If we can link, we can do it. Dugan must go. And this is the best way; this way we can dispose of him and still remain human beings.
I am an old fool. But perhaps this dried old brain still is good for something. If I can link with Kennon—
10. Chester Dugan
All resistance has crumbled now. I’m set up for life—Chester Dugan, ruler of the world. It’s not much of a world, true enough, but what the hell. It’s mine.
It’s amazing how all the grumbling has stopped. Even Kennon has given in—in fact, he’s become my most valuable man, since that time I had to belt him. It was too bad, I guess, to ruin such a nice nose, but I couldn’t have him walking off that way.
He’s going to lead the expedition to the north tomorrow, and he’s leaving Jarinne here. That’s good. Corilann is busy with her baby, and I think I need a little variety anyway. Good-looking kid Corilann had; takes after his old man. It’s amazing how everything is working out.
I hope to get electricity going soon, but I’m not too sure. The stream here is kind of weak, and maybe we’ll have to throw up a dam first. In fact, I’m sure of it. I’ll speak to Kennon about it before he leaves.
This business of rebuilding a civilization from scratch has its rewards. God, am I lean! I’ve lost all that roll of fat I was carrying around. I suppose part of the reason is that there’s no beer here, yet—but I’ll get to that soon enough. Everything in due time. First, I want to see what Kennon brings back from the north. I hope he doesn’t ruin anything by ripping it out. Wouldn’t it be nice to find a hydraulic press or a generator or stuff like that? And with my luck, we probably will.
Maybe we’ll do without religion a little while longer. I spoke to Dandrin about it, but he didn’t seem to go for the idea of being priest. I might just take over that job myself, once things get straightened out. I’d like to work out some sort of heating system before the winter gets here. I’ve figured out that we’re somewhere in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, and it’ll get pretty cold here unless things have changed. (Could the barbarian city to the north be New York? Sounds reasonable.)
It’s funny the way everyone lies down and says yes when I tell them to do something. These people have no guts, that’s their trouble. One good thing about civilization—you have to have guts to last. I’ll put guts in these people, all right. I’ll probably be remembered for centuries and centuries. Maybe they’ll think of me as a sort of messiah in the far future when everything’s blurred? Why not? I came to them out of the clouds, didn’t I? From heaven.
Messiah Dugan! Lawsy-me, if they could only see me now!
I still can’t get over the way everything is moving. It’s almost like a dream. By next spring we’ll have a respectable little city here, practically overnight. And we can hold a super-special Singing next summer and snaffle in the folk from all around.
Too bad about that kid Jubilain, by the way; he’s really gone off his nut. But I always thought he was a little way there anyway. Maybe I’ll teach them some of the old songs myself. It’ll help to make me popular here. Although, come to think of it, I’m pretty popular now. They’re all smiling at me all the time.
11.
“Kennon? Kennon? Hear me?”
“I hear you, Dandrin. I’ll get Jarinne.”
“Here I am. Corilann?”
“Here, Jarinne. And pulling hard. Let’s try to get Onnar.”
“Pull hard!”
“Onnar in.” “And Jekkaman.” “Hello, Dandrin.”
“Hello.”
“All here?”
“One hundred twenty.”
“Tight now.” “We’re right tight.”
“Let’s get started then. All together.”
“Hello? Hello, Dugan. Listen to us, Dugan. Listen to us. Listen to us. Hold on tight! Listen to us, Dugan.”
“Open up all the way, now.”
“Are you listening, Dugan?”
12. Dandrin plus Kennon plus Jarinne plus Corilann plus n
I think we’ll be able to hold together indefinitely, and so it can be said that the coming of Dugan was an incredible stroke of luck for us. This new blending is infinitely better than trying to make contact over thousands of miles!
Certainly we’ll have to maintain this gestalt (useful word; I found it in Dugan’s mind when I entered) until after Dugan’s death. He’s peacefully dreaming now, dreaming of who knows what conquests and battles and expansions, and I don’t think he’ll come out of it. He may live on in his dream for years, and I’ll have to hold together and sustain the illusion until he dies. I hope we’re making him happy at last. He seems to have been a very unhappy man.
And just after I joined together, it occurred to me that we’d better stay this way indefinitely, just in case any more Dugans get thrown at us from the past. (Could it have been part of a Design? I wonder.) They must all have been like that back then. It’s a fine thing that bomb was dropped.
We’ll keep Dugan’s city, of course. He did make some positive contributions to us—me. His biggest contribution was me; I never would have formed otherwise. I would have been scattered—Kennon on his farm, Dandrin here, Corilann there. I would have maintained some sort of contact among us, the way I always did even before Dugan came, but nothing like this! Nothing at all.
There’s the question of what to do with Dugan’s child. Kennon, Corilann, and Jarinne are all raising him. We don’t need families now that we have me. I think we’ll let Dugan’s child in with us for a while; if he shows any signs of being like his father, we can always put him to sleep and let him share his father’s dream.
I wonder what Dugan is thinking of. Now all his projects will be carried out; his city will grow and cover the world; we will fight and kill and plunder, and he will be measurelessly happy—though all these things take place only within the boundaries of his fertile brain. We will never understand him. But I am happy that all these things will happen only within Dugan’s mind so long as I am together and can maintain the illusion for him.
Our next project is to reclaim Jubilain. I am sad that he cannot be with us yet, for how rare and beautiful I would be if I had a Singer in me! That would surely be the most wonderful of blendings. But that will come. Patiently I will unravel the strands of Jubilain’s tangled mind, patiently I will bring the Singer back to us.
For in a few months it will be summer again, and time for the Singing. It will be different this year, for we will have been together in me all winter, and so the Singing will not be as unusual an event as it has been, when we have come to each other covered with a winter’s strangeness. But this year I will be with us, and we will be I; and the songs of summer will be trebly beautiful in Dugan’s city, while Dugan sleeps through the night and the day, for day and night on night and day.
To Be Continued
It was in the summer of 1955, once classes were over, that my career made its great leap forward, having been jump-started by Randall Garrett. Both in collaboration with him and on my own I started selling stories all over the place, and the big event came in August, 1955, when he and I, working under the collective pseudonym of “Robert Randall,” had an 11,000-word story accepted by the editor I regarded as the greatest in the science-fiction field’s history, John W. Campbell, Jr. of Astounding Science Fiction. Campbell read the story on the spot in his office as Garrett and I watched tensely, and bought it then and there, and I went home in a daze, scarcely believing that I had actually sold a story to John W. Campbell, Jr.—and Campbell had told us also that he wanted us to write a couple of sequels to it, too.
But my selling a collaborative story to Campbell was one thing—Garrett was already an established Campbell contributor, and I had no illusions about how it had come to pass that I was now a Campbell writer as well—and selling one that was all my own was something else again. I would appear in the magazine under a pseudonym, which was better than never appearing in it at all. But the name of Robert Silverberg on the contents page of Astounding—I saw that as t
he ultimate accolade, the greatest achievement that any young science-fiction reader could aspire to.
First, though, Garrett and I tackled one of those “Robert Randall” sequels that Campbell had requested, and sold it to him in October, 1955. Then, the following week—I was still an undergraduate at Columbia, remember, but by now I was spending as much time at my typewriter as I was in the classroom—I set out to write the story that would put me in Astounding for the first time under my own byline.
As it turned out, even this one wasn’t done entirely on my own. I told Garrett what my idea was—the story of an immortal man who dreams of fatherhood, but who, for reasons inherent in the nature of immortality, has been unable to achieve it—and Garrett, whose story titles almost always embodied some sort of sly pun, said immediately, “You ought to call it ‘To Be Continued.’” Which I did; and quite possibly—since our working lives were so closely intertwined at that time—he even wrote a few hundred words of the text. The first scene in the East End Bar sounds more like Garrett’s work than mine. The legal drinking age in New York City then was 18, and I was a couple of years older than that, but even so I had spent very little time in bars, whereas Garrett, alas, was very familiar with them. But whether he actually wrote the scene or merely stuck in a few details of local color is something that I’m not able to recall, more than fifty years after the fact. Later in the story a character named “Corwyn” makes a brief appearance, and I know that that was a character name that Garrett frequently used in his own stories; but whether that means that Garrett wrote that scene or simply that I inserted the name as a little inside joke is, again, something I’m unable to say at this late date.
At any rate, Campbell bought the story the day I brought it to his office. The $150 he paid me for it, though quite a substantial amount of money in those pre-inflation days, was secondary for me by some distance to the thrill of knowing that I had made it into Astounding under my own name. He used the story in the May, 1956 issue. Campbell ran a readers’ poll back then, with cash bonuses for the two most popular stories in each issue, and I learned a few months later that “To Be Continued” had finished in second place among the five stories of its issue, which brought me a bonus of $25. It began to seem likely now that I would become one of the regular writers for Campbell’s legendary magazine, which between 1938 and 1950 or so had virtually defined modern science fiction. Clearly I was on my way.
~
Gaius Titus Menenius sat thoughtfully in his oddly-decorated apartment on Park Avenue, staring at the envelope that had just arrived. He contemplated it for a moment, noting with amusement that he was actually somewhat perturbed over the possible nature of its contents.
After a moment he elbowed up from the red contour-chair and crossed the room in three bounds. Still holding the envelope, he eased himself down on the long green couch near the wall, and, extending himself full-length, slit the envelope open with a neat flick of his fingernail. The medical report was within, as he had expected.
“Dear Mr. Riswell,” it read. “I am herewith enclosing a copy of the laboratory report concerning your examination last week. I am pleased to report that our findings are positive—emphatically so. In view of our conversation, I am sure this finding will be extremely pleasing to you, and, of course, to your wife. Sincerely, F. D. Rowcliff, M.D.”
Menenius read the letter through once again, examined the enclosed report, and allowed his face to open in a wide grin. It was almost an anticlimax, after all these centuries. He couldn’t bring himself to become very excited over it—not any more.
He stood up and stretched happily. “Well, Mr. Riswell,” he said to himself, “I think this calls for a drink. In fact, a night on the town.”
He chose a smart dinner jacket from his wardrobe and moved toward the door. It swung open at his approach. He went out into the corridor and disappeared into the elevator, whistling gaily, his mind full of new plans and new thoughts.
It was a fine feeling. After two thousand years of waiting, he had finally achieved his maturity. He could have a son. At last!
“Good afternoon, Mr. Schuyler,” said the barman. “Will it be the usual, sir?”
“Martini, of course,” said W. M Schuyler IV, seating himself casually on the padded stool in front of the bar.
Behind the projected personality of W. M Schuyler IV, Gaius Titus smiled, mentally. W. M. Schuyler always drank martinis. And they had pretty well better be dry—very dry.
The baroque strains of a Vivaldi violin concerto sang softly in the background. Schuyler watched the swirl of colors that moved with the music.
“Good afternoon, Miss Vanderpool,” he heard the barman say. “An old-fashioned?”
Schuyler took another sip of his martini and looked up. The girl had appeared suddenly and had taken the seat next to him, looking her usual cool self.
“Sharon,” he said, putting just the right amount of exclamation point after it.
She turned to look at him and smiled, disclosing a brilliantly white array of perfect teeth. “Bill! I didn’t notice you! How long have you been here?”
“Just arrived,” Schuyler told her. “Just about a minute ago.”
The barman put her drink down in front of her. She took a long sip without removing her eyes from him. Schuyler met her glance, and behind his eyes Gaius Titus was coldly appraising her in a new light.
He had met her in Kavanaugh’s a month before, and he had readily enough added her to the string. Why not? She was young, pretty, intelligent, and made a pleasant companion. There had been others like her—a thousand others, two thousand, five thousand. One gets to meet quite a few in two millennia.
Only now Gaius Titus was finally mature, and had different needs. The string of girls to which Sharon belonged was going to be cut.
He wanted a wife.
“How’s the lackey of Wall Street?” Sharon asked. “Still coining money faster than you know how to spend it?”
“I’ll leave that for you to decide,” he said. He signaled for two more drinks. “Care to take in a concert tonight? The Bach Group’s giving a benefit this evening, you know, and I’m told there still are a few hundred-dollar seats left—”
There, Gaius Titus thought. The bait has been cast. She ought to respond.
She whistled, a long, low, sophisticated whistle. “I’d venture that business is fairly good, then,” she said. Her eyes fell. “But I don’t want to let you go to all that expense on my account, Bill.”
“It’s nothing,” Schuyler insisted, while Gaius Titus continued to weigh her in the balance. “They’re doing the Fourth Brandenburg, and Renoli’s playing the Goldberg Variations. How about?”
She met his gaze evenly. “Sorry, Bill. I have something else on for the evening.” Her tone left no doubt in Schuyler’s mind that there was little point pressing the discussion any further. Gaius Titus felt a sharp pang of disappointment.
Schuyler lifted his hand, palm forward. “Say no more! I should have known you’d be booked up for tonight already.” He paused. “What about tomorrow?” he asked, after a moment. “There’s a reading of Webster’s ‘Duchess of Malfi’ down at the Dramatist’s League. It’s been one of my favorite plays for a long time.”
Silently smiling, he waited for her reply. The Webster was, indeed, a long-time favorite. Gaius Titus recalled having attended one of its first performances, during his short employ in the court of James I. During the next three and a half centuries, he had formed a sentimental attachment for the creaky old melodrama.
“Not tomorrow either,” Sharon said. “Some other night, Bill.”
“All right,” he said. “Some other night.”
He reached out a hand and put it over hers, and they fell silent, listening to the Vivaldi in the background. He contemplated her high, sharp cheekbones in the purple half-light, wondering if she could be the one to bear the child he had waited for so long.
She had parried all his thrusts in a fashion that surprised him. She was no
t at all impressed by his display of wealth and culture. Titus reflected sadly that, perhaps, his Schuyler facet had been inadequate for her.
No, he thought, rejecting the idea. The haunting slow movement of the Vivaldi faded to its end and a lively allegro took its place. No; he had had too much experience in calculating personality-facets to fit the individual to have erred. He was certain that W. M. Schuyler IV was capable of handling Sharon.
For the first few hundred years of his unexpectedly long life, Gaius Titus had been forced to adopt the practice of turning on and off different personalities as a matter of mere survival. Things had been easy for a while after the fall of Rome, but with the coming of the Middle Ages he had needed all his skill to keep from running afoul of the superstitious. He had carefully built up a series of masks, of false fronts, as a survival mechanism.
How many times had he heard someone tell him, in jest, “You ought to be on the stage?” It struck home. He was on the stage. He was a man of many roles. Somewhere, beneath it all, was the unalterable personality of Gaius Titus Menenius, cives Romanus, casting the shadows that were his many masks. But Gaius Titus was far below the surface—the surface which, at the moment, was W. M. Schuyler IV; which had been Preston Riswell the week before, when he had visited the doctor for that fateful examination; which could be Leslie MacGregor or Sam Spielman or Phil Carlson tomorrow, depending on where Gaius Titus was, in what circumstances, and talking to whom. There was only one person he did not dare to be, and that was himself.
He wasn’t immortal; he knew that. But he was relatively immortal. His life-span was tremendously decelerated, and it had taken him two thousand years to become, physically, a fertile adult. His span was roughly a hundred times that of a normal man’s. And, according to what he had learned in the last century, his longevity should be transmissible genetically. All he needed now was someone to transmit it to.
To Be Continued Page 11