by Brian Aldiss
In a shower of splinters, it fell slowly forward. He ducked out of its grasp. One great paw rasped his shoulder and it hit the floor face down. Where it had stood, a new corridor lay open. Panting, sobbing with fright and hurt, Kervis jumped over the great riven body and ran down the new avenue.
Here, the maze was wider and the walls free of all but the most elusive pattern. He leant against the wall, gasping the thick air into his lungs. He lifted his injured wrist and saw the dark hair growing on the backs of his fingers. Beyond surprise, he recalled only that before he had been naked; now there was a light thatch of hair up his arms. Looking at his legs, he saw they too were not hairless as formerly. Opening the gown, his whole body was revealed, patched here and there with wiry hair in the manner of the people’s bodies in the settlement.
The visibility had much improved for him to be able to glimpse such detail. Looking up, he saw that the source of illumination must indeed be bright, and was moving towards him.
By now, he took it for granted that he was in a maze. The light seemed to be several passages away; only intuition told him it was approaching. Some of his former alarm returned, but in the main he felt only an apprehension that he might be somehow unprepared for whatever was coming next. He hurried forward down the corridor, clutching his robe about him.
At the next turn, the corridor divided. Instinctively, he took the left turn, ran through a shadowy arch, found himself in a circular chamber, to which four arches permitted entrance. Exhilaration filled him; he knew he stood at the heart of the place.
*
The light was coming nearer. From the arch opposite him, a woman appeared, bearing in her hand a lamp that glowed with a living white luminance. She stopped before him and looked at him. Overcome, he went down on his knees.
Afterwards, he was unable to recall what she looked like; he retained only the general idea that her beauty was of a severe and yet exotic kind, and that there was a sort of seriousness about her that seemed as if it might easily melt, either into laughter or erotic welcome. Nor was their conversation any more easy to recall; it always slipped away, though he knew it was the most momentous conversation in which he had participated.
He thought that at first she spoke about strange wild animals being wrenched from their natural habitat and being put to strange work under a yoke. He thought that he in some manner disclaimed all connection with this, and that she then produced a yoke which he did not recognise as such. Either she told him, or he gathered without being told, that a yoke might still be a yoke even when it was not recognisable. She seemed to talk of recognition, and say that millions of years might render things like yokes difficult to recognise without changing their essential natures. Someone – it was as if a third party were speaking for him at times – claimed something about essential natures: that man’s essential nature was not known. But the woman knew it; that was her function. He saw she knew it and that she was unlike Ysis. He thought he said that he recognised her essential nature. It was enough, whatever was said, to release a great wave of loving trust between them. He thought she or he said that he had come here seeking something, and that it had been found. What happened, what was ‘said’ was on a plane below the vocal one; but he understood, even when afterwards he was not sure if he did, and he had the task of interpreting the experience into words.
When she was gone, he walked dazedly through the nearest arch and out into the open air. He saw that it had rained heavily; the air was fresh, everything gleamed. Ysis was coming towards him. He staggered forward in a faint.
That yoke had been very complex, an intricately manufactured thing, as elaborate in its own way as a city, and that he could not understand. He roused in puzzlement, to find that Ysis had driven him back to the settlement. She was sitting by him, looking doubtful.
‘I thought you would die.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘Bandareich is holding a meeting. I must ask you, Kervis – did you see the thing in the maze?’
‘What thing?’
‘I followed you in after a moment I had to. But there was a hairy – a man, all hairy, with burning eyes, clad in steel. I ran away.’
After a while he said, ‘I didn’t see him.’ It seemed useless to pursue that subject; she was not like him. He said, heavily, ‘What is the meeting for?’
‘They want to replace you. They say you are finished. They asked me if we found anything, and I had to say no.’
‘I’ll speak to them.’ He rose. He felt curiously well. Ysis was dressed in one of her more elaborate and artificial costumes; he still had on his mud-spattered gown.
‘You can’t go in that,’ she said. ‘You know you’ll lose your chance of winning if you appear like that. You look like an Earthman.’
He took her face between his hands. ‘Do you love me, Ysis?’
‘Darling, you know our year is nearly up, do try and be rational.’
‘Ha!’ He pulled the gown round him and strode out into the open.
Bandareich and five of the Senior Seekers were approaching, their faces telling him much that he had guessed.
They raised hands to him in the traditional greeting, and Bandareich said, ‘Kervis XI, we come to you after a meeting convened according to the articles of Seeking, tabled –’
‘Thank you, Bandareich, I’m satisfied it was all legal. I take it I’ve offended?’
‘You know how you have offended, not only by refusing to undergo Ablution, but by leaving the vehicle of which you had command and by –’
‘I have offended in more ways than you can know, Seniors, so spare me an incomplete list. If you wish to replace me, I am entirely willing to be replaced.’
Ysis had come up beside him. She said, ‘Defend yourself! Your record was blameless until we reached Earth.’
‘Quiet, woman!’ Bandareich exclaimed. But one of his companions, Wolvorta IV, said, ‘She has reason on her side. Kervis, have you anything to say in your defence? Did you find on your excursion any artifact or object that might be ranked among man’s greatest achievements?’
‘Nothing you would recognise as such,’ Kervis said.
The group of Seekers conferred among themselves. A group of Earthmen had come up and stood at a distance in easy attitudes, watching with an amount of leisurely interest.
Bandareich broke from the group and said, ‘Kervis XI, regretfully we must ask for your resignation as leader. You will be returned to home galaxy as soon as possible.’
He looked down at his feet in the dusty ground. The blow was none the less heavy for being expected, even wanted; no Kervis before him had suffered such disgrace – but the disgrace was imposed by them and no real part of him.
Looking across at his erstwhile companions, he said, ‘I offer you my resignation.’
‘Accepted,’ they said in unison. Bandareich snapped his fingers. ‘Then we will leave Earth immediately; this idle mission has wasted enough time.’ As he spoke, he thumbed the button set in his metal lapel, and a ghostly cage descended from the sky and materialised before them. A door swung open. They began to move towards it. More cages were descending for men and vehicles, to carry them up to the great celestial city orbiting above the planet.
‘Come along, Kervis,’ Bandareich called. ‘We can’t leave you behind.’
Ysis wept, clung to him in unexpected pain, finally ran to the cage as its door was closing. They made one last gesture to him; he shook his head. He stood alone, the Earthmen coming slowly up to him. The cage door closed; they were impatient to be off, seeking again man’s greatest achievement. The cage vanished.
He stared upwards into the clear sky, wetting his lips, wondering what would become of them all. He sighed. ‘You idiots, you won’t see that you have your hands on it as surely as I do! The greatest human achievement is to fulfil one’s destiny.’
He turned to the ragged Earthmen, nearer now, playing their simple pipes.
Amen and Out
The day had begun mightily, s
howering sunshine over the city, when Jaybert Darkling rose from his bed. He tucked his feet into slippers and went over to the shrine by the window,
As he approached, the curtains that normally concealed the shrine slid back, the altar began to glow. Darkling bowed his head once and said, ‘Almighty Gods, I come before you at the start of another day dedicated to your purposes. Grant that I may in every way fulfill myself by acting according to your law and walking in your ways. Amen.’
From the altar came an answering voice, thin, high, remote.
‘Grant that you may indeed. But try to remember how you offered the same prayer yesterday, and then spent your day pleasing yourself.’
‘I will do differently today, Almighty Gods. I will spend the day working at the project, which is surely dedicated to your ends.’
‘Excellent, son, especially as that is what the governors employ you for. And while you work, reflect in your inner heart on your hypocrisy, which is great.’
‘Your will be done.’
The light died, the curtains drew together.
Darkling stood there for a moment, licking his lips. There was no doubt in his mind that the Gods had him taped; he was a hypocrite.
He shuffled across to the window and peered out. Although, as a human, he played a not unimportant role in the city, it was primarily a city of machines. It stretched to the horizon, and most of it moved. The machines willed it that way. Most of the giant building structures had never been entered by man, and they moved because it was convenient they moved.
The walls of the project gleamed brightly. Inside there, Darkling’s immortals were imprisoned. Thank Gods that building did not move!
Hypocrite, eh? Well, he had faced the terror and glory of the idea since he was a lad. The Gods had seen to that.
Undressing, he walked toward the shower, and looked at his watch as he went. In seventy minutes, he could be at the project; today he surely would try to be a better man and live a better life. There was no doubt it paid.
He cursed himself for his double thoughts, but they were the only kind he knew.
Zee Stone was also late in getting up. He did not approach the shrine in his small room. Instead, as he staggered across to the bathroom, he called, ‘I suppose I’m due for my usual bawling out!’
The voice of the Gods came from the unlit shrine, deep, paternal, but on the chilly side. ‘You wenched and fornicated yesterday night: in consequence, you will be late on the project today. You do not need us to tell you, you were in sin.’
‘You know everything – you know why it was. I’m trying to write a story. I want to be a writer. But whenever I begin, even if I have it all planned out, it turns into a different story. You’re doing it, aren’t you?’
‘All that happens within you, you try to blame on things outside. That way, you will never prosper.’
‘To hell with that!’ He turned the shower on. He was young, independent. He was going to make good at the project and with his writing – and with that brunette with yellow eyes. All the same, there was a lot in what the Gods said; inside, outside, he hardly knew the difference. His hated boss, Darkling; maybe much of Darkling’s nastiness existed only in Stone’s imagination.
His thoughts drifted. As he splashed under the warm water, his mind returned to his current story. The Gods had more control over him than he had over his characters
*
Dean Cusak got up early enough. What delayed him was the quarrel with his wife. The morning was fresh and sweet; the quarrel was foul and stale.
‘We’re never going to make that little farm,’ Edith Cusak grumbled as she dressed. ‘You were going to save and we were going to go to the country. How many years ago was that? I notice you’ve still got your moldy ill-paid job as doorman at the project!’
‘It’s a very responsible job,’ Dean squeaked.
‘How come it’s so ill-paid then?’
‘Promotion just didn’t come my way.’ He got his voice a tone lower and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He hated Edith’s discontent because he still cared for her; her complaints were justified. He had held out the vision of a little farm when they got married. But he’d always – admit it, he’d always been so subservient that the powers-that-be at the project found it easy to ignore his existence.
She followed him into the bathroom and took up the argument precisely at the point to which his thoughts had delivered it.
‘What are you, for Gods’ sake? Are you going to be a yes-man all your life? Stand up for yourself! Don’t be a mere order-taker! Throw your weight about down there, then maybe they’ll notice you.’
‘That’s your philosophy, I know,’ he muttered.
When she had gone into the kitchen to dial breakfast, Cusak hurried back into the bedroom and knelt before the bedside shrine. As the light came on behind the altar, he clasped his hands and said, ‘Almighty Gods, help me. I’m a terrible worm, she’s right, a terrible worm! You know me, you know what I am. Help me – it’s not that I haven’t struggled, you know I’ve struggled, but things are going from bad to worse. I’ve always served you, tried to do your will, Gods, don’t let me down!’
A fatherly voice filled the air, saying, ‘Reforms are sometimes best performed piecemeal, Cusak. You must build your own self-confidence bit by bit.’
‘Yes, Gods, thanks, I will, I will, I’ll do exactly as you say – but … how?’
‘Resolve to use your own judgement at least once today, Cusak.’
He begged humbly for further instructions, but the Gods cut off; they were notoriously untalkative. At last, the doorman rose to his feet, struggled into his brown uniform jacket, brushed his hair, and slouched toward the kitchen.
‘Even the Gods call me by my surname,’ he mumbled.
Unlike Dean Cusak, who had a wife to keep him in check, unlike Jaybert Darkling and Zee Stone, whose lives were secure, who showered most mornings, who enjoyed the fruits and blondes of late Twenty-Second Century civilisation, Otto Jack Pommy was an itinerant. He possessed practically nothing but the shrine on his back.
It had been a bad night for Otto, wandering the automated city, and only when dawn had broken did he find a comfortable deserted house in which to sleep. He roused to find the sun shining through a dirty pane onto the stained mattress on which he lay, and remained for a long time angrily entranced – he was an acid head and had taken his last ration of LSD only a week ago – by the conjunction of stains, stripes, and fly specks there, which seemed to epitomise so much of the universe.
At length, Otto rolled over and snapped open his portable shrine. The light failed to glow behind the altar.
‘What’s matter? You lot feeling dim too? Expecting me to pray when you can’t even light up like you used to? Gods?! I spit ’em!’
‘Son, you know you sold your good shrine for this poor cheap one that has never worked properly. But as we come to you through an imperfect instrument, so you are the imperfect instrument for the performance of our will.’
‘Hell, I know, I sinned! Look, you know me, Gods, not the best of men but not the worst either. Leave me alone, can’t you? Did I ever exploit anyone? Remember what it used to say in the pre-Gods book: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.” How about that, then?’
The Gods made a noise not unlike a human snort. ‘Meek! Otto Pommy, you are the most conceited old man that ever inflicted prayer upon us! Try to behave a little less arrogantly today.’
‘OK, OK, but all I want is to go and see Father at the project. Amen.’
‘And buy a new battery for this altar. Have you no reverence?’
‘Amen, I said; Amen and out.’
The Immortality Investigation Project occupied a few acres in the center of the city. This contrast with the spacestations, which were always situated outside the cities, was one on which Jaybert Darkling had dilated at length to some of the governors of the project.
‘It’s symbolic, isn’t it?’ he had said pleasantly. ‘
Man forges outward, ever outward – at least, our machines do – but the important things lie inward. As one of the sages of the Twentieth Century put it, we need to explore inner space. It’s a sign of that need that although our precious space stations lie on the outskirts of town, we find room for this great, this metaphysical project, right at the centre of things.
Right or not, he said it often enough to silence most of the governors.
Before getting down to his paper work on this fine morning. Darkling went briskly on a tour of inspection. Robots and machines had care over most things here, but the housing and guarding of the immortals was his responsibility. As he walked through into the first Wethouse, he saw some disapproval that young Zee Stone was on duty and flirting with a slight blonde secretary.
‘Stone!’
‘Sir!’
They walked together into the antechamber of the Wethouse, pulling on boots and oilskins.
In the Wethouse itself basked the immortals. The project housed thousands of them. This first hall contained perhaps twenty, most of them unmoving.
The temperature was maintained at a rigid seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit. From the high ceiling, showers spouted. Around the walls, taps gushed, their waters running across the tiles into a pool that occupied half of the floor space. In the centre of the pool, fountains played. Cool jets of air hurtling in at ceiling level, made tiny localised clouds and random cloudbursts that played hydropic variations in the chamber.
Statuesquely, the immortals stood or lay in the water torrents. Many slumped half-submerged on the sloping edge of the pool, their eyes unblinkingly looking at some distant scene. The waters, beaten to a broth by the downpour, lapped around their limbs.
Yet they themselves conveyed an impression of drought. Not a man or woman here was less than one hundred and eighty years old. They resembled planed wood planks with the grain standing out strongly, so covered were their skin with the strange whorls and markings that represented hallmarks of immortality. From the time when they first took the series of three ROA5 injections, they had been plunged into the extreme throes of old age; their skin had wrinkled and dried, their hair thinned, their marrows shrivelled. They developed the appearance and postures of extreme old age.