes. Yes. Baffled, amazed, Gilgamesh took a few stumbling steps toward them. The city around him had all but vanished, leaving nothing but a radiant glow stretching far toward the horizon. It seemed to him that he was in Vy-otin’s ancient feasting-hall now, the palace of the Ice-Hunters where the bones of the great beasts lay strewn about as they had in the early mists of time. And all about him were unexpected figures, coming to him from the other world, crowding close—Prester John saluting him now, and limping little Magalhaes, and Belshazzar, Amenhotep, Kublai Khan, Bismarck, Lenin—

  That was Calandola standing apart from the others, like a massive column of black stone, grinning, his eyes blazing like beacons—and the Hairy Man—and Dumuzi—Ninsun—Minos—Varuna of Meluhha—

  They were all here, everyone he had ever known. A horde of faces ringing him around, people nodding, smiling, waving, winking, laughing—

  “What is this?” Gilgamesh asked. “What is happening to me?”

  He wondered if he might be dying at last. The third and final death, the true death, after he had died from this world into the other one and died from that one back into this, and now was going onward into oblivion, into the ultimate sleep. Could that be it? So at last, then—was it peace at last? Sleep? Eternal rest? An end to wandering, an end to kingship, an end to Gilgamesh?

  He understood nothing. Nothing.

  “Herod? Mother? I beg you—tell me—please, tell me—”

  It was growing even darker. The glow was fading from the sky, and the figures around him were mere shadows, faceless, indistinguishable. No longer did he see the Ice-Hunter hall. Now it seemed to him that he was in Uruk again, the first Uruk, the city of his birth—in the great palace of the king, that formidable place of fortified towered entrances and intricately niched facades and lofty columns, where the walls were a brilliant white and the ceilings of rich black wood from far-off lands.

  “Enkidu? Where are you, Enkidu? Vy-otin? Simon, are you there? Or your Hairy Man?”

  “Come to me, Gilgamesh,” a great voice called in the darkness, a voice that he did not know.

  “I can’t see you. Who are you?”

  “Come to me, Gilgamesh.” And then the voice used another name, that secret one, his birth-name that no one must ever speak, conjuring him by it, urging him forward.

  The vast rolling tones came to Gilgamesh like the tolling of a colossal bell. He took an uneasy step, another, another. He was in utter blackness now. “Come to me,” the voice said. “Come. Come. Come.”

  There was sudden light, as if a new sun had been born that instant.

  Before him in the void there rose a mighty figure, a man who seemed as high as the highest of towers, before whom Gilgamesh stood as though before a god. He wore nothing but a flounced woolen robe of the sort that the men had worn in Sumer the Land, which left him bare above the waist. His shoulders were as broad as a mountain, his chest was as deep as the sky. His skin was smooth and dark from the sun, and his scalp was shaven clean, and his beard was thick and black, falling in curling folds.

  Most wondrous of all were his eyes: dark and bright and enormous, so large that they seemed almost to fill his whole forehead. Gilgamesh knew those eyes. He had seen them before, and he could never forget them.

  “Father?”

  “Yes. I am Lugalbanda.”

  Gilgamesh went to his knees. Yet it seemed to him that he was floating forward into the vast pool of those eyes, that he would be lost within his father’s soul forever.

  “How splendid you are, my son,” Lugalbanda said. “Come to me. Closer. Closer.”

  “Father”

  Lugalbanda smiled. His voice rolled down from high above. “Ah, Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh, you were only a boy when I went away. Though I could see even then that you would be kingly one day. I would have wished to be with you, to watch you grow into manhood. The gods took me too soon for that.”

  “Yes. I was six.”

  “Six, yes. And even before I died I saw you so rarely. There were so many wars to fight. And the pilgrimages afterward, the shrines that had to be visited—”

  “You promised that there would be time later,” said Gilgamesh. “When you and I could hunt lions together, and you would teach me all the things of manhood.”

  “But that could not be,” said Lugalbanda.

  “After you died I still thought you would come back,” said Gilgamesh. “Perhaps I spent my whole life thinking that, that I would find you again some day.”

&nbs
p; “I am here now.”

  “Am I dead, father?”

  “Dead? Yes, yes, of course. We are all dead.”

  “I mean, will I sleep now? Will I go into the great darkness and never awaken?”

  “Ah,” said Lugalbanda, “but our spirits are eternal. Have you not learned that, in all your seeking?”

  Gilgamesh was silent, staring at the immense form that filled the void before him. After a time he said, “Sometimes I think I have learned nothing at all, father.”

  Lugalbanda smiled and stretched forth one enormous hand.

  “Come closer, Gilgamesh. Put your hand in mine.”

  “Yes, father.”

  “Here. Yes.” Their hands touched. Through Gilgamesh went a surge of power so intense that he nearly fell to his knees a second time; but he kept himself upright, receiving it, absorbing it. The vastness and majesty of Lugalbanda were overwhelming. The eyes of Lugalbanda were like suns before him. I know my father at last, Gilgamesh thought. And he is a god.

  Quietly Lugalbanda said, “I tell you only this, Gilgamesh my son, that which you have already learned, though you think you have forgotten it: there is no death. There is no death. There is only change, and change leads only to rebirth and renewal. Your soul goes ever onward, in joy and wonder, through all that will come; and when everything has come, it will come again, and again and again, everlasting and unwaning. We are indestructible, though we die and are scattered to the winds, for we will be brought together again and renewed. That is the truth of the world, Gilgamesh. That is the only truth: there is no death. Do you see, Gilgamesh? Do you see?”

  “I think I see, yes, father.”

  “Good. Go, then, and take my blessing.”

  It seemed to Gilgamesh that the figure of Lugalbanda wavered, and began to grow dim.

  “Father? Father, will I see you again?”

  “Of course.”

  “Father! Father!”

  “Go,” said Lugalbanda. “Everything awaits you.”

  He tried to hold tight to his father’s hand, but no, there was no substance to it, there was only shadow, and then just the shadow of a shadow, and then nothing at all, and he stood alone, blinking as sudden brightness came pouring down upon him. Jagged green lightning danced on the horizon. A wind came ripping like a blade out of the east, skinning the flat land bare and sending up clouds of gray-brown dust. He held a bow in his hand, his bow of several fine woods, the bow that no man but he was strong enough to draw, he and Enkidu. He knew this place. Indeed, he had been here before. This was the Afterworld. This was the Outback where he had hunted so long. He narrowed his eyes and stared into the distance. A figure was coming this way across the plain, a man, robust and vigorous, a man he knew as well as he knew his own self. Enkidu, it was. Enkidu, smiling, waving. “Brother!” he cried. “Hail, brother!” And Gilgamesh, smiling, waving also, called out in joyous response, and began to walk toward him.