A Time of Changes

by Robert Silverberg

  I must move on, then. But—

  A sound? Engines?

  A groundcar coming swiftly toward my cabin over the flat red land. I am found. It is done. At least I was able to write this much.

  71

  FIVE DAYS HAVE PASSED since the last entry, and I am still here. The groundcar was Noim’s. He came not to arrest me but to rescue me. Cautiously, as if expecting me to open fire on him, he crept about my cabin, calling, “Kinnall? Kinnall?” I went outside. He tried to smile, but he was too tense to manage it. He said, “One thought you would be somewhere near this place. The place of the hornfowl—it still haunts you, eh?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Stirron’s patrols are searching for you, Kinnall. Your path was traced as far as Salla’s Gate. They know you’re in the Burnt Lowlands. If Stirron knew you as well as your bondbrother does, he’d come straight here with his troops. Instead they’re searching to the south, on the theory that you mean to go into the Wet Lowlands to the Gulf of Sumar, and get a ship to Sumara Borthan. But they’re bound to start hunting for you in this region once they discover you haven’t been down there.”

  “And then?”

  “You’ll be arrested. Tried. Convicted. Jailed or executed. Stirron thinks you’re the most dangerous man on Velada Borthan.”

  “I am,” I said.

  Noim gestured toward the car. “Get in. We’ll slip through the blockade. Into West Salla, somehow, and down to the Woyn. The Duke of Sumar will meet you and put you aboard some vessel heading out. You can be in Sumara Borthan by next moonrise.”

  “Why are you helping me, Noim? Why should you bother? I saw the hate in your eyes when I left you.”

  “Hate? Hate? No, Kinnall, no hate, only sorrow. One is still your—” He paused. With an effort, he said, “I’m still your bondbrother. I’m pledged to your welfare. How can I let Stirron hunt you like a beast? Come. Come. I’ll get you safely out of here.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “We’re certain to be caught. Stirron will have you, too, for aiding a fugitive. He’ll seize your lands. He’ll break your rank. Don’t make a useless sacrifice for me, Noim.”

  “I came all the way into the Burnt Lowlands to fetch you. If you think I’ll go back without—”

  “Let’s not quarrel over it,” I said. “Even if I escape, what is there for me? To spend the rest of my life hiding in the jungles of Sumara Borthan, among people whose language I can’t speak and whose ways are alien to me? No. No. I’m tired of exile. Let Stirron take me.”

  Persuading Noim to leave me here was no little task. We stood in the midday fire for eternal minutes, arguing vehemently. He was determined to effect this heroic rescue, despite the almost certain probability that we would both be captured. This he was doing out of a sense of duty, not out of love, for I could see that he still held Halum’s death to my account. I would not have his disgrace scored against me as well, and told him so: he had done nobly to make this journey, but I could not go with him. Finally he began to yield, but only when I swore I would at least make some effort to save myself. I promised that I would set out for the western mountains, instead of sitting here where Stirron would surely find me. If I reached Velis or Threish safely, I said, I would notify Noim in some way, so that he would cease to fear my fate. And then I said, “There is one thing you can do for me.” I brought my manuscript out of the cabin—a great heap of paper, red scribbling on grayish rough sheets. In this, I said, he would find the whole story: my entire self encapsulated, and all the events that had brought me to the Burnt Lowlands. I asked him to read it, and to pass no judgment on me until he had. “You will find things in here that will horrify and disgust you,” I warned him. “But I think you’ll also find much that will open your eyes and your soul. Read it, Noim. Read it with care. Think about my words.” And I asked one last vow of him, by our oath of bonding: that he keep my book safely preserved, even if the temptation came over him to burn it. “These pages hold my soul,” I told him. “Destroy the paper and you destroy me. If you loathe what you read, hide the book away, but do no harm to it. What shocks you now may not shock you a few years from now. And someday you may want to show my book to others, so that you can explain what manner of man your bondbrother was, and why he did what he did.” And so that you may change them as I hope my book will change you, I said silently. Noim vowed this vow. He took my sheaf of pages and stored them in the hold of his groundcar. We embraced; he asked me again if I would not ride away with him; again I refused; I made him say once more that he would read my book and preserve it; once more he swore he would; then he entered the groundcar and drove slowly toward the east. I entered the cabin. The place where I had kept my manuscript was empty, and I felt a sudden hollowness, I suppose much like that of a woman who has carried a child for the full seven moontimes and now finds her belly flat again. I had poured all of myself into those pages. Now I was nothing, and the book was all. Would Noim read it? I thought so. And would he preserve it? Very likely he would, though he might hide it in the darkest corner of his house. And would he someday show it to others? This I do not know. But if you have read what I have written, it is through the kindness of Noim Condorit; and if he has let it be read, then I have prevailed over his soul after all, as I hope to prevail over yours.

  72

  I HAD SAID to Noim that I would remain in the cabin no longer, but would set out for the west in an attempt to save myself. Yet I found myself unwilling to leave. The sweltering shack had become my home. I stayed a day, and another day, and a third, doing nothing, wandering the blazing solitude of the Burnt Lowlands, watching the hornfowl circle. On the fifth day, as you perhaps are able to see, I fell into the habit of autobiography again, and sat down at the place where I had lately spent so many hours sitting, and wrote a few new pages to describe my visit from Noim. Then I let three days more go by, telling myself that on the fourth I would dig my groundcar out of the red sand and head westward. But on the morning of that fourth day Stirron and his men found my hiding place, and now it is the evening of that day, and I have an hour or two more to write, by the grace of the Lord Stirron. And when I have done with this, I will write no more.

  73

  THEY CAME in six well-armed groundcars, and surrounded my cabin, and called on me through loudspeakers to surrender. I had no hope of resisting them, nor any desire to try. Calmly—for what use was fear?—I showed myself, hands upraised, at the cabin door. They got out of their cars, and I was amazed to find Stirron himself among them, drawn out of his palace into the Lowlands for an out-of-season hunting party with his brother as quarry. He wore all his finery of office. Slowly he walked toward me. I had not seen him in some years, and I was appalled by the signs of age on him: shoulders rounded, head thrust forward, hair thinning, face deeply lined, eyes yellowed and dim. The profits of half a lifetime of supreme power. We regarded one another in silence, like two strangers seeking a point of contact. I tried to find in him that boy, my playmate, my elder brother, whom I had loved and lost so long ago, and I saw only a grim old man with trembling lips. A septarch is trained to mask his inner feelings, yet Stirron was able to hold nothing secret from me, nor could he keep one consistent expression: I saw his face, one look tumbling across the other, tokens of imperial rage, bewilderment, sorrow, contempt, and something that I took to be a sort of suppressed love. At length I spoke first, inviting him into my cabin for a conference. He hesitated, perhaps thinking I had assassination in mind, but after a moment he accepted in right kingly manner, waving to his bodyguard to wait outside. When we were alone within, there was another silent spell, which this time he broke, saying, “One has never felt such pain, Kinnall. One scarcely believes what one has heard about you. That you should stain our father’s memory—”

  “Is it such a stain, Lord Septarch?”

  “To foul the Covenant? To corrupt the innocent—your bondsister among the victims? What have you been doing, Kinnall? What have you been doing?�
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  A terrible fatigue came over me, and I closed my eyes, for I scarcely knew where to begin explaining. After a moment I found strength. I reached toward him, smiling, taking his hand, and said, “I love you, Stirron.”

  “How sick you are!”

  “To talk of love? But we came out of the same womb! Am I not to love you?”

  “Is this how you talk now, only in filth?”

  “I talk as my heart commands me.”

  “You are not only sick but sickening,” said Stirron. He turned away and spat on the sandy floor. He seemed a remote medieval figure to me, trapped behind his dour kingly face, imprisoned in his jewels of office and his robes of state, speaking in gruff, distant tones. How could I reach him?

  I said, “Stirron, take the Sumaran drug with me. I have a little left. I’ll mix it for us, and we’ll drink it together, and in an hour or two our souls will be one, and you’ll understand. I swear, you’ll understand. Will you do it? Kill me afterward, if you still want to, but take the drug first.” I began to bustle about, making ready the potion. Stirron caught my wrist and halted me. He shook his head with the slow, heavy gesture of one who feels an infinite sadness. “No,” he said. “Impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “You will not fuddle the mind of the prime septarch.”

  “I’m interested in reaching the mind of my brother Stirron!”

  “As your brother, one wishes only that you may be healed. As prime septarch, one must avoid harm, for one belongs to one’s people.”

  “The drug is harmless, Stirron.”

  “Was it harmless for Halum Helalam?”

  “Are you a frightened virgin?” I asked. “I’ve given the drug to scores of people. Halum is the only one who reacted badly—Noim too, I suppose, but he got over it. And—”

  “The two people in the world closest to you,” said Stirron, “and the drug harmed them both. Now you offer it to your brother?”

  It was hopeless. I asked him again, several times, to risk an experiment with the drug, but of course he would not touch it. And if he had, would it have availed me anything? I would have found only iron in his soul.

  I said, “What will happen to me now?”

  “A fair trial, followed by an honest sentence.”

  “Which will be what? Execution? Imprisonment for life? Exile?”

  Stirron shrugged. “It is for the court to decide. Do you take one for a tyrant?”

  “Stirron, why does the drug frighten you so? Do you know what it does? Can I make you see that it brings only love and understanding? There’s no need for us to live as strangers to each other, with blankets around our souls. We can speak ourselves out. We can reach forth. We can say ‘I,’ Stirron, and not have to apologize for having selves. I. I. I. We can tell each other what gives us pain, and help each other to escape that pain.” His face darkened; I think he was sure I was mad. I went past him, to the place where I had put down the drug, and quickly mixed it, and offered a flask to him. He shook his head. I drank, impulsively gulping it, and offered the flask again to him. “Go on,” I said. “Drink. Drink! It won’t begin for a while. Take it now, so we’ll be open at the same time. Please, Stirron!”

  “I could kill you myself,” he said, “without waiting for the court to act.”

  “Yes! Say it, Stirron! I! Myself! Say it again!”

  “Miserable self-barer. My father’s son! If I talk to you in ‘I,’ Kinnall, it’s because you deserve no better than filth from me.”

  “It doesn’t need to be filth. Drink, and understand.”

  “Never.”

  “Why do you oppose it, Stirron? What frightens you?”

  “The Covenant is sacred,” he said. “To question the Covenant is to question the whole social order. Turn this drug of yours loose in the land and all reason collapses, all stability is lost. Do you think our forefathers were villains? Do you think they were fools? Kinnall, they understood how to create a lasting society. Where are the cities of Sumara Borthan? Why do they still live in jungle huts, while we have built what we have built? You’d put us on their road, Kinnall. You’d break down the distinctions between right and wrong, so that in a short while law itself would be washed away, and every man’s hand would be lifted against his fellow, and where would be your love and universal understanding then? No, Kinnall. Keep your drug. One still prefers the Covenant.”

  “Stirron—”

  “Enough. The heat is intolerable. You are arrested; now let us go.”

  74

  BECAUSE THE DRUG was in me, Stirron agreed to let me have a few hours alone, before we began the journey back to Salla, so that I would not have to travel while my soul was vulnerable to external sensations. A small mercy from the lord septarch: he posted two men as guards outside my cabin, and went off with the others to hunt hornfowl until the coming of dusk.

  Never had I taken the drug without a sharer. So the strangenesses came upon me and I was alone with them, to hear the throbbings and the whinings and the rushings, and then, as the walls fell away from my soul, there was no one for me to enter, and no one to enter me. Yet I could detect the souls of my guards—hard, closed, metallic—and I felt that with some effort I could reach even into them. But I did not, for as I sat by myself I was launched on a miraculous voyage, my self expanding and soaring until I encompassed this our entire planet, and all the souls of mankind were merged into mine. And a wondrous vision came upon me. I saw my bondbrother Noim making copies of my memoir, and distributing them to those he could trust, and other copies were made from those, to circulate through the provinces of Velada Borthan. And out of the southern land now came shiploads of the white powder, sought not merely by an elite, not only by the Duke of Sumar and the Marquis of Woyn, but by thousands of ordinary citizens, by people hungry for love, by those who found the Covenant turning to ashes, those who wished to reach one another’s souls. And though the guardians of the old order did what they could to halt the movement, it could not be stopped, for the former Covenant had run its course, and now it was clear that love and gladness could no longer be suppressed. Until at last a network of communication existed, shining filaments of sensory perception linking one to one to one to all. Until at last even the septarchs and the justiciars were swept up in the tide of liberation, and all the world joined in joyous communion, each of us open to all, and the time of changes was complete; the new Covenant was established. I saw all this from my shabby cabin in the Burnt Lowlands. I saw the bright glow encompassing the world, shimmering, flickering, gaining power, deepening in hue. I saw walls crumbling. I saw the brilliant red blaze of universal love. I saw new faces, changed and exultant. Hands touching hands. Selves touching selves. This vision blazed in my soul for half a day, filling me with joy such as I had never experienced at any time, and my soaring spirit wandered in realms of dream. And only as the drug began to ebb from me did I realize that it was nothing but a fantasy.

  Perhaps it will not always be a fantasy. Perhaps Noim will find readers for what I have written, and perhaps others will be persuaded to follow my path, until there are enough like me, and the changes become irreversible and universal. It has happened before. I will disappear, I the forerunner, I the anticipator, I the martyred prophet. But what I have written will live, and through me you will be changed. It may yet be that this is no idle dream.

  This final page has been set down as twilight descends. The sun hastens toward the Huishtors. Soon, as Stirron’s prisoner, I will follow it. I will take this little manuscript with me, hidden somewhere about me, and if I have good fortune I will find some way of giving it to Noim, so that it can be joined to the pages he has already had from me. I cannot say if I will succeed, nor do I know what will become of me and of my book. And you who read this are unknown to me. But I can say this: If the two parts have become one, and you read me complete, you may be sure that I have begun to prevail. Out of that joining can come only changes for Velada Borthan, changes for all of you. If you have read this far, you
must be with me in soul. So I say to you, my unknown reader, that I love you and reach my hand toward you, I who was Kinnall Darival, I who have opened the way, I who promised to tell you all about myself, and who now can say that the promise has been fulfilled. Go and seek. Go and touch. Go and love. Go and be open. Go and be healed.

  Robert Silverberg, a past president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, has published stories in all the major science fiction magazines, and has written over twenty novels, including The Time Hoppers, Hawksbill Station, To Live Again and Downward to the Earth. He is a two-time winner of the coveted Hugo Award.