I went over to his place prepared to travel.
* * * *
It was the same thing again to start with. The cigarette in the jade-green holder and lying down on the bed and relaxing.
But this time I seemed to reach the glittering worlds a lot sooner. Then one of the worlds spun closer. It loomed bigger and its surface separated into oceans and continents. Unfamiliar ones.
There was a rushing, roaring sensation as I turned over and over, and then I was walking along a lane in a peaceful countryside, with Jones beside me.
“Do you like it?” he asked, without speaking the words.
My mind answered, “It’s beautiful. This isn’t our world.”
“This is Uru,” he said. “It is my world.”
Then I noticed that he wasn’t dressed the same. Instead of the black suit and the blue shirt and white tie, he was wearing knee-length shorts, blue, topped by a wide belt of metallic-looking leather. He wore a thin circlet of the same material around his head. It held in the center of his forehead a heraldic device, as if it were a mark of rank. Except for sandals he wore nothing else. His body was a light tan.
I noticed then that I was dressed similarly, except that there was no circlet around my head.
We went by a field under cultivation. A few people were among the rows, working easily, chatting and laughing. They waved as we passed. There was a mental exchange of greetings between them and Jones which I also heard.
We walked effortlessly, even uphill. The gravity seemed less than on Earth. The air was clean and invigorating. It was warm but not humid.
A blue-white sun was in the sky. I could look at it without hurting my eyes. It was larger, apparently closer, than Earth’s sun, and I thought I could make out markings on it. Were they the same as those on the oval Jones wore on his forehead? I could not be sure.
We were coming to a city, or a big town.
“Urula,” Jones told me. “Our capital.”
He had been out of communication with me since we passed the people in the field, though I felt that my thoughts were being transmitted to him. It was as if he knew all my thoughts but permitted me to know his only when he wished. Or it might have been that I was so engrossed in my new experience that he had let me enjoy it without interfering, by keeping his thoughts neutral.
“Where is Uru?” I asked then.
He showed me a mind-picture so vast I could not fully comprehend it. He showed me the sky of Earth, with the moon low on the horizon. Then up beyond the moon, so that the Earth was in eclipse behind it. Then farther still, and the mighty sun faded into insignificance among other stars.
I was whirled around in the opposite direction and rushed through space as the stars ran together and melted into a shivering puddle of luminescence which instantly flew apart into stars again, leaving one of them closer than the others. It grew in size, became blue-white, and five planets came into view, circling it in precision, equal distances away.
One of the planets began to swell and again I saw the continents and oceans of Uru and was whisked to its surface, and again I was walking along the lane toward the city.
“It is far, you see,” Jones told me.
I nodded, dazed.
The city, Urula, was impeccably clean. It had a feeling of openness about it; it didn’t close in and tower over you like Earth cities.
The streets were wide and landscaped with shrubs and trees. The walks were of turf and the lush trimmed grass provided a pleasant cushion for the feet. The buildings were low and rambling, set well back from the walks. There was no lack of room to force them up into the air beyond a storey or two.
People passed us occasionally, never in crowds, radiating cordiality as they nodded to Jones and me. Other people lounged idly on benches or on the lawns in front of the buildings. I couldn’t tell whether they were homes or business offices, or a combination of both.
I looked in vain for factories, for ugly smokestacks thrusting into the clean sky. Nor were there any automobiles, railroads or machines of any kind to foul the air with their exhausts or rend it with their din.
I asked a mental question and Jones said they had none of these things simply because they weren’t needed. If one wanted to go somewhere he walked. There was no exertion and there was never any hurry. As for traveling to another city, there was no need to; one city was exactly like another. Each was self-sufficient and there was no trade among them. If one wished to see a friend in another city, why, the journey was a pleasant one, and since it was a pleasure trip it didn’t matter whether the journey took a day or thirty days.
Because there were no factories or railroad yards there were no slums where people lived a marginal existence between the animal and human levels.
We turned off the main street and up a wide path to a building set back under tall shade trees.
“My home,” Jones said.
* * * *
We sat on the broad porch and a servant appeared, carrying delicate bowls on a tray. The bowls, cool to the touch, held a dark liquid that was better than any good thing I had ever drunk, without being in any way recognizable.
I sent a thought of thanks to the servant, an old white-haired man with a lighter skin than Jones’, but he did not reciprocate it. For an instant, when the old man was facing me with his back to Jones, I caught a curious expression in his eyes, a combination of warning and beseeching. There was also the beginning of a message, I felt, but instantly it was swept away and Jones’ thoughts came.
“You are wondering why we went so far in our star journey—from Uru to Earth.”
I had wondered about that earlier, when Jones showed me the mind-picture of the vast rushing through space.
“Yes,” I said, and the old servant, his face impassive again, trudged back into the house.
Jones showed me another picture of travels from Uru to the other four worlds of Uru’s blue-white sun. I could not make out the type of craft, if a craft was used. The older worlds seemed the same, but death was on them. Man could never live there, Jones showed me, because of poisonous atmosphere, or unstable boiling land, or forbidding ice-locked vastness, or impenetrable fog. Only Uru, of the five, had evolved in a way harmonious to man.
Then I traveled with him farther from Uru’s sun to other suns and explored their planets. But they held only desolation and potential death for a colonizer. Again the stars ran together in that glittering display of luminescence that I was allowed to understand now was the effect of crashing through the barrier of hyperspace. Only then did Earth’s sun come into view. And then her planets. And then Earth herself.
I felt a foreboding now and tried to communicate it to my companion, but Earth came inevitably closer.
A moment later I was again in Jones’ dingy room, lying on his bed with the jade-green cigarette holder in my fingers.
I felt cheated and frustrated.
I tried to take another puff, to return to Uru, but Jones took away the holder.
“I am sorry,” he said, “but only so much time is permitted for your visits—unless you decide to join us permanently.”
This was new. I hadn’t even considered the possibility. I suppose I’d been thinking of these uru smokes as nothing more than pipe dreams—exciting and logical, even consecutive, but still only figments of the poppy ember.
But apparently uru was merely the key that opened the door to the real world for which it was named, a finite and beautiful planet spinning in a vastly distant galaxy at the other side of the spatial barrier. A world that Earthmen would never reach in this lifetime without the invitation and assistance of a native of that world who had developed mental powers beyond our comprehension.
And Jones, not only a native but apparently a noble of Uru, was extending that invitation to me.
Me, a dope addict, temporarily between kicks. Me, a dreg of humanity.
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br /> Why?
Jones was following my thoughts, I knew, but he only smiled and said I would have to leave. He would call me again. In the meantime I must consider his invitation. He had not made it frivolously, but had weighed all factors. If I accepted, it would have to be unquestioningly, trusting him as my brother.
And it would be permanent. Once I chose Uru, there would be no returning to Earth.
“Until we meet again,” he said.
I walked out into the street, pondering my choice.
* * * *
My place depressed me.
I poured myself half a tumbler of whiskey and walked around, holding the drink in my hand. I opened the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and looked at my works—the hypo, the eye-dropper and the old spoon, blackened on the bottom, in which I’d cooked so many batches of heroin. Sooner or later I’d go back to it, I knew, even though I kidded myself into thinking I might be off the stuff for good.
Then the old round would begin again. The frantic search for a pusher when my supply ran low. Setting up a meet in some cafeteria or lunch counter to get the stuff. Rushing back to my place, with every stranger looking like a copper ready to tap me. The search in my poor scarred arm for a vein that hadn’t withdrawn out of sight. Maybe even the necessity for a messy skin injection. The fleeting relief.
And then the anxiety of no money. A dirty job, possibly washing dishes in some greasy kitchen if the heat was on. Or risking a stint of lush-working in the subway, haunted by copper jitters and five-twenty-nine—five months and twenty-nine days in the workhouse—if they nabbed me “jostling” a drunk.
I couldn’t go back to that life. I couldn’t—but I would. I always had. You reach a point where you can’t change any more. It’s too late—you’re too old—you don’t know anything else—you’ve got no connections outside the squalid circle of users, pushers, tea-heads, queers and petty crooks who are nowhere and never will be anywhere.
It was a limbo, a hell on Earth.
I swallowed my drink in burning gulps.
But Uru was paradise. And through Jones—The Man—the archangel?—I could achieve it. All I had to do was make up my mind.
But why had he chosen me to make the trip with him, past the place where the stars melted together in the speed of our journey through mental space, to the planet that was named for a drug or gave its name to a drug?
Since uru was a drug maybe it was only natural that Jones’ first contact would be with users of narcotics. The natives an explorer first meets in a new land are not necessarily people of the highest class. He meets the adventurers, the ones with spirit enough to canoe out to meet his ship.
So with Jones, perhaps. He would meet the other eventually—the normal, respectable people to whom we users were a despised, hunted minority. And when he had met the normal people, and through them Earth’s leaders, it was possible he would have no further use for me and my kind. It was more than possible; it stood to reason.
If that was the case I had better grab my chance while I could—while Jones still thought of me as his brother.
He had already bypassed one level of our outcast society—the stratum typified by Rollo, habitual user and cheap crook—to reach me. I didn’t have to flatter myself to know I was better than Rollo and his kind. I’d had some education, I avoided crime except when necessary, and I had the will power to quit the stuff at least occasionally.
Was this mere rationalization? I didn’t think so. But whatever it was I would do well to accept Jones’ offer without further demur and give up Earth for life on Uru. I could start out fresh there, make a clean break with my sordid past, and live the life of serenity and good will he had shown me.
I made my decision.
The telephone rang and I knew before I picked it up that it was Jones calling.
“I know your choice, my brother,” he said, “and I am pleased. We will travel immediately.”
A great joy surged through me. Here was the Messiah to deliver me from the slavery of my Earthbound existence to the paradise of Uru.
“I’m on my way!” I cried. I shut the door of my squalid room without a backward glance or a moment of regret.
Life was even more beautiful in Urula than I had dared hope. I had my own home and a man-servant. I ate the finest foods, drank choice liquors.
I learned the written language and read the great literature of Uru.
I met the charming, intelligent, nubile women of the society that had adopted me.
I also practiced the Sport of Uru, in which Jones was my teacher. I called him Joro now; that was his real name, and my name had become Boru.
As Boru I was something of a celebrity in my adopted world. When I went to the great gamesward, for the Sport, they cheered and often crowded around to press gifts on me.
Oh, I was well regarded. I had been assimilated. I, Boru. Boru the Fighting Man.
* * * *
Twice I had engaged in hand-to-hand combat, as Joro’s Fighting Man, in the Annual Sport—the wars between the cities. Twice I had fought, and now one contest remained.
I had a long ugly scar on the inside of my right arm. My left foot was prosthetic from the calf down. My right eye was gone; I wore a false one next to the cheekbone that had been restored by a series of grafts. Flesh healed quickly and bone knitted fast in Uru. The Uru doctors could heal anyone who lived.
But they could not heal the dead and there was no quarter in the Sport. I expected none for myself as I had given none to the two men I had killed. Two down and one to go. If I won the third I’d be a noble like Joro, my patron, my fighting days over. If I didn’t I’d be dead.
Joro had started me out in the back rank, where the danger was least. But I moved up fast, and fought.
Again I was in the back rank, because of my old wounds—but I knew I’d move up this time, too, though there were two good men ahead of me. Like me they were Joro’s men, each of us equipped for the Sport.
The equipment:
Steel-claw appendages on our hands.
Feet shod in hooves, sharpened to razor-edge.
Teeth fitted with fangs.
A diagram explained the pattern of battle better—U for Urula, T for Tara. Us against Them, even as in Madison Square Garden or the San Francisco Cow Palace:
T T T T T
T T T T T
T T T T T
U U U U U
U U U U U
U U U U U
Joro’s men were in the file at the extreme right. I, Boru, was in the southeast corner, standing in the crowded arena naked except for armor at my loins and the fearful appendages of hand, foot and mouth.
At last the ceremonial speeches and blessings were over. Joro took his place to our rear, on a high seat, our coach and our mentor. There was a clang of great cymbals and the battle was joined.
I watched tensely as the first man in my line advanced to meet his opponent in the Circle of Death. To their left, in the other four circles, similar battles were taking place, but I had eyes only for the struggle in my own file.
Rans, our lead-off man, was down! Before he could recover, his opponent had slashed his neck with a razored hoof and Rans was dead.
Rans was dragged off and our file moved up, as the other battles continued. Now the man ahead of me, Karn, was in the Circle of Death with Rans’ killer. Karn of Kama, whose planet was as far from Uru as my own and who, fleeing Kama’s law when Joro found him, had been as glad to come as I had been. And poor dead Rans, from still a third world among the galaxies that Joro had explored to recruit his Fighting Men.
Karn, toe to toe with his tiring opponent, feinted and enticed his man to lunge. Karn sidestepped and his steel claws raked the other from neck to waist. A pivot then, a well-placed kick and Karn alone still lived in the Circle of Death.
The blood had sickened me a little. I
turned to Joro, sitting high behind me, his glance darting from one circle to another. Joro’s face reflected his swiftly-changing emotions. He was fighting five battles at once, vicariously, directing his men by concentration of will. He thoughts flicked to mine for an instant.
Courage, Boru! The game goes well!
And so it did. There was a roar from the crowd as Kara won again. Now only one of the enemy remained in our file. When he was disposed of our job would be done for another year—and mine forever.
But Karn was weary and his opponent fresh. Clumsily Karn tried a slash at the other’s eyes. The other dodged and struck, his fanged teeth closing on Karn’s wrist. A wrench and Karn stood dazed, his arm hanging loose while blood gushed over his steel claws. Then a quick horrible thrust and Karn was down, dying slowly.
Another great roar came from the crowd and I saw that the battles in the other files had ended. Joro’s men had won two and lost two. It was in my file that the Sport would be decided. It was no longer us against them. It was the most primitive of all contests—him or me.
I had a moment to look out across the gamesward as they removed poor lifeless Karn. Festive pennants flew. The blue-white sun was high, serene in a cloudless sky. The field was green and soothing, except in the bloodstained Circles of Death.
In two of the circles stood Joro’s men, proud in victory. In two others stood victorious men of Tara. In the fifth stood the man who had killed Karn—the man I must kill if I was to live.
* * * *
The crowd was in a frenzy, the blood lust on them now. I understood for the first time the purpose of the Sport. It was a purge of emotion.
Once a year the thousands gathered in the cities and satisfied their primitive instincts. They were more than spectators: they were vicarious participants in each battle. Their telepathy identified them completely with the Fighting Men of their city.
Their empathy was such that they felt every blow, exulted in animal passion when their fighter retaliated and drew blood. In the course of an afternoon all their base instincts were satisfied. They knew violence, pain, triumph, death.
The Alien MEGAPACK® Page 28