Pan Sagittarius (2509 CE)

by Ian Wallace

Woman demanded: “What is our totem?”

  Man replied: “Atman.”

  “What does Atman call us?”

  “He calls us Man.”

  “But you call me Woman.”

  “Just because you have a womb. But you are Man too, Ave. Soft Man, punk Man, but Man.”

  She winced but stayed with it. “Very good, my man Edom—I don’t think you’re drunk yet. Have one more bite. Just one. Then more questions.”

  Lunging, he seized her around the waist, grabbed the fruit, and sheared off a quarter of it. With difficulty she thrust him away. He stood chewing, savoring, swallowing. He glowered up at her: “I want all of it now.”

  “Not yet!” she begged, cowering. “Snake said! Not yet!”

  “More questions?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Ask, then! Go, Woman!”

  She frowned, trying to remember the next one. Behind her, Snake Vogeler hissed a prompt, while I shuddered. She demanded: “Are we friends with Snake?”

  “Yes—”

  “Friends with Lion? Friends with Antelope?”

  “Friends with everybody. Of course.”

  “Are we as good as they are?”

  Seated, he drew himself tall. “What do you mean? We are the best!”

  “If we are the best, why are we always trying to do just the way they do?”

  That one would have lost him totally had it not been for the mind-enlarging fruit; on the other hand, without the fruit she could not have asked it. He scratched in his head, looking stupid: an impossibly culture-free test would have measured his IQ at 127 (as contrasted with his more primitive parents’ approximation to 86), but he was a contented rustic bumpkin and had no incentive to be alert about abstractions. Presently he mumbled: “The other animals always know what to do. But we always have to decide. So we just do what they do, and then we don’t have to decide.”

  “If they always know what to do, and we don’t—why are we the best?”

  “Dunno. We just are. Look at us!”

  Resolutely fixing her gaze, she responded firmly: “I am looking at you.”

  He stared at her. Then he saw where on him she was looking. His head came up with a broad smile. “Good, yes? You like?” Putting out her lower lip, she disciplined herself to move her head slowly back and forth in a deliberate hypocritical negation.

  His face fell. He stood; and, slapping hands to hips, he looked down at himself. “What’s wrong? I don’t see anything wrong.” Continuing to stare, she asserted judiciously: “Antelope you hardly notice. Lion you hardly notice. Snake you can’t even find. But you—”

  “Well?”

  “It gets in your way when you run. The brambles catch it.” His face flushed dark; and somehow his hanging hands had come together before him.

  “In that way,” she pressed, “they are better than you are.” He said low: “You really think so?”

  “They good. You bad.”

  He was frowning deeply.

  “And another thing,” added Ave. “How often do they have to?”

  “How often do who have to?”

  “Our friends. Snake. Antelope. Lion. Even Peacock. All the ones that we are better than. How often do they have to?”

  He spat. “Once a year. Twice a year. I dunno. When they get get goin’, though, boy, do they—”

  It was a debate turning of the sort that tells a skilled tactician to introduce a red herring hurriedly. Said Ave: “You’re getting sober. Finish the fruit.”

  While he was wolfing it with both hands, she needled: “Just think how it is, with these friends of ours that we are better than. They have fur and hair and scales and feathers, so nothing catches in brambles. They have their own times during the year to climb each other, and they don’t have to do it any other time. How’s the fruit?”

  “Mmmmmmm-m!”

  “And another thing. Who does the choosing—he or she?”

  “Mm?”

  “With Antelope, who does the choosing—he or she?”

  “Well—he does the jumping.”

  “I know—but which she does he jump, and when?”

  “Got any more of that fruit?”

  “You’ve had plenty. How about Peacock? Who does the choosing?”

  “He does, naturally. He spreads his tail, and—”

  “And one of the girls decides that she wants him.”

  “So?”

  She spread hands. “You see why our people are afraid of that fruit? It’s because it makes us think clearer. Here we’ve been going along imagining that we were better than our friends the other animals. But they don’t catch in brambles, and they have time rules, and their women do the choosing. Their totems have given them these things. But what has our totem Atman given us! Woman abuse and season chaos and brambles!

  “You know what, Edom? They are better than we are! They are good, and we are bad. We are bad, Edom—bad! What are we going to do about it?”

  He was staring at her. He had thrown away the fruit core, and he stood with his hands hanging folded before him.

  “It seems to me, Vogeler,” I observed, “that we have been watching the effects, not only of your first cantrip, but also of your second and your third.”

  “They sort of flowed in together, Pan. But you see the consequences.”

  “You tell me.”

  “Credit me with no brilliant predictions, Pan: this is nothing but remembrance of things past! It will begin simply: now that Woman has made Man feel sexually alienated from the other animals, he will try to find his way back to them with suitable atonements: he will be hiding his manhood that catches in brambles and gets in his way when he runs; very particularly he will be hiding it from Woman, who identified his shame; and also, to get back in the good graces of Antelope and Peacock, he will be asking Woman instead of demanding, with occasional lapses of course; and she will form a habit of refusing often enough to make this meaningful. Gradually she will build up her coyness into a mystique of the feminine: they are not generations away from creating an Erth totem, and the Erth goddess will follow. Meanwhile Man will feel guilt toward his totem, Atman, for denying what his totem had naturally conferred upon him: he will be unable to bear this totem conflict; he will therefore rationalize his denial of his totem as a command by his totem and later by his God, and he will seek other kinds of actions to feel guilty about—and he will find them.

  “But it is not merely the forthcoming apparatus of sexual taboo that interests me: this is only the symbolically appropriate procreative core of what is to come. For the woman has implanted in the man a haunting thought that instead of being better than other animals, he is inferior to them; and this thought he will not tolerate. Therefore he will become a predator, proving his superiority by wearing their skins and drinking their blood—”

  “He is a predator now, isn’t he?”

  “But only for food; but the woman and I together have forced his killing to become symbolic! Worse than that: she has taunted him by saying that part of the superiority of other animals is vested in the instincts that their totems have given them, the absolute rules they have to steer by; whereas the man and the woman have no inbuilt rules, because their vast brains can bypass every instinct that evolution has left them with. In those animal rules for Man reposed the soul of their garden; and this soul, Pan, I have destroyed. For Man will now rise to the challenge by inventing far more complicated taboo systems than any animal totem ever dreamed of; and he will guarantee the absoluteness of his taboo system and the superiority of his own totem, Atman, to the animal totems by asserting and believing that the taboos were given by his own totem, Atman—or, later, by his God. And thus, within a few generations, mankind on Erth will be all wound up in an ornate artificial morality, exchanging this incubator garden for the cold real world of guilt and supernal fear and propitiation.

  “And out of guilt and fear and propitiation, Man will generate a compensatory defiance that he will call self-confidence; and he w
ill drive himself upward and onward to godhead and the stars.

  “I did it, Pan. Me!”

  My mind gazed at his mind, aghast at his hybris and his myopia—although of course I knew that the two go together; but this was a man who had been chosen by Thoth and Althea for Operation Second Chance! surely neither of these flaws had seriously troubled his past record! Of course, I too had been chosen, and with chagrin I remembered a couple of instances; nevertheless…

  Skip the hybris; consider only the myopia. Of course Vogeler knew that he was operating in Antan, seeking to nudge at an if-node in order to head off a mistake; and the mistake had been Avé’s. How then could Vogeler—knowing the original story—have failed to see that the serpent whom he inhabited had been here the first time and had done all the same things? It was hard for me to imagine what supernal mind a hundred thousand years ago could have invested a snake with such farseeing purpose: possibly the Bushy-Tailed Master: minds leave no traces in Antan, only bodies including brains leave traces. But I know Antan; and in my observing mind there was absolutely no question that originally the snake had done all the same things, that Vogeler had been merely running its fixed trace, that Vogeler’s persuasion of will and initiative was wholly a Vogeler illusion.

  He had, in fact, overshot the if-node, without even noticing it. The if-node had been the instant when the brain that controlled Vogeler (although he supposed that he was controlling it) had conceived the genial notion of enlarging the minds of the man and the woman with the psychedelic fruit and feeding them new ideas. But whoever the original serpent had been controlled by, he had fed them precisely the new ideas that Vogeler now refed them: the outcome had been no different—Vogeler had not even arrived at creating a parallel track in Antan. Simply, he was rerunning the past—and I was watching him do it…

  Should I have stepped in? they had dropped me here to do something. …Eh, but Vogeler too they had dropped here, and he had the con, and he had goofed it. Was I supposed to await a later if-node, maybe? But then I reminded myself that by the rules of Operation Second Chance I was on my own in these Antan sorties: there was nothing particular that I was supposed to do, other than watch for the chance and hope to catch it and use it…

  “Pan?”

  I pulled myself back to the moment. “Vogeler?”

  “I have a moral problem.”

  “Oh?”

  “In full candor, I must confess that—my decision to help the woman was not—well—not entirely a selfless decision.”

  “Oh?”

  “My snakiness appears to be inordinately sensual. 1—well, she promised me—a reward, if it worked. I await your castigation.”

  “Until now, Vogeler, you have acted with total self-confidence. Why ask me?”

  The voice was semihaughty. “Until now, Pan, my operation has been for the good of the woman and of mankind. But now reenters a question of personal interest, and committee work seems indicated. What is your opinion, Pan? may I properly claim my reward from the woman?”

  Inwardly sighing, I advised him: “Take your reward, Vogeler. If you can, that is.”

  “If I can, that is?”

  “There is a thing about primate females: it is a sex characteristic, whether women ever admit it or not. Women have a way of accepting the taboos around them, particularly those that they arrive at through their own preaching. Whether the customs of the country are Puritan or libertine, women embrace them with a whole heart. If a woman convinces a man that such-and-such is so, the woman will promptly believe that such-and-such is so. And this may affect your rewarding.”

  “I sense an internal contradiction. If all women accept existing taboos, how can any woman preach new taboos?”

  “I will say it another way. Most women tend to accept existing taboos, Puritan or libertine. Some women, influenced perhaps by some serpent, preach new taboos. If they sell their new taboos, they themselves and all other women settle instantly into them.”

  “Even if you are right, Pan, I fail to see how this will affect my rewarding.”

  Silence.

  “Pan?”

  But I had retreated, hurting, into physical and mental invisibility.

  Leaving Vogeler free to collect his reward from Avé by once again becoming the python in the garden.

  Snake and Woman confronted each other in the copse. Avé was changed to this extent: her nether parts, as Milton Puritan-put it in his reticently pagan way, were hidden by an apron of leaves. Large rubbery leaves.

  Snake Vogeler hissed: “How about it?”

  “Not sure, my friend, not sure.” Avé was frowning small. “These leaves tickle, is the thing.”

  “But is Edom bothering you anymore?”

  “I can’t tell, it’s still the same day. He won’t stop entirely, will he?”

  Vogeler spoke with the Wisdom of the Serpent. “They will say of you that you violated God’s law by eating of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. But I am a pragmatist, and I would phrase it differently. For a pragmatist, ‘knowledge’ means ‘warranted theory.’ So actually, you and Edom, having eaten the fruit, are now theorizing for the first time about good and evil; and this theorizing, of course, terminates your innocence. So this jungle won’t seem to be a garden anymore; but at least, Woman, you have entered upon your Domination of Man by Mystique.” Her brow was multiply wrinkled. “Stay on the subject, Snake. What did you mean about Edom not bothering me? He will sometimes, won’t he?”

  Vogeler sighed. “If you play it right, now you will be able to choose your own times for being bothered and otherwise dominated. As for you, Woman, the road is not going to be easy; but remember that you too are Man, you are on your way upward now, in time you will persuade the law that you are equal, you may even fall into the dismal trap of supposing that you are the same. You can use and elaborate your own mystique to keep him from using you all the time for and at his pleasure. Make it at least partly a matter of your own discretion, as the animal females do. Tie it in with religion—”

  “Eh?”

  “Totem propitiation.”

  “Oh.”

  “Be a weak and feeble vessel. When he approaches you, if you are not ready for him, weep and protest your weakness or your sickness, have a headache, remind him that he must keep himself superior to other animals. Set up some taboos around your menstrual times: that will give you several days a month when you don’t have to worry at all. When you want to give in, make a great mystery of it, so that he will be grateful. And as he—with his great intellect made insatiably hungry by man-woman frustration—moves now vigorously into the new field of ethical theory, be very sure that he bases all his theory on sexual ethics—which you, of course, will establish. The fruit and I have made it all possible. Are you properly grateful?”

  She purred: “Of course.”

  All seven feet of Vogeler were tumid. “Then,” he hissed deep, “it is time to claim my reward.”

  He slithered toward her.

  She sat rigid.

  He wound his way luxuriously up a fine leg, over a knee, around a rounded thigh.

  She said very low: “Listen, Snake. I am weak, I am sick, I have a headache, and I am superior to other animals. It is contrary to ethical theory for you to do this.”

  Vogeler scarcely heard her: already he was around her waist; his head was moving deliciously upward between her breasts, his lithe dry tongue lightning-busy…

  He was paralyzed by her shrill scream: “Edom! Help! EDOMMM!”

  His upper three feet drew stiffly back; he stared at her contorted face. Scream after scream after scream…

  Crashing in the foliage.

  Vogeler began to retreat.

  Aproned Edom crashed into the clear.

  Avé wailed: “Snake is attacking me!”

  Emitting a roaring snarl, Edom grappled the Vogeler-serpent with both hands by the upper torso, tore him loose from Ave, flung him to the grass, and stomped on his head. Vogeler tried to flee. Edom kept bare-heeling
his head. Half stunned, Vogeler whipped his tail around Edom’s ankle and threw him; and Vogeler bit Edom’s heel and got away into underbrush.

  I heard the murmuring of a slightly sardonical voice that had to be Althea’s voice: “So far, nothing is different from the first time. Take over, Pan. Vogeler, report to Headquarters.”

  I found Edom and Avé. The woman, lips pursed, was designing a nicer apron. The man was in swimming with all his clothes on.

  I considered the nature of the problem, seeking the most promising long-range solution. The crux of the difficulty was sexual, and I thought maybe I knew why. Of the instincts that Man had left, some, like the survival instinct, were quite rigid, while others, like the social instinct, were highly malleable. But the most clamant-glamorous of all Man’s instincts, and the one most precariously balanced on the threshold between rigidity and malleability, was the instinct for sexual aggression or receptivity. Consequently any theory of behavior inhibition that Man might form would center itself primitively on sexual behavior; and this had occurred on Erth—twice, now—when some other serpent, and then Vogeler, had deliberately utilized sexual behavior as a nucleus for theorizing about good and evil with their ultimate overtones of saintliness and guilt.

  If this were a mistake, as I believed, then ironically neither serpent had needed to trouble himself about conferring this kind of theory; for, left to himself, Man—or, more probably, Woman—would eventually have arrived at that destination unaided. Consequently, if this were a mistake, I must now do something positive yet subtle to deflect this course of valuative events.

  I must, in short, help them to project the nucleus of a value theory that was not in its foundation a theory of virtue versus sin. This theory must avoid repressive distortions, with their inevitable backlash of aggression and destruction and ultimate self-destruction; it must preserve the garden; yet somehow it must lead man onward to beauty and godhead and the stars.

  What if I were to substitute, for the poles of good and evil, the rather different poles of beauty and ugliness?

  In the long run, perhaps it would produce only complication: beauty would be good and saintly, ugliness would be evil and guilty, and the garden would soon be gone. Nevertheless, even the complication should slow down the progress of repressive distortion in its hurtful purity—and the qualitative meaning of the recoverable foundation would be altogether different…