by John Brunner
She caught a snatch of their conversation. "It's a different life-style," the woman was saying. "Simpler, nearer to nature, independent of things like nervograps and scudders and luxury imports. You have to admire the underlying principle."
Preening a little as he noticed Chybee looking at him, the man retorted, "If living the simple life means you have to put up with all sorts of loathsome diseases, I'd rather settle for the modern way."
"Come now, you must admit that it's a devastatingly attractive notion…"
Still arguing, they drifted on along the branchways.
But the woman was right. There was something subtly alluring about this run-down quarter of Slah, and the reason for it was all around them. The air was permeated with the pheromones of people experiencing utter certainty. A single breath was enough to convey the message. Here, the aroma indicated, one might find refuge from constant warnings about how any dark or bright might bring just such another meteorite as had carried an ocean-going city far inland to create the foundations of modern Slah. (How deep underpad were those foundations now? Some of the oldest houses' roots were alleged to stretch for padlonglaqs, though of course not directly downward ...)
And, inevitably, the path to that sense of security lay through hunger. Why should anyone worry about tending foot-plants, then? Why should anyone care if the rain-channels got stopped up? Why should anyone object if a patch of mold started growing on her or his mantle? It all liberated precious dreams which could be recounted to innumerably eager listeners. It all helped to reduce the intolerable burden of reality.
Moreover, there was an extra benefit to be gained from moving to this squalid district. It was the lowest-lying part of Slah, sheltered by thickly vegetated hills, and the prevailing wind rarely did more than stir the pool of air it trapped. Little by little, the pheromone density was building up to the point where feedback could set in. Some tune soon now its inhabitants might conceivably cease to argue about the content of their visions. No longer would there be endless disputes about the shape and language of the folk in Stumpalong. Gradually the chemical signals they were receiving would unify their mental patterns. And then: mass collective insanity...
It had never happened in living memory, but it was theoretically possible. Archeological records indicated that certain now-vanished epidemic diseases had had a similar effect in the far past, possibly accounting for the collapse of once-great cities. All this and more had been explained to Chybee by Ugant and her friends after Wam's return to Hulgrapuk: Glig the biologist, Galdu the pastudier, Airm the city councilor ... the last, the most pitiable, because she was worn out from trying to persuade her colleagues that the psychoplanetarist quarter represented a real danger to the rest of the citizens.
What a topsy-turvy universe Chybee's prong-of-the-moment decision had brought her into, where she could pity a major public figure in the world's greatest metropolis! Yet how could she not react so when she listened to what Airm had to complain about?
"They always think it's other people's budlings who wind up in that slum!" she had explained over and over. "Well, I grant that's been the case up till now. Young'uns from prosperous and comfortable homes are relatively immune. What are they going to do, though, if this threatened mass hysteria actually sets in? The likeliest effect will be to make all the victims decide they have to drive the rest of us around to their way of thinking, correct? And how could they achieve that goal? By spoiling other people's food! By cutting off nutrients and water from their homes, by fouling cargoes at the docks, even by spreading drugs which suppress normal appetite! Worse yet, they could poison our haulimals, and how could we feed everybody without them? If Slah attempted to support its citizens off its internal resources, we'd all be dreamlost within a moon-long! What are we going to do?"
Hearing that, the full magnitude of what she was committed to came home to Chybee. A few brights ago, all she had thought of was escape from her crazy parents. Now, because of who her parents were, she was embarquing on a course that might mean the difference between collapse and survival for the planet's most populous city. She could scarcely credit how completely, as a result of Ugant's unpremeditated suggestion, people were coming to rely on her.
Was she equal to the task? She greatly feared she was not; nothing had prepared her for such immense responsibility. True, she had chided her budder again and again for continuing to treat her like a budling when she believed she was grown-up enough to think for herself. What a world of difference there was, though, between the ambition and the reality!
But the reality was the buried ruin of Voosla, deep beneath the branchways scudders swarmed along. The reality was the corpses of its inhabitants that had rotted to fertilize evolving plants. The reality was that modern Slah could be overrun by scores-of-scores of madfolk. The reality was that unless Ugant and Hyge and Wam saw their efforts crested with success life itself might be abolished by the mindless workings of celestial chance.
She had not so far found words to explain what had overcome her while watching Hyge's driver being demonstrated. In her most secret pith, though, she had already started to compare it with what her parents, and their psychoplanetarist friends, called "stardazzle"—a moment of total conviction after which one could never be the same.
At its simplest, she had abruptly decided that so much effort and ingenuity, dedicated to so worthwhile a goal, must not be allowed to go to waste because of a bunch of dreamlost fools.
Hidden under her mantle was a bunch of leaves which, so Glig had assured her, would protect her against the insidious effect of the local pheromones. She slipped one into her mandibles as she reviewed heir immediate task. They wanted her to ingratiate herself with the psychoplanetarists; she was to establish what food they ate and what if any drugs they used, and bring away samples not just of those but, if possible, mantle-scrapings or other cells from their very bodies.
Ugant had been blunt. She had said, "If necessary accept a bud from one of them! Embryonic cells are among the most sensitive of all. Glig can rid you of it later without even a scar, if that worries you"—glancing down at the two bud-marks on her own torso. "But that would help us beyond measure in determining how close we are to disaster."
Chybee hoped against hope it wouldn't come to that...
Well, she had stood here gazing about long enough. Now she must act. Presumably she ought to start by getting into conversation with somebody. But who? Most of those nearby were clearly lost in worlds of their own. Over there, for example: a girl about her own age, very slowly stripping the twigs off a dying branch and putting them one by one into her mandibles. She looked as though, once having settled to her task, she might never rise again.
And to her left: a boy trying to twist his eye around far enough to inspect his mantle which, as Chybee could see—but he couldn't—was patched with slimy green and must be hurting dreadfully.
She knew, though, what kind of answer she would get were she to offer help. She had seen similar cases at home. Her parents even admired young'uns like that, claiming that they were making progress along the path that led to mind being freed from matter, so that it could exert total power instead of merely moving a perishable carcass. She had often angered them by asking why, if that were so, they themselves didn't go out and rub up against the foulest and most disease-blotched folk they could find.
She tried not to remember that by now Isarg might all too easily have wound up in a similar plight.
So she left the boy to his endless futile attempts to view his own back, and moved along the branchway. The pheromones grew stronger with every padlong.
Abruptly she grew aware that people were staring at her. It wasn't surprising. At Ugant's she had enjoyed the best diet of her life, and she was tall and plump—too much so, in fact, to suit the role she was supposed to adopt. Who could believe she was a dedicated psychoplanetarist when she was in this condition?
She clung desperately to her recollection of how well favored Aglabec had appeared
at Ugant's house. More than once, thinking back over his appearance, she had wondered whether he was sharing his followers' privations. If not, did that imply that he was crazy for some other reason? Was he spreading his lies for personal power and gain? If only one of the scientists she had met at Ugant's had broached the subject ... But none had, and she was too timid to suggest the idea herself.
Suddenly she wanted to flee. It was too late. Three young'uns—two girls and a boy—detached themselves from the group who had been looking at her with vast curiosity and approached in such a way as to cut off her retreat. She summoned all her self-control.
"Hello! My name's Chybee and I'm from Hulgrapuk. Maybe you heard tell of my parents Whelwet and Yaygomitch? They sent me here to dig into a report they picked up off the wind, about how it was the folk of Swiftyouth and Sunbride that threw the Greatest Meteorite at us. I can trade information about life on Sluggard's moons for fuller details."
She curled her mantle into an ingratiating posture and waited for their response.
It came in the form of excitement. One of the girls said, "I didn't know Sluggard had any moons!"
"Sure it does!" the boy countered. "Much too small to see, but there they are! Five, right?"—to Chybee.
Ugant and her friends had briefed Chybee carefully. "Only four. What they thought was a fifth turned out to be last year's red comet on its way to us."
"I made contact with the folk on that comet!" the other girl declared.
How can anyone be so crazy as to believe that comets are inhabited? But Chybee kept such thoughts to herself as far as her exudants allowed; at least the all-pervading pheromones masked most of them.
"Well, if your budder is Whelwet," the first girl said, "I know who'll want to talk to you. Come with us. We're on our way to meet with Aglabec himself!"
Oh, NO!
But there was no gainsaying them; they fell in on either side like an escort and swept her along.
VII
At least the leaves Glig had provided were working. Chybee had no idea what they were, but the scientists of Slah had many secrets. Not only did they protect against the terrifying pheromones surrounding her; they seemed also to mask her own exudations. And that too was terrifying, in a way. It was a popular pastime for younglings at Hulgrapuk and elsewhere to reenact stories from the legendary past, but only the very young could so far submerge themselves in a false identity as to make each other and their audience believe in the roles they were playing. As soon as they started to secrete adult odors, the illusion waned.
But suppose adults too could fake such a transformation. Suppose, for instance, Aglabec had figured out a way...?
She wanted not to think about him, for fear of betraying her imposture, but her companions kept chattering on with mad enthusiasm, saying how he must be the greatest male teacher since Awb. Privately, Chybee did not believe Awb had ever existed. She had often been punished by her parents for saying so. If she were to voice a similar opinion right now, though, she could surely look forward to something worse than the penalties meted out to a budling. What if Aglabec were to recognize her from the meeting at Ugant's? She could only reassure herself that there had been too many people present for anybody to single out one person's trace, and try and believe that he would have refused on principle to register what she said.
Struggling to divert the conversation along another path, she demanded what the trio's names were. The replies added to her dismay.
"I'm Witnessunbride," stated the first girl.
"And I, Cometaster!" declared the other.
While the boy said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, "Startoucher!" He added with curiosity, "Do Chybee and Whelwet and Yaygomitch have arcane meanings? At Slah we discard our old names after entering the knowledge state."
But before Chybee could reply, Witnessunbride rounded on him. "And your new one is ridiculous! I could cite five-score of us who know more about what goes on under other stars than you do! Don't take him seriously, Chybee! But how and why did you choose your new name?"
Chybee was briefly at a loss. Then inspiration struck. She said with contempt she did not need to feign, "Some of us, including me and my parents, felt no call to change our names, because they turned out to have significance in the speech of other worlds."
Impressed, Cometaster said, "And yours means...?"
With stiff dignity, Chybee answered, "Those who attain enlightenment will recognize its purport in due time."
The other three exchanged glances.
"Aglabec is going to be very interested in you," said Witnessunbride. "He's the only other person I ever heard say anything like that. And the only other person so advanced he can contact other planets without needing to fast. That is, assuming you got your knowledge about Sluggard direct. Did you? Or were you just told it by your budder or someone?"
Chybee was so taken aback by the audacity of Aglabec's excuse for being in better fettle than his disciples, she could not think of a suitable answer. Luckily they mistook her silence for wounded pride.
"Hurry up!" Startoucher said. "It's nearly sunset!"
And, hastening towards the fringe of this decrepit quarter, he explained how it was that he and his friends were going to meet Aglabec in person.
"Every full moon, unless he's traveling to spread his knowledge, he returns to us, going from home to home to visit his oldest and most loyal followers. Sometimes, when he's due to leave for a long trip, sick people choose to liberate their minds in his presence, for fear of never seeing him again. Isn't that marvelous?"
To liberate—? Oh. Chybee hoped against hope that Glig's leaves would mask the signs of her nausea. Hastily she said, "How did you earn your name?"
"Witnessunbride is jealous of it," Startoucher said with a pout of his mantle. "But I'm fully entitled! Aglabec told me so—he said there are going to be a lot more cases like mine, people who start getting knowledge from other stars instead of just our local planets. Well, I mean I must have done! None of what I see and hear matches with what other people get from Sunbride, or Swiftyouth, or Stolidchurl, or anywhere! Unless, of course—"
He broke off, while Chybee wondered how anyone could be deluded by so transparently silly an explanation. But it was politic to seem interested. She said, "Unless what?"
"I was going to say: unless it comes from somewhere like the moons of Sluggard. But if that were so, then Aglabec would have told me, wouldn't he?"
Much relieved, he hurried on in advance of the group, announcing that they were almost at their destination and it looked as though Aglabec must already have arrived, since nobody was outside watching out for him.
Oh, why could these people not have been on their way to a meeting where she could melt into the crowd? Inside a house, how could she disguise her true detestation of Aglabec? How could she keep up the pretense that she and her parents were still on good terms?
She would simply have to try.
The house was a little better cared for than most in the area. In its main bower Aglabec rested in a curved crotch, surrounded by fervent admirers. He acknowledged the late arrivals with a courteous dip; if his gaze rested longer on Chybee than the others, that could be ascribed to her being a stranger and much better nourished than the rest ... except himself.
"As I was about to say before you came in," he stated in resonant tones, "it always does my pith good to learn how many more people are coming around to the view that we must not and dare not allow scientists to persist in their crazy attempts to launch artificial moons and even space-going cities. They are, of course, impervious to reason; it's futile to warn them that they risk forcing our planetary neighbors to act against us in self-defense. I know! I've tried, and I haven't yet given up, but it's a weary task ... Scientists they call themselves!"—with vast contempt "Yet they don't appear to realize how dangerous it would be to convey life from one planet to another. Some of them are actually plotting to do precisely that: to export bacteria and other organisms
to Swiftyouth and Sunbride, to infect them, to contaminate them! How would they like it if the prong were in the other claw? Luckily for us, all the planetfolk we've contacted so far seem to be cognizant of the risks. They would never dream of doing such a thing, would they?"
Able to relax a little now that it was plain that Aglabec did not after all remember her, Chybee joined in the murmur of agreement which greeted his declaration. Witnessunbride, to her surprise, did not, and Aglabec inquired why.
"You did once say," the girl ventured, "that next tune we try to fly into space we can look forward to being stopped not by another gigantic meteorite but perhaps something subtler, like a plague."
"Ah, I'm glad that registered. My compliments on your excellent recollection. Yes, I did say that. Moreover a number of our comrades have reinforced me, have they not? There is, however, a great moral difference between seeding organisms into space merely to conduct a blind and futile experiment, and doing so with infinite reluctance in order to prevent invasion from another world. What point is there, anyhow, in traveling through space? It would be absurdly dangerous; it would be terribly slow, and living in such confinement—even assuming we can survive in the absence of gravity, which has not been proved—would be a strain on anybody's sanity. What purpose would it serve to deliver a briqload of lunatics to another world? In any case, those of us who have discovered how to make mental voyages have chosen the path that avoids all such perils. If not instantaneously, then at speeds which exceed that of light itself, we can find ourselves on virtually any planet, any moon, we choose, to be greeted by the inhabitants as honored guests, because we understand and accept the reasons why we must not make a physical journey. If the discipline we have to endure in order to achieve our goal is harsh, so be it. Once we have been stardazzled, the need for it dies away, and we can enjoy the best not of 'both' worlds but of as many as we like! I emphasize that because I notice among us a stranger who seems unwilling to enter upon the pathway of privation."