The Totems of Abydos

by John Norman

  “No hoods! No masks!” said Rodriguez to the Pon. “No hoods! No masks!”

  He then lifted the small creature into the air, and shook it, good-naturedly, as one might a child.

  “We are friends,” said Rodriguez. “Friends. There are no secrets between us, no masks, no hoods. We will tell one another everything. In the village you will behave as you always do. Do not be different because of us. In time you will pay no attention to us. It will be like we were not there. We want to find out about you. We want to know all about you. You are interesting. We like you. We will be friends. We will give you gifts, beads, pretty glass, nice things. Do you understand?”

  The Pon, lifted up, Rodriguez’ hands under its arms, looked down at Rodriguez.

  Then Rodriguez set it down, gently.

  It then hurried to the others.

  “Do you think it understood?” asked Brenner.

  “I think so,” said Rodriguez. “These things trade at Company Station.”

  “Do you think it is their leader?” asked Brenner.

  “They do not have leaders, at least in the sense you are thinking of,” said Rodriguez. “They have little if any social organization. He was the first one I could get my hands on.”

  “Look,” said Brenner.

  The Pons, one by one, some of them looking away, or down, pulled away their hoods.

  “Good! Good!” called Rodriguez to them. “We are friends, friends!”

  Brenner thought they were all males, but he was not sure. The features of many were sufficiently fine as to make a mistake in such matters possible. The shapeless, nondescript nature of their garb, too, presented its problems. On the other hand, as they were bipedalian, and mammalian, or mammalian1ike, it seemed that some indications of feminine sexuality, if females were amongst them, ought to manifest themselves in even so inauspicious an environment. Yet he did not note such indications. There might, of course, be very few differences between the sexes of the Pons. Rodriguez had conjectured that they approached the unisexual ideal which was so prized, and yet still so imperfectly attained, on the home world. We can learn much from Pons, thought Brenner. His conjecture, incidentally, that they were all males was, in this case, we might note, correct.

  “It seems they are cooperative,” said Brenner. “I am surprised they did not all rush away and leave us here. You may have jeopardized the entire expedition.”

  “Not at all,” said Rodriguez. “We have something they want.”

  “What is that?” asked Brenner.

  “Beads, hard candy, mirrors, buttons, colored glass,” said Rodriguez, “that sort of thing.”

  “Why did you insist on the removal of the hoods?” asked Brenner.

  “Surely you were curious to see what they looked like?”

  “Of course,” said Brenner. “But you could have waited until we knew them better, until we had won their confidence, until we had reached the village.”

  “You have never been in a place like the forest, have you?” asked Rodriguez.

  “No,” said Brenner.

  “I am not going to follow something into the forests whose behavior I cannot interpret,” said Rodriguez.

  “The forests are dangerous?”

  “I think so.”

  “And so you wished to see if they were unusually alert at times, if they were being evasive, if they were frightened.”

  “Yes, such things,” said Rodriguez.

  “You don’t trust them, do you?” asked Brenner.

  “No,” said Rodriguez.

  Brenner was silent.

  “Too, of course,” said Rodriguez, “it is important to rob them of their anonymity, to individualize them, to reduce them to openness, to make them more helpless, more vulnerable to us.”

  Brenner nodded. It was for such reasons, he supposed, as for many others, as well, that on various worlds slaves were denied veiling, that the least nuances of their expressions, in all their helplessness, in all their subtlety and delicacy, would be available to free persons. This contributes, of course, to their control.

  Brenner looked at the Pons. All now, were unhooded. They were approximately the same height. They huddled together, watching himself and Rodriguez. Brenner hoped they had not been frightened.

  Rodriguez consulted his compass.

  “They seem sexless,” said Brenner.

  “Back home even the Humblers would stand in awe of them,” said Rodriguez. “They would be on all the circuits, they would be celebrated as heroes of the times, they would be held up as shining examples to youth.”

  “Because they are nothing, and have done nothing?” asked Brenner.

  “Pretty much,” said Rodriguez.

  Brenner suddenly, unaccountably, pitied the youth of the home world. How innocent they were. And how they would be warped and twisted, into what grotesque shapes would they be hammered, what eccentric, pathological, gruesome molds would they be expected to fill, and all to serve the ends of others, mocking them and exploiting them.

  Brenner considered the Pons, standing there.

  “I do not think I like Pons,” said Brenner.

  “I would have thought you would esteem them,” said Rodriguez.

  “How is that?” asked Brenner.

  “Are they not, for most practical purposes, “sames”?”

  “Yes,” said Brenner, guiltily. “I suppose they are.”

  “So there,” said Rodriguez.

  One of the Pons had come closer now, to look on.

  Rodriguez showed him the compass. “See?” he asked. “Pretty?” Then he put the compass back in his pocket. The Pon, simple creature of the forest that it was, of course, would not understand the compass. At best it would seem to it like some sort of toy. Rodriguez then drew forth a sheet of paper from his jacket, on which he jotted something down. He had begun his map. He showed the paper to the Pon. “Paper,” he said. “Paper.”

  The Pon looked up at him.

  “They are illiterate, of course,” said Rodriguez. He put the paper back in his jacket. He then clapped his hands together, sharply. Brenner was startled. This seemed rude to him. “Ropes! Ropes! Pick up!” called Rodriguez. He clapped his hands together, twice more. The Pons hurried to the ropes.

  “Why are you acting like this?” asked Brenner.

  “We will teach them who is master,” said Rodriguez.

  “You will alienate them,” said Brenner.

  “No,” said Rodriguez. “They are only one step above gits, if that.”

  “Are you ready?” asked Rodriguez.

  “Of course,” said Brenner.

  “You are all right?” he asked.

  “Of course,” said Brenner. “Why do you ask?”

  “I thought, before,” said Rodriguez, “that something might be wrong.”

  “No,” said Brenner.

  “Weren’t you crying?” asked Rodriguez.

  “No,” said Brenner.

  The woman had not cared for him, of course. She had only wanted her pastry. Women are practical in such ways. She had said she loved him. Such things are easily said. Brenner, of course, did not believe in love, for such, like sexual needs, did not exist. To be sure, one might love a party, or the state, or everything, rather as a rosy, remote, safe, antiseptic, abstract conglomerate. Too, he supposed it was all right to love everyone, and, ideally, everything, including primitive particles. It was only that it was suspect or immoral to love a particular individual, particularly if that entity were of an opposite sex. That was dangerous. For sexuality, as was well known, does not unite men; it divides them.

  At a gesture from Rodriguez, the Pons put their small, but cumulatively not inconsiderable, weight to the ropes. The sled moved, over wet leaves and twigs. The trees here, at the edge of the forest were not closely grown. There would be little difficulty in making headway during this part of the journey and, later, hopefully, there would be trails. The mud sled was not wide, only a Commonworld yard in width.

  “Those are lantern
fruit,” said Rodriguez, pointing to some heavy, gourdlike pods, some half split.

  “Are they edible?” asked Brenner.

  “No,” said Rodriguez.

  “They are not indigenous to this world, are they?” asked Brenner.

  “It is thought not,” said Rodriguez.

  Most of the Pons were following behind.

  Brenner could not, at this point, of course, look back to the tower, to the fence. There was the rise, and there were the trees.

  Brenner looked to the Pons drawing the sled. And ahead of them there were some others, strung out, leading the way.

  He remembered how rudely Rodriguez had seized up one of the Pons, and removed its hood. Whereas the small creature had squirmed, and struggled, it had not attempted to fight, or defend itself. Too, when Rodriguez had forced open its mouth, it had not resisted. Pons do not bite, thought Brenner. On the other hand, thought Brenner, they do not have very strong teeth either. Perhaps organisms with small, fine teeth are well advised not to bite. At most, they might deliver a small, nasty, unclean wound, one which larger, stronger organisms might find annoying, and punish. Perhaps that was why Pons were good, thought Brenner, because they could not be dangerous. Perhaps morality comes most easily to the weak.

  Brenner wondered what was the nature of his own species, and if it had a nature. One theory had it that those of his species were originally filled with a nothingness, and another that they were filled with sunshine. Those who held the “nothingness” theory looked upon this nothingness as an opportunity. If the mind, for example, were a blank tablet, or a blank recording plate, or such, one might then inscribe upon it messages of benignity and beauty. But if the mind were indeed a blank tablet, with no nature of its own, no secrets, no resistances, no internal geodesies, no realities, why might not one, with equal propriety, inscribe upon it messages of terror, of fear and woe, of sickness and hatred? Surely the canvas has no rights with respect to the pictures one chooses to paint upon it. Who decides the plans from which man is to be manufactured? If men had no nature of their own, then they are only putty in the hands of others, whether in the white fingers of angels or the paws of beasts. And where must one stand, outside the domain of man, to see value? Where will he find his patterns and possibilities if not within himself? Where will those who so complacently, so innocently, arrogate to themselves the right to write these messages find their models? Are there plates of graven brass hung between the stars? The stars are silent, burning in space. They are alone, like men. And if such plates were there, who will decipher them, who will read them, and who will ask from whence they came, and if they are true? No, thought Brenner, the theory of emptiness is not a happy one. If true, it is not that man is lost, or that he has not yet been found. Rather it is that he does not exist, has never existed, and can never exist. Rather he would be nothing in himself, not even a material, but rather only a temporary, arbitrary form, only an artifact, meaningless, and perishable. But what of the theory that man is filled with sunshine, thought Brenner. That is a theory, so to speak, of original virtue. Perhaps it is naive, and less plausible than an older, more pessimistic myth, but it might be a benign myth. Believe that man is basically good. Now that might be a useful myth. It could be developed in a number of ways, not all obviously compatible. If one stresses the corrupting influences of institutions and societal arrangements, construed somehow to have arisen surprisingly amongstst these benign creatures, perhaps by magic, then one can absolve individuals, generally on a selective basis, of responsibility for their actions. The victim, for example, is to blame for the crime. On the other hand, in a sterner society, one may blame the criminal, so to speak, for having chosen, somehow, to repudiate his own nature, his natural goodness. On this approach one may hold him responsible for his actions and simultaneously hasten to his correction, the effort to recall him, by various techniques, perhaps punishment, imprisonment, torture, conditionings, pharmacological therapy, lobal surgery, and such, to his forsaken innate goodness. There is an additional difficulty here, of course, which is that of independently identifying the “goodness” which is innate. Who makes this identification, how do we know it is correct, and who decides disagreements which might arise in these matters? Presumably we might not wish to characterize all nativistic dispositions, if there are any, in man as essentially good. If we did that, saying man was essentially good would presumably mean no more than saying that man was essentially man, which might be true, but would not be likely to be of much political utility. Presumably then, if the notion of man being essentially good is to make sense, we have to have an independent criterion for goodness. It does not seem likely that we will be successful in this search, except that we might impose one which pleases us, by force. In this sense, in its ultimate vacuity and bankruptcy, the “sunshine” theory closely approximates the “nothingness theory.” It is possible, Brenner thought, that man, innately, is both good and evil, assuming that some external sense could be given to such claims. But it is more likely, he thought, that man is neither good nor evil. Rather, he is something more profound than either. He is real. He is as he is, not in some trivial sense, but in the sense that he has his own nature, which is in its way apart from good and evil, or beyond them, if you like. This is not to deny, of course, that he might not have his own “good,” in senses such as those of satisfaction and pleasure, or his own “evil” or “bad,” in the senses of frustration or pain. Those things are real enough, and we grant them even to camels and horses, but they do not answer the social needs of a moral “good” and a moral “evil.” There may be no common interest; there may be no general will. But without the rules there is only chaos. Perhaps the myths are important.

  Brenner was angry, seemingly unaccountably.

  Brenner put down his head, and brushed a branch out of the way.

  How complacent were those of the home world. How much they claimed to know! How assured they were!

  But there must be something beyond the myths, thought Brenner. Beyond the evanescent myths, coming into fashion, going out of fashion. And not just more myths, nor even an ultimate myth, that to which all other myths might point, that to which they might over time, more and more closely, approximate, the myth ultimately fated to be agreed upon by all those in need of a myth, if only investigation could be carried on diligently enough, long enough, the ultimate myth, the fated myth, the ideal myth, lying like a spider at the end of time. No, thought Brenner. Rather a truth. But must we make it ourselves? And how then will that differ from another myth, or even from the ultimate myth? It will be ours, thought Brenner. But the myths, too, are they not ours? There must be criteria, thought Brenner, for truths, even for myths. And who shall decide the criteria? By what criteria shall we judge our criteria, and those criteria, in turn? How long is “until then,” how far is the end of time, how shall we come to the last foot of infinity?

  Brenner suddenly stopped.

  “Are you all right?” asked Rodriguez.

  “Yes!” said Brenner.

  They began again. That is it, thought Brenner. One must stop somewhere. One must begin somewhere.

  What he had been taught, he was sure, was wrong, at least in some basic, fundamental, profound, even if only personal sense. It was productive of frustration; it generated misery; it caused pain.

  He thought of the woman, whom he fiercely dismissed as a mere contract slut, in whom he had taken his pleasure, whom he had had well serve him, even to the collar and bracelets. Even she, low, vulnerable, passionate thing that she was, little better than a slave, had reminded him of such things, as though he had needed reminding! If torture could not convince him of the wrongness of what he had been taught, she had asked, what could? Suddenly he was angry with her. What an insult she was to the women of his species! Why could she not have been, like them, a “same”! She cast doubt, even, on her sisters of the home world. Perhaps, too, they were not really “sames.” Perhaps, too, like her, they were different from men, something quite d
ifferent. How horrifying that would be! What if his species was not sexually unimorphic? What if the sexes, really, were quite different? The females of his species, he knew, both by those of his own species, and by those of other species, were kept as slaves, on many worlds. They were easily trained. They adapted quickly to bondage. It was said that within the institution they blossomed, that within it they found fulfillment. What could such things mean?

  Brenner looked at the Pons about, so tiny, so weak, so pathetic, so meaningless. And yet they represented, in their way, as Rodriguez had pointed out, the achievement of what was at least a verbal ideal of the home world. That is what the home world wants, thought Brenner, at least of men. It wants to break and destroy men, to make them small and weak. It wants to turn men into such innocent, simple, stupid, harmless things, such tiny, blinking, pleasant, manageable, cooperative, timid, meaningless nonentities. In the Pon, it seemed, was to be found the new idea of the male, gentle, tender, and such, but his very weakness and manageability, and gullibility celebrated as true masculinity and strength. Surely that is an easy route to manhood, thought Brenner, doing what you are told, fulfilling a stereotype, externally imposed, indexed to the utility of those who despised one. Yes, thought Brenner, that is surely an easy route to manhood, doing what you are told, an easy route to strength, being weak.