Downward to the Earth

by Robert Silverberg

  He said, “Under present law, I must have the permission of a many-born one to enter the mist country. So I come to make application to you for such permission."

  “You are fastidious in your respect for our law, my once-born friend. Once it was different with you."

  Gundersen bit his lip. He felt something crawling up his calf, down in the depths of the lake, but he compelled himself to stare serenely at the many-born one. Choosing his words with care, he said, “Sometimes we are slow to understand the nature of others, and we give offense without knowing that we do so."

  “It is so."

  “But then understanding comes,” Gundersen said, “and one feels remorse for the deeds of the past, and one hopes that one may be forgiven for his sins."

  “Forgiveness depends on the quality of the remorse,” said Vol'himyor, “and also on the quality of the sins."

  “I believe my failings are known to you."

  “They are not forgotten,” said the nildor.

  “I believe also that in your creed the possibility of personal redemption is not unknown."

  “True. True."

  “Will you allow me to make amends for my sins of the past against your people, both known and unknown?"

  “Making amends for unknown sins is meaningless,” said the nildor. “But in any case we seek no apologies. Your redemption from sin is your own concern, not ours. Perhaps you will find that redemption here, as you hope. I sense already a welcome change in your soul, and it will count heavily in your favor."

  “I have your permission to go north, then?” Gundersen asked.

  “Not so fast. Stay with us a while as our guest. We must think about this. You may go to shore, now."

  The dismissal was clear. Gundersen thanked the many-born one for his patience, not without some self-satisfaction at the way he had handled the interview. He had always displayed proper deference toward many-born ones—even a really Kiplingesque imperialist knew enough to show respect for venerable tribal leaders—but in Company days it had never been more than a charade for him, a put-on show of humility, since ultimate power resided with the Company's sector agent, not with any nildor no matter how holy. Now, of course, the old nildor really did have the power to keep him out of the mist country, and might even see some poetic justice in banning him from it. But Gundersen felt that his deferential and apologetic attitude had been reasonably sincere just now, and that some of that sincerity had been communicated to Vol'himyor. He knew that he could not deceive the many-born one into thinking that an old Company hand like himself was suddenly eager to grovel before the former victims of Earth's expansionism; but unless some show of earnestness did come through, he stood no chance at all of gaining the permission he needed.

  Abruptly, when Gundersen was still a good distance from shore, something hit him a tremendous blow between the shoulders and flung him, stunned and gasping, face forward into the water.

  As he went under, the thought crossed his mind that Vol'himyor had treacherously come up behind him and lashed him with his trunk. Such a blow could easily be fatal if aimed with real malice. Spluttering, his mouth full of the lake's liquor, his arms half numbed by the impact of the blow, Gundersen warily surfaced, expecting to find the old nildor looming above him ready to deliver the coup de grace.

  He opened his eyes, with some momentary trouble focusing them. No, there was the many-born one far away across the water, looking in another direction. And then Gundersen felt a curious prickly premonition and got his head down just in time to avoid being decapitated by whatever it was that had hit him before. Huddling nose-deep in the water, he saw it swing by overhead, a thick yellowish rod like a boom out of control. Now he heard thunderous shrieks of pain and felt widening ripples sweeping across the lake. He glanced around.

  A dozen sulidoror had entered the water and were killing a malidar. They had harpooned the colossal beast with sharpened sticks; now the malidar thrashed and coiled in its final agonies, and it was the mighty tail of the animal that had knocked Gundersen over. The hunters had fanned out in the shallows, waist-deep, their thick fur bedraggled and matted. Each group grasped the line of one harpoon, and they were gradually drawing the malidar toward shore. Gundersen was no longer in danger, but he continued to stay low in the water, catching his breath, rotating his shoulders to assure himself that no bones were broken. The malidar's tail must have given him the merest tip-flick the first time; he would surely have been destroyed the second time that tail came by, if he had not ducked. He was beginning to ache, and he felt half drowned by the water he had gulped. He wondered when he would start to get drunk.

  Now the sulidoror had beached their prey. Only the malidar's tail and thick web-footed hind legs lay in the water, moving fitfully. The rest of the animal, tons of it, stretching five times the length of a man, was up on shore, and the sulidoror were methodically driving long stakes into it, one through each of the forelimbs and several into the broad wedge-shaped head. A few nildoror were watching the operation in mild curiosity. Most ignored it. The remaining malidaror continued to browse in the woods as though nothing had happened.

  A final thrust of a stake severed the malidar's spinal column. The beast quivered and lay still.

  Gundersen hurried from the water, swimming quickly, then wading through the unpleasantly voluptuous mud, at last stumbling out onto the beach. His knees suddenly failed him and he toppled forward, trembling, choking, puking. A thin stream of fluid burst from his lips. Afterward he rolled to one side and watched the sulidoror cutting gigantic blocks of pale pink meat from the malidar's sides and passing them around. Other sulidoror were coming from the huts to share the feast. Gundersen shivered. He was in a kind of shock, and a few minutes passed before he realized that the cause of his shock was not only the blow he had received and the water he had swallowed, but also the knowledge that an act of violence had been committed in front of a herd of nildoror, and the nildoror did not seem at all disturbed. He had imagined that these peaceful, nonbelligerent creatures would react in horror to the slaughter of a malidar. But they simply did not care. The shock Gundersen felt was the shock of disillusionment.

  A sulidor approached him and stood over him. Gundersen stared up uneasily at the towering shaggy figure. The sulidor held in its forepaws a gobbet of malidar meat the size of Gundersen's head.

  “For you,” said the sulidor in the nildoror language. “You eat with us?"

  It did not wait for a reply. It tossed the slab of flesh to the ground next to Gundersen and rejoined its fellows. Gundersen's stomach writhed. He had no lust for raw meat just now.

  The beach was suddenly very silent.

  They were all watching him, sulidoror and nildoror both.

  Five

  SHAKILY GUNDERSEN GOT to his feet. He sucked warm air into his lungs and bought a little time by crouching at the lake's edge to wash his face. He found his discarded clothing and consumed a few minutes by getting it on. Now he felt a little better; but the problem of the raw meat remained. The sulidoror, enjoying their feast, rending and tearing flesh and gnawing on bones, nevertheless frequently looked his way to see whether he would accept their hospitality. The nildoror, who of course had not touched the meat themselves, also seemed curious about his decision. If he refused the meat, would he offend the sulidoror? If he ate it, would he stamp himself as bestial in the eyes of the nildoror? He concluded that it was best to force some of the meat into him, as a gesture of good will toward the menacing-looking bipeds. The nildoror, after all, did not seem troubled that the sulidoror were eating meat; why should it bother them if an Earthman, a known carnivore, did the same?

  He would eat the meat. But he would eat it as an Earthman would.

  He ripped some leaves from the water-plant and spread them out to form a mat; he placed the meat on this. From his tunic he took his fusion torch, which he adjusted for wide aperture, low intensity, and played on the meat until its outer surface was charred and bubbling. With a narrower beam he cut the
cooked meat into chunks he could manage. Then, squatting cross-legged, he picked up a chunk and bit into it.

  The meat was soft and cheesy, interlaced by tough stringlike masses forming an intricate grid. By will alone Gundersen succeeded in getting three pieces down. When he decided he had had enough, he rose, called out his thanks to the sulidoror, and knelt by the side of the lake to scoop up some of the water. He needed a chaser.

  During all this time no one spoke to him or approached him.

  The nildoror had all left the water, for night was approaching. They had settled down in several groups well back from the shore. The feast of the sulidoror continued noisily, but was nearing its end; already several small scavenger-beasts had joined the party, and were at work at the lower half of the malidar's body while the sulidoror finished the other part.

  Gundersen looked about for Srin'gahar. There were things he wished to ask.

  It still troubled him that the nildoror had accepted the killing in the lake so coolly. He realized that he had somehow always regarded the nildoror as more noble than the other big beasts of this planet because they did not take life except under supreme provocation, and sometimes not even then. Here was an intelligent race exempt from the sin of Cain. And Gundersen saw in that a corollary: that the nildoror, because they did not kill, would look upon killing as a detestable act. Now he knew that his reasoning was faulty and even naïve. The nildoror did not kill simply because they were not eaters of meat; but the moral superiority that he had attributed to them on that score must in fact be a product of his own guilty imagination.

  The night came on with tropic swiftness. A single moon glimmered. Gundersen saw a nildor he took to be Srin'gahar, and went to him.

  “I have a question, Srin'gahar, friend of my journey,” Gundersen began. “When the sulidoror entered the water—"

  The nildor said gravely, “You make a mistake. I am Thali'vanoom of the third birth."

  Gundersen mumbled an apology and turned away, aghast. What a typically Earthman blunder, he thought. He remembered his old sector chief making the same blunder a dozen dozen times, hopelessly confusing one nildor with another and muttering angrily, “Can't tell one of these big bastards from the next! Why don't they wear badges?” The ultimate insult, the failure to recognize the natives as individuals. Gundersen had always made it a point of honor to avoid such gratuitous insults. And so, here, at this delicate time when he depended wholly on winning the favor of the nildoror—

  He approached a second nildor, and saw just at the last moment that this one too was not Srin'gahar. He backed off as gracefully as he could. On the third attempt he finally found his traveling companion. Srin'gahar sat placidly against a narrow tree, his thick legs folded beneath his body. Gundersen put his question to him and Srin'gahar said, “Why should the sight of violent death shock us? Malidaror have no g'rakh, after all. And it is obvious that sulidoror must eat."

  “No g'rakh?" Gundersen said. “This is a word I do not know."

  “The quality that separates the souled from the unsouled,” Srin'gahar explained. “Without g'rakh a creature is but a beast."

  “Do sulidoror have g'rakh?"

  “Of course."

  “And nildoror also, naturally. But malidaror don't. What about Earthmen?"

  “It is amply clear that Earthmen have g'rakh."

  “And one may freely kill a creature which lacks that quality?"

  “If one has the need to do so, yes,” said Srin'gahar. “These are elementary matters. Have you no such concepts on your own world?"

  “On my world,” said Gundersen, “there is only one species that has been granted g'rakh, and so perhaps we give such matters too little thought. We know that whatever is not of our own kind must be lacking in g'rakh."

  “And so, when you come to another world, you have difficulty in accepting the presence of g'rakh in other beings?” Srin'gahar asked. “You need not answer. I understand."

  “May I ask another question?” said Gundersen. “Why are there sulidoror here?"

  “We allow them to be here."

  “In the past, in the days when the Company ruled Belzagor, the sulidoror never went outside the mist country."

  “We did not allow them to come here then."

  “But now you do. Why?"

  “Because now it is easier for us to do so. Difficulties stood in the way at earlier times."

  “What kind of difficulties?” Gundersen persisted.

  Softly Srin'gahar said, “You will have to ask that of someone who has been born more often than I. I am once-born, and many things are as strange to me as they are to you. Look, another moon is in the sky! At the third moon we shall dance."

  Gundersen looked up and saw the tiny white disk moving rapidly, low in sky, seemingly skimming the fringe of the treetops. Belzagor's five moons were a random assortment, the closest one just outside Roche's Limit, the farthest so distant it was visible only to sharp eyes on a clear night. At any given time two or three moons were in the night sky, but the fourth and fifth moons had such eccentric orbits that they could never be seen at all from vast regions of the planet, and passed over most other zones no more than three or four times a year. One night each year all five moons could be seen at once, just along a band ten kilometers wide running at an angle of about forty degrees to the equator from northeast to southwest. Gundersen had experienced the Night of Five Moons only a single time.

  The nildoror were starting to move toward the lakeshore now.

  The third moon appeared, spinning retrograde into view from the south.

  So he was going to see them dance again. He had witnessed their ceremonies once before, early in his career, when he was stationed at Shangri-la Falls in the northern tropics. That night the nildoror had massed just upstream of the falls, on both banks of Madden's River, and for hours after dark their blurred cries could be heard even above the roar of the water. And finally Kurtz, who was also stationed at Shangri-la then, said, “Come, let's watch the show!” and led Gundersen out into the night. This was six months before the episode at the serpent station, and Gundersen did not then realize how strange Kurtz was. But he realized it quickly enough after Kurtz joined the nildoror in their dance. The huge beasts were clustered in loose semicircles, stamping back and forth, trumpeting piercingly, shaking the ground, and suddenly there was Kurtz out there among them, arms upflung, bare chest beaded with sweat and shining in the moonslight, dancing as intensely as any of them, crying out in great booming roars, stamping his feet, tossing his head. And the nildoror were forming a group around him, giving him plenty of space, letting him enter fully into the frenzy, now running toward him, now backing away, a systole and diastole of ferocious power. Gundersen stood awed, and did not move when Kurtz called to him to join the dance. He watched for what seemed like hours, hypnotized by the boom boom boom boom of the dancing nildoror, until in the end he broke from his trance, and searched for Kurtz and found him still in ceaseless motion, a gaunt bony skeletonic figure jerking puppet-like on invisible strings, looking fragile despite his extreme height as he moved within the circle of colossal nildoror. Kurtz could neither hear Gundersen's words nor take note of his presence, and finally Gundersen went back to the station alone. In the morning he found Kurtz, looking spent and worn, slumped on the bench overlooking the waterfall. Kurtz merely said, “You should have stayed. You should have danced."

  Anthropologists had studied these rites. Gundersen had looked up the literature, learning what little there was to learn. Evidently the dance was preceded and surrounded by drama, a spoken episode akin to Earth's medieval mystery plays, a theatrical reenactment of some supremely important nildoror myth, serving both as mode of entertainment and as ecstatic religious experience. Unfortunately the language of the drama was an obsolete liturgical tongue, not a word of which could be understood by an Earthman, and the nildoror, who had not hesitated to instruct their first Earthborn visitors in their relatively simple modern language, had never offered any cl
ue to the nature of the other one. The anthropological observers had noted one point which Gundersen now found cheering: invariably, within a few days after the performance of this particular rite, groups of nildoror from the herd performing it would set out for the mist country, presumably to undergo rebirth.

  He wondered if the rite might be some ceremony of purification, some means of entering a state of grace before undergoing rebirth.

  The nildoror all had gathered, now, beside the lake. Srin'gahar was one of the last to go. Gundersen sat alone on the slope above the basin, watching the massive forms assembling. The contrary motions of the moons fragmented the shadows of the nildoror, and the cold light from above turned their smooth green hides into furrowed black cloaks. Looking over to his left, Gundersen saw the sulidoror squatting before their huts, excluded from the ceremony but apparently not forbidden to view it.

  In the silence came a low, clear, forceful flow of words. He strained to hear, hoping to catch some clue to the meaning, seeking a magical gateway that would let him burst through into an understanding of that secret language. But no understanding came. Vol'himyor was the speaker, the old many-born one, reciting words clearly familiar to everyone at the lake, an invocation, an introit. Then came a long interval of silence, and then came a response from a second nildor at the opposite end of the group, who exactly duplicated the rhythms and sinuosities of Vol'himyor's utterance. Silence again; and then a reply from Vol'himyor, spoken more crisply. Back and forth the center of the service moved, and the interplay between the two celebrants became what was for nildoror a surprisingly quick exchange of dialogue. About every tenth line the herd at large repeated what a celebrant had said, sending dark reverberations through the night.

  After perhaps ten minutes of this the voice of a third solo nildor was heard. Vol'himyor made reply. A fourth speaker took up the recitation. Now isolated lines were coming in rapid bursts from many members of the congregation. No cue was missed; no nildor trampled on another's lines. Each seemed intuitively to know when to speak, when to stay silent. The tempo accelerated. The ceremony had become a mosaic of brief utterances blared forth from every part of the group in a random rotation. A few of the nildoror were up and moving slowly in place, lifting their feet, putting them down.