Trips - 1962–73 - The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg Volume Four

by Robert Silverberg

  Pitkin, who had watched the interchange from the far side of the lounge, came striding fiercely toward him as the Spicans glided off. “What are you up to now?” he demanded.

  “How about minding your own business?” Schwartz said amiably.

  “You’re trading pills with those snakes, aren’t you?”

  “Let’s call it field research.”

  “Research? Research? What are you going to do, trip on that orange stuff of theirs?”

  “I might,” Schwartz said.

  “How do you know what its effects on the human metabolism might be? You could end up blind or paralyzed or crazy or—”

  “—or illuminated,” Schwartz said. “Those are the risks one takes in the field. The early anthropologists who unhesitatingly sampled peyote and yage and ololiuqui accepted those risks, and—”

  “But those were drugs that humans were using. You have no way of telling how—oh, what’s the use, Schwartz? Research, he calls it. Research.” Pitkin sneered. “Junkie!”

  Schwartz matched him sneer for sneer. “Economist!”

  The house is a decent one tonight, close to three thousand, every seat in the University’s great horseshoe-shaped auditorium taken, and a video relay besides, beaming his lecture to all Papua and half of Indonesia. Schwartz stands on the dais like a demigod under a brilliant no-glare spotlight. Despite his earlier weariness he is in good form now, gestures broad and forceful, eyes commanding, voice deep and resonant, words flowing freely. “Only one planet,” he says, “one small and crowded planet, on which all cultures converge to a drab and depressing sameness. How sad that is! How tiny we make ourselves, when we make ourselves to resemble one another!” He flings his arms upward. “Look to the stars, the unattainable stars! Imagine, if you can, the millions of worlds that orbit those blazing suns beyond the night’s darkness! Speculate with me on other peoples, other ways, other gods. Beings of every imaginable form, alien in appearance but not grotesque, not hideous, for all life is beautiful; beings that breathe gases strange to us, beings of immense size, beings of many limbs or of none, beings to whom death is a divine culmination of existence, beings who never die, beings who bring forth their young a thousand at a time, beings who do not reproduce—all the infinite possibilities of the infinite universe!

  “Perhaps on each of those worlds it is as it has become here: one intelligent species, one culture, the eternal convergence. But the many worlds together offer a vast spectrum of variety. And now: share this vision with me! I see a ship voyaging from star to star, a spaceliner of the future, and aboard that ship is a sampling of many species, many cultures, a random scoop out of the galaxy’s fantastic diversity. That ship is like a little cosmos, a small world, enclosed, sealed. How exciting to be aboard it, to encounter in that little compass such richness of cultural variation! Now our own world was once like that starship, a little cosmos, bearing with it all the thousands of Earthborn cultures. Hopi and Eskimo and Aztec and Kwakiutl and Arapesh and Orokolo and all the rest. In the course of our voyage we have come to resemble one another too much, and it has impoverished the lives of all of us, because—” He falters suddenly. He feels faint, and grasps the sides of the lectern. “Because—” The spotlight, he thinks. In my eyes. Not supposed to glare like that, but it’s blinding. Got to have them move it. “In the course…the course of our voyage—” What’s happening? Breaking into a sweat, now. Pain in my chest. My heart? Wait, slow up, catch your breath. That light in my eyes—

  “Tell me,” Schwartz said earnestly, “what it’s like to know you’ll have ten successive bodies and live more than a thousand years.”

  “First tell me,” said the Antarean, “what it’s like to know you’ll live ninety years or less and perish forever.”

  Somehow he continues. The pain in his chest grows more intense, he cannot focus his eyes, he believes he will lose consciousness at any moment and may even have lost it already at least once, and yet he continues. Clinging to the lectern, he outlines the program he developed in The Mask Beneath the Skin. A rebirth of tribalism without a revival of ugly nationalism. The quest for a renewed sense of kinship with the past. A sharp reduction in nonessential travel, especially tourism. Heavy taxation of exported artifacts, including films and video shows. An attempt to create independent cultural units on Earth once again while maintaining present levels of economic and political interdependence. Relinquishment of materialistic technological-industrial values. New searches for fundamental meanings. An ethnic revival, before it is too late, among those cultures of mankind that have only recently shed their traditional folkways. (He repeats and embellishes this point particularly, for the benefit of the Papuans before him, the great-grandchildren of cannibals.)

  The discomfort and confusion come and go as he unreels his themes. He builds and builds, crying out passionately for an end to the homogenization of Earth, and gradually the physical symptoms leave him, all but a faint vertigo. But a different malaise seizes him as he nears his peroration. His voice becomes, to him, a far-off quacking, meaningless and foolish. He has said all this a thousand times, always to great ovations, but who listens? Who listens? Everything seems hollow tonight, mechanical, absurd. An ethnic revival? Shall these people before him revert to their loincloths and their pig-roasts? His starship is a fantasy; his dream of a diverse Earth is mere silliness. What is, will be. And yet he pushes on toward his conclusion. He takes his audience back to that starship, he creates a horde of fanciful beings for them. He completes the metaphor by sketching the structures of half a dozen vanished “primitive” cultures of Earth, he chants the chants of the Navaho, the Gabon Pygmies, the Ashanti, the Mundugumor. It is over. Cascades of applause engulf him. He holds his place until members of the sponsoring committee come to him and help him down; they have perceived his distress. “It’s nothing,” he gasps. “The lights—too bright—” Dawn is at his side. She hands him a drink, something cool. Two of the sponsors begin to speak of a reception for him in the Green Room. “Fine,” Schwartz says. “Glad to.” Dawn murmurs a protest. He shakes her off. “My obligation,” he tells her. “Meet community leaders. Faculty people. I’m feeling better now. Honestly.” Swaying, trembling, he lets them lead him away.

  “A Jew,” the Antarean said. “You call yourself a Jew, but what is this exactly? A clan, a sept, a moiety, a tribe, a nation, what? Can you explain?”

  “You understand what a religion is?”

  “Of course.”

  “Judaism—Jewishness—it’s one of Earth’s major religions.”

  “You are therefore a priest?”

  “Not at all. I don’t even practice Judaism. But my ancestors did, and therefore I consider myself Jewish, even though—”

  “It is an hereditary religion, then,” the Antarean said, “that does not require its members to observe its rites?”

  “In a sense,” said Schwartz desperately. “More an hereditary cultural subgroup, actually, evolving out of a common religious outlook no longer relevant.”

  “Ah. And the cultural traits of Jewishness that define it and separate you from the majority of humankind are—?”

  “Well—” Schwartz hesitated. “There’s a complicated dietary code, a rite of circumcision for newborn males, a rite of passage for male adolescents, a language of scripture, a vernacular language that Jews all around the world more or less understand and plenty more, including a certain intangible sense of clannishness and certain attitudes, such as a peculiar self-deprecating style of humor—”

  “You observe the dietary code? You understand the language of scripture?”

  “Not exactly,” Schwartz admitted. “In fact I don’t do anything that’s specifically Jewish except think of myself as a Jew and adopt many of the characteristically Jewish personality modes, which, however are not uniquely Jewish any longer—they can be traced among Italians, for example, and to some extent among Greeks. I’m speaking of Italians and Greeks of the late twentieth century, of course. Nowadays—” It was all
becoming a terrible muddle. “Nowadays—”

  “It would seem,” said the Antarean, “that you are a Jew only because your maternal and paternal gene-givers were Jews, and they—”

  “No, not quite. Not my mother, just my father, and he was Jewish only on his father’s side, but even my grandfather never observed the customs, and—”

  “I think this has grown too confusing,” said the Antarean. “I withdraw the entire inquiry. Let us speak instead of my own traditions. The Time of Openings, for example, may be understood as—”

  In the Green Room some eighty or a hundred distinguished Papuans press toward him, offering congratulations. “Absolutely right,” they say. “A global catastrophe.” “Our last chance to save our culture.” Their skins are chocolate-tinted but their faces betray the genetic mishmash that is their ancestry—perhaps they call themselves Arapesh, Mundugumor, Tchambuli, Mafulu, in the way that he calls himself a Jew, but they have been liberally larded with chromosomes contributed by Chinese, Japanese, Europeans, Africans, everything. They dress in International Contemporary. They speak slangy, lively English. Schwartz feels seasick. “You look dazed,” Dawn whispers. He smiles bravely. Body like dry bone. Mind like dead ashes. He is introduced to a tribal chieftain, tall, gray-haired, who looks and speaks like a professor, a lawyer, a banker. What, will these people return to the hills for the ceremony of the yam harvest? Will newborn girl-children be abandoned, cords uncut, skins unwashed, if their fathers do not need more girls? Will boys entering manhood submit to the expensive services of the initiator who scarifies them with the teeth of crocodiles? The crocodiles are gone. The shamans have become stockbrokers.

  Suddenly he cannot breathe.

  “Get me out of here,” Schwartz mutters hoarsely, choking.

  Dawn, with stewardess efficiency, chops a path for him through the mob. The sponsors, concerned, rush to his aid. He is floated swiftly back to the hotel in a glistening little bubble-car. Dawn helps him to bed. Reviving, he reaches for her.

  “You don’t have to,” she says. “You’ve had a rough day.”

  He persists. He embraces her and takes her, quickly, fiercely, and they move together for a few minutes and it ends and he sinks back, exhausted, stupefied. She gets a cool cloth and pats his forehead, and urges him to rest. “Bring me my drugs,” he says. He wants siddharthin, but she misunderstands, probably deliberately, and offers him something blue and bulky, a sleeping pill, and, too weary to object, he takes it. Even so, it seems to be hours before sleep comes.

  He dreams he is at the skyport, boarding the rocket for Bangkok, and instantly he is debarking at Bangkok—just like Port Moresby, only more humid—and he delivers his speech to a horde of enthusiastic Thais, while rockets flicker about him, carrying him to skyport after skyport, and the Thais blur and become Japanese, who are transformed into Mongols, who become Uighurs, who become Iranians, who become Sudanese, who become Zambians, who become Chileans, and all look alike, all look alike, all look alike.

  The Spicans hovered above him, weaving, bobbing, swaying like cobras about to strike. But their eyes, warm and liquid, were sympathetic: loving even. He felt the flow of their compassion. If they had had the sort of musculature that enabled them to smile, they would be smiling tenderly, he knew.

  One of the aliens leaned close. The little translating device dangled toward Schwartz like a holy medallion. He narrowed his eyes, concentrating as intently as he could on the amber words flashing quickly across the screen.

  “…has come. We shall…”

  “Again, please,” Schwartz said. “I missed some of what you were saying.”

  “The moment…has come. We shall…make the exchange of sacraments now.”

  “Sacraments?”

  “Drugs.”

  “Drugs, yes. Yes. Of course.” Schwartz groped in his pouch. He felt the cool, smooth leather skin of his drug case. Leather? Snakeskin, maybe. Anyway. He drew it forth. “Here,” he said. “Siddharthin, learitonin, psilocerebrin, acid-57. Take your pick.” The Spicans selected three small blue siddharthins. “Very good,” Schwartz said. “The most transcendental of all. And now—”

  The longest of the aliens proffered a ball of dried orange fungus the size of Schwartz’ thumbnail.

  “It is an equivalent dose. We give it to you.”

  “Equivalent to all three of my tablets, or to one?”

  “Equivalent. It will give you peace.”

  Schwartz smiled. There was a time for asking questions, and a time for unhesitating action. He took the fungus and reached for a glass of water.

  “Wait!” Pitkin cried, appearing suddenly. “What are you—”

  “Too late,” Schwartz said serenely, and swallowed the Spican drug in one joyous gulp.

  The nightmares go on and on. He circles the Earth like the Flying Dutchman, like the Wandering Jew, skyport to skyport to skyport, an unending voyage from nowhere to nowhere. Obliging committees meet him and convey him to his hotel. Sometimes the committee members are contemporary types, indistinguishable from one another, with standard faces, standard clothing, the all-purpose new-model hybrid unihuman, and sometimes they are consciously ethnic, elaborately decked out in feathers and paint and tribal emblems, but their faces, too, are standard behind the gaudy regalia, their slang is the slang of Uganda and Tierra del Fuego and Nepal, and it seems to Schwartz that these masqueraders are, if anything, less authentic, less honest, than the other sort, who at least are true representatives of their era. So it is hopeless either way. He lashes at his pillow, he groans, he wakens. Instantly Dawn’s arms enfold him. He sobs incoherent phrases into her clavicle and she murmurs soothing sounds against his forehead. He is having some sort of breakdown, he realizes: a new crisis of values, a shattering of the philosophical synthesis that has allowed him to get through the last few years. He is bound to the wheel; he spins, he spins, he spins, traversing the continents, getting nowhere. There is no place to go. No. There is one, just one, a place where he will find peace, where the universe will be as he needs it to be. Go there, Schwartz. Go and stay as long as you can. “Is there anything I can do?” Dawn asks. He shivers and shakes his head. “Take this,” she says, and gives him some sort of pill. Another tranquilizer. All right. All right. It will help him get where he must go. The world has turned to porcelain. His skin feels like a plastic coating. Away, away, to the ship. To the ship! “So long,” Schwartz says, and lets himself slip away.

  Outside the ship the Capellans twist and spin in their ritual dance as, weightless and without mass, they are swept toward the rim of the galaxy at nine times the velocity of light. They move with a grace that is astonishing for creatures of such tremendous bulk. A dazzling light that emanates from the center of the universe strikes their glossy skin and, rebounding, resonates all up and down the spectrum, splintering into brilliant streamers of ultra-red, infra-violet, exo-yellow. All the cosmos glows and shimmers. A single perfect note of music comes out of the remote distance and, growing closer, swells in an infinite crescendo. Schwartz trembles at the beauty of all he perceives.

  Beside him stands the seal-slick Antarean. She—definitely she, no doubt of it, she—plucks at his arm and whispers, “Will you go to them?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “So will I. Wherever you go.”

  “Now,” Schwartz says. He reaches for the lever that opens the hatch. He pulls down. The side of the starship swings open.

  The Antarean looks deep into his eyes and says blissfully, “I never told you my name. My name is Dawn.”

  Together they float through the hatch into space.

  The blackness receives them gently. There is no chill, no pressure at the lungs, no discomfort at all. He is surrounded by luminous surges, by throbbing mantles of pure color, as though he has entered the heart of an aurora. He and Dawn swim toward the Capellans, and the huge beings welcome them with deep glad booming cries. Dawn joins the dance at once, moving her sinuous limbs with extravagant ease; Schwartz will do
the same in a moment, but first he turns to face the starship, hanging in space close by him like a vast coppery needle, and in a voice that could shake universes he calls, “Come, friends! Come, all of you! Come dance with us!” And they come, pouring through the hatch, the Spicans first, then all the rest, the infinite multitude of beings, the travelers from Fomalhaut and Achernar and Acrux and Aldebaran, from Thuban and Arcturus and Altair, from Polaris and Canopus and Sirius and Rigel, hundreds of star-creatures spilling happily out of the vessel, bursting forth, all of them, even Pitkin, poor little Pitkin, everyone joining hands and tentacles and tendrils and whatever, forming a great ring of light across space, everyone locked in a cosmic harmony, everyone dancing. Dancing. Dancing.

  IN THE HOUSE OF DOUBLE MINDS

  After 1970, which had been a year of relatively high output for me, each successive year of the 1970’s saw my productivity steadily decreasing, and, as I indicated in the introduction to the previous story, by 1973 I found myself unable, or unwilling, to write very much at all. My records for that year show no novels, five short stories and novellas (including the major story “Born with the Dead”) and one short magazine article—a paltry total of 81,000 words, less by far than I had produced in any single year since I began writing. (I had written more than that in a good many months when I was younger.) Blame it on the chaotic Zeitgeist, blame it on an increasingly centrifugal private life, blame it on any number of things: the fact at the bottom of all the rationalizations was that after twenty years of steady production I was weary of writing and wanted desperately to escape from the profession I had so eagerly chosen for myself two decades before.