Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  I find her desirable, repellent. I do not love her. I do want her. But I do not want to want her.

  That leaves me in a clumsy position, engaged in combat with myself.

  It is all too much. I am finding it difficult to believe that there is a place called Earth, that I left that place in some sort of a contrivance, that I came here, talked with flowers, degraded myself, married Lanea. It is all too much.

  Lanea is calling me to come eat dinner. The ugly thought just struck me. She prepared food for me, but what does she eat herself? Does she eat me?

  That is unworthy of me and unfair to Lanea. Nevertheless, I go to the table now with a certain apprehension.

  Lanea is very beautiful and loving. That is some compensation for the steady attrition of my humanity.

  We play a pretty domestic scene, Lanea and I. She brings me breakfast, walking briskly into the bedroom in her swirling morning coat. I drink a warm, mild stimulant, about the equivalent of coffee. I am the only person on Kaldor who does this. Little habits like that help me to remember who I am.

  Then I work on my notes, slides, tapes. After lunch I go for a walk. Usually I turn away from the city, into stubbled fields and second-growth forest. I take along a flute that Wolfing made for me. Its tones are not quite true, but I don’t mind; my own tones are not quite true either.

  There is a hill several miles from here called Nmassi. I usually climb it and sit on its pointed top all alone, playing my flute and resting my eyes on distant scenery. I play “When You’re a Long, Long Way from Home” and “Amapola” and “Flying Down to Rio” and other songs that are all but forgotten even on Earth. The songs sound strange in this place; the notes are a miniature invasion, bravely piped, soon lost in the immensities of Kaldor. While playing, I am a Terran. But at night, in Lanea’s arms, I do not know what I am.

  Not a Kaldorian by any means. But not quite human either.

  A changeling, perhaps.

  Lanea knows with her own wisdom who and what I am. Sometimes she holds me very tight, as if I might fly off into the vacuum of space. Sometimes she holds my face in her two hands, looks into my eyes, and makes a strange sound deep in her throat. Sometimes she squeezes my hand, tight, tight.

  I do not think I will ever be rescued. I will live out my time here. And if there is a heaven or hell, it will be a Kaldorian one to which I will be consigned. Or perhaps there is a special limbo for those who have severed their roots, who are no longer of one stock, not yet of another.

  In the meantime, I have no real complaints.

  Having taken a wife, or been taken by one, I suppose I could not avoid the problem of in-laws. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that a universal constant. These are not quite what you would expect, however: Lanea’s parents change every week.

  So far I have counted three sets of parents.

  Their behavior with me is similar enough to consider them a single set.

  Nevertheless, there are three (so far).

  I have questioned Lanea about this. She finds it strange and funny that I ask. She laughs at me—and her laugh is beautiful. She says, “How do you manage it on Earth, then?”

  “With one father and one mother,” I tell her. “Of course, in the past, some Terran societies had variations on the theme—extended families, for one, or passing on the paternal or maternal role to an uncle or aunt.”

  “How complicated!” she says. “Why not simply start right off with a parental group?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. “It simply happened that way.” (How quickly I become defensive about the customs of Earth.)

  “Here,” she said, “we cooperate in vital functions. We have a saying, you know—the more parents the better.”

  “I’ve heard the saying,” I tell her. “But which of the parents physically gave birth to you?”

  She shakes her head reprovingly. “I do not know that myself. That is a mystery.”

  “Why don’t you ask?”

  “Because I don’t want to know. There would no longer be a mystery, then.”

  “Is it so important to have a mystery?”

  “Oh, yes.” She looked at me very seriously, eyes wide and intent. “We of Kaldor have many mysteries. Mystery of one sort or another is the core of our existence.”

  “On Earth,” I told her, “we explore mysteries and try to explain how they work.”

  She nodded gravely. “That is because you are a passionate and impatient people; you solve smaller mysteries in order to find others that are beyond your understanding.”

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  “Because you are here on Kaldor, having gambled your life against great odds to cross the mystery of space and find the strangeness of another race. Your journey here was like an initiation ceremony, like our Time of Destruction. But we of Kaldor would not do this. We have enough mysteries on our own planet without the need to cross space in order to find more.”

  I push on in my blunt, uncomprehending way. “What is the reason for having three sets of parents?”

  “We don’t have three sets; we usually have four.”

  “Then I haven’t met one of your fathers and mothers.”

  “Nor have I. One parental group is never revealed except under certain special conditions.”

  “Why?”

  “There are reasons. But above all, it is another mystery.”

  “You seem to have a lot of mysteries,” I comment.

  “Oh, yes! It is the key to understanding us.”

  I realize that this is true. A month ago I would have plunged on, asked her to state exactly what a mystery was, if it was an invention or a discovery, how many mysteries they possessed, which were the most characteristic, and so forth. Now I am no less curious, but I have learned a little of the usages of this place. There are things that one simply does not ask. Not outright. I hope to find out more about this matter, but I will have to suit my inquiries to local conditions.

  And then Lanea is sitting in my lap, her arms around my neck, her lips pressed against my face. Gently I stroke her long dark hair. She sighs, her arms tighten, she adjusts herself to fit my body more closely.

  Perhaps women are similar all over the universe?

  It surprises me now that I could ever eat meat. Here on Kaldor the taboo against meat runs very deeply and is comparable to our own revulsion against cannibalism. I share the Kaldorian meat phobia now; I suppose I learned it by empathy from Lanea, my in-laws, and the population at large.

  It occurs to me now that I did eat meat when I first came here; that Doerniche and others supplied it. I can’t remember whether they ate with me, but it seems entirely possible.

  More likely, they disguised a vegetarian dish to simulate meat. Their better chefs have more than enough skill to do this. Mock-meat is ceremonially served on one occasion in the year.

  The Kaldorians are most notable, in my estimation, for their sense of the wholeness and interrelatedness of life. They seem to have an innate ecological sense, which runs in them as deep and true as the sex drive. The Kaldorian, although conscious of a unique status by virtue of his intelligence, still views himself as an animal living in a natural habitat. He changes his environment, but so do beavers. In each case, the changes wrought are relatively minimal and predictable.

  Most of this planet is wilderness, despite the fact that civilized and mobile races have occupied it for thousands of years. This knowledge gives me an indescribable sense of peace and freedom.

  The Kaldorian food taboo does not limit itself only to meat, fish and fowl, and their products. The taboo extends also to many vegetables.

  This, in my opinion, is not illogical. When you think about it, why should animal status be the main criterion of who or what gets eaten? Is not a carrot worthy of life, despite the fact that it might lack mobility?

  It is not very logical to look over the attributes you possess and then declare that they are the most important attributes in the universe.

  How c
ould I eat that talking rose, azalea, and sycamore in my backyard?

  How could I eat any creature that talked, whether it was animal or vegetable?

  Suppose the steak on your table cried out to you for help? What if the veal cutlet begged you to restore it to its mother?

  Suppose beans screamed when they were being boiled?

  This is how the Kaldorians feel, and I concur. This attitude leaves them with a problem. What are they going to eat?

  I am afraid they have solved the problem only through hypocrisy. They have designated certain plants that may be eaten. All others are forbidden.

  Still, I may be wrong about hypocrisy. I questioned Wolfing about this once. He insisted that certain plants were permissible food through essence, not through arbitrary choice.

  “How are they different from other plants?” I asked.

  He looked at me strangely, and I knew that once again I was asking questions that should not be asked. Any Kaldorian would understand the answer without its ever having been stated. But Wolfing was very good about realizing that I had not been born here.

  Wolfing said at last, “Those plants do not dream.”

  I didn’t know what to make of this answer. I asked him to tell me more of the differences.

  “Those plants do not change like the others,” he said.

  “Change? Do you mean blossom?”

  He shook his head impatiently. “When I say they do not change, I mean they retain their constancy by day, week, month and year.”

  “Are they immortal?”

  “Perhaps, in some special sense. But in a special sense we all are.”

  “Yes . . . Is there anything else about them?”

  “Those plants do not feel right. It is very difficult to describe,” Wolfing said. “The impression is qualitatively different. I suppose you might call them inert. By which I do not mean dead. Nor do I mean to imply a value judgment. I simply mean that they feel different from all other plants.”

  Wolfing was talking with animation now; his words poured out easily.

  “But we do not know what the difference means. Perhaps the permissible plants are recent arrivals, seeds or spores from meteorites and other cosmic debris. Perhaps they have not become fully a part of this planet. Or perhaps the opposite is true, perhaps they are the oldest inhabitants, perhaps they have evolved beyond our comprehension. We simply don’t know. We still do not like to eat them. But we do so in order to live and in accordance with the rule of like choosing unlike.”

  We looked at each other in that moment of full understanding that the Kaldorians call d’bnai. I was in full agreement, intellectually, with the Kaldorian concept of the sacredness of life. Earthmen’s ideals state what they would like to become; Kaldor in that sense has no ideals. It has already become what it desired.

  Yesterday was Sarameish, a very special holiday. Lanea and I were lucky enough to obtain first-row seats in the drawing.

  Wolfing had also drawn a front-row seat, which pleased Lanea and myself very much. It meant that three of our friendship-bond had been lucky today, and thus we give our luck to the others.

  I looked around to see where my friends were seated. Eliaming was in a fourth row behind a pillar. He smiled his pleasure at our good luck. Grandinang, the lovable fool, had contrived a part for himself in the ceremony—quite superfluously, since the Council Eyes would have picked him anyhow. And dear Doerniche was playing inger to the girls in the procession, as he had for the last three years since reaching his fullness.

  Lanea and I were excited enough to hold hands. We clutched each other, waiting, scarcely breathing, even though the ceremony is almost the same year in and year out. Still, no one can contain himself on Sarameish.

  Then the procession began. First the young girls, clothed all in white, and then the boys, in russet and forest green. Their dance was the utmost expression of a prayer.

  Next, the God of Discord was brought in on his iron cart. (This is all symbolic, of course; no one believes in a literal God of Discord. They are addressing themselves to the attitude.)

  The God was very splendid this year, almost ten feet tall, very portly, brilliantly colored in metallic blacks, reds, yellows. He looked impossibly solid and strong, invincible, in fact, and there were whispers of consternation throughout the stands; for the Artificer’s Cooperative has been known to be overzealous at several points in their long history, making durable out of pride of craft what had been intended for a single day only.

  The car comes to a stop. There are various propitiatory dances, several songs, a dramatic recitative. All of this is intoxicating; the finest expressions of theatrical arts are saved for this day.

  All too soon that part is over. Then Doerniche steps forward.

  He approaches the God with deliberate steps, and Lanea and I can hardly control ourselves for pride and joy that this man is in our friendship group. Doerniche stalks the God with slow steps, and some of the children start to cry. But Grandinang and the other clowns come out, dressed as flowers and herbivorous animals. They make jokes, sing nonsense songs, scramble under each other’s legs and over each other’s backs. The children scream with laughter, and even we adults must smile at the antics.

  But our attention is abruptly diverted. Doerniche has reached the God; he has mounted the iron cart! Now, literally, we cannot see the clowns. All of our attention is focused on Doerniche, yes, and all-out concern.

  Doerniche inspects the God and turns his back on him. We applaud. He turns again, takes a piece of the God’s coat, and rips it off.

  We fall silent, barely breathing.

  With measured movements Doerniche rips off all the God’s clothes, rendering him naked. We wait. Doerniche is committed now; he can no longer refuse the job. In his two bare hands the luck of the city resides.

  He inspects the body of the God, which is made of various metals and looks as if it could withstand the eruption of a volcano. He touches this part and that, learning the nature of the ultimate evil he is encountering. His fingers glide over the God’s face, down his massive chest, down his hard-muscled flanks . . .

  Doerniche stops; he has found what he was looking for. He lunges suddenly at precisely the right spot. His hand penetrates the thin, soft sheet of copper, and his fingers rip upward, stopping only when they encounter bronze.

  Doerniche’s eyes are rolled blindly upward. He explores the hole he has made with his fingers. He probes, finds softness, rips, moves his hand, rips again, reaches inside the God, rips. He takes his hand out, there is blood on it, he reaches in again, his hand grips, he sets his feet, the cords in his neck stand out, he heaves. We in the stands hold our breath, and some of us have already begun to curse the Artificers, for we are afraid they have ruined the ceremony.

  But then Doerniche relaxes; he has pulled something loose within the God, and he takes it out and shows it to us: an iron stanchion, one of the internal supporting members. He holds it above his head and we applaud and hug each other with relief. (It is the same every year, and the stanchion always comes free, and Doerniche makes his muscles stand out for show but in reality he only must exert a moderate pull, and we know all of this, know that there is no reasonable way the ceremony can fail, nevertheless we are in anxiety until it actually happens. That is always how Sarameish affects us.)

  With the iron bar removed, the God’s left arm collapses onto the iron cart. The children shriek. Doerniche works quickly now, ripping copper and tearing out the God’s supporting members, which we refer to as his ribs. Doerniche’s movements become a dance which is accompanied by the slow, steady collapse of Discord. At last he reaches in and plucks out the spine and then steps nimbly out of the way. What was left of the God collapses in on itself. Doerniche reaches into the debris and plucks out a double-chambered globe of red quartz. This he shatters on the ground.

  Now at last we can applaud, and we do so, releasing our tensions tumultuously. There are some hours of the ceremony still to go, and we stay until the fi
nish, taking part in the dancing and all the rest. But the part that Doerniche played with the God of Discord was the heart of the festival, the center of our mystery.

  It is painful for me to look backward. My past is accessible but no more compelling to me than any other record. It seems to have no bearing on me. It might have been about a different person entirely.

  I am whoever I am now.

  But this is not really satisfactory either. I maintain this record, even though I find it often incomprehensible upon rereading, because I seem to need a sense of continuity with my past.

  It is easier for me to write it than to reread it. For sometimes these notes seem the work of someone I do not know at all. I cannot find therein the stylistic progression of a single personality.

  Many of the things that I have noted down must have been fantasies or dreams. I can find no other way of explaining them.

  I would like to know how Lanea became my wife. But perhaps it is better for me not to know.

  Now it is another day, and I am in a different mood. I do not know why I harbor such sickly misgivings about the past. As Wolfing has pointed out to me, the past is always a state of potentiality, and its various outcomes can be known by one’s state-of-being in the present.

  Wolfing and the others are better friends than I deserve. They are rarely irritated with me, even when my alien education leads me into all kinds of inadvertent gaucheries. They view my behavior with the generous eyes of love, as I do theirs.

  This is most particularly a special day for me—what they call here “a starburst day.” It began very quietly and with no hint of what was to come. I was drinking my morning coffee and reading a book of poetry—S’thenm’s experiments in the antique verse form called Helian. I must be the only person on Kaldor who has not read this miniature masterpiece. But at least I have the pleasure of reading it now and savoring the intricate and archaic web of words.

  There was a knock at the door. Wolfing had come to call.

  We spoke for a time of inconsequentialities. An outsider might have thought it a normal conversation. But Wolfing and I are friendship-bonded. This means that I cannot avoid reading the emotionality behind his facial expressions, gestures, and bodily movements.