A Time of Changes

by Robert Silverberg

  32

  THERE IS A STORY they tell to children who are still learning the Covenant, about the days when the gods had not yet ceased to walk the world in human form, and the first men had not yet arrived on Borthan. The gods at that time did not know they were divine, for they had no mortals about them for comparison, and so they were innocent beings, unaware of their powers, who lived in a simple way. They dwelled in Manneran (this is the source of Manneran’s claim to superior holiness, the legend that it was once the home of the gods) and ate berries and leaves, and went without clothing except in the mild Mannerangi winter, when they threw shawls of animal hide loosely over their shoulders. And there was nothing godlike about them.

  One day two of these ungodlike gods decided they would go off to see something of the world. The idea for making such a journey came first to the god whose secret name is Kinnall, now the god who looks after wayfarers. (Yes, he for whom I was named.) This Kinnall invited the goddess Thirga to join him, she whose responsibility now is the protection of those who are in love. Thirga shared Kinnall’s restlessness and off they went.

  From Manneran they walked west along the southern coast until they came to the shores of the Gulf of Sumar. Then they turned north, and passed through Stroin Gap just by the place where the Huishtor Mountains come to an end. They entered the Wet Lowlands, and stayed there a while, and then proceeded to the Burnt Lowlands, which they found less to their liking, and finally they ventured into the Frozen Lowlands, where they thought they would perish of the cold. So they turned south again, and this time they found themselves staring at the inland slopes of the Threishtor Mountains. There seemed no way for them to cross over this mighty range. They followed its eastern foothills south, but could not get out of the Burnt Lowlands, and they suffered great hardships, until at last they stumbled upon Threish Gate, and made their way through that difficult pass into the cool and foggy province of Threish.

  On their first day in Threish the two gods discovered a place where a spring flowed out of a hillside. The opening in the hillside was nine-sided, and the rock surrounding the opening was so bright that it dazzled the eye, for it rippled and iridesced, and glowed with many colors constantly pulsing and changing, red and green and violet and ivory and turquoise and many more. And the water that came forth was of the same shimmering quality, having in it every color anyone ever had seen. The stream flowed only a short distance this way, and then was lost in the waters of a much larger brook, in which all the wondrous colors vanished.

  Kinnall said, “We have wandered a long while in the Burnt Lowlands, and our throats are dry from thirst. Shall we drink?” And Thirga said, “Yes, let us drink,” and knelt by the opening in the hillside. She cupped her hands and filled them with the glittering water, and poured it into her mouth, and Kinnall drank also, and the taste of the water was so sweet that they thrust their faces right against the flow of the spring, gulping down all they could.

  As they did this they experienced strange sensations of their bodies and minds. Kinnall looked toward Thirga and realized that he could see the thoughts within her soul, and they were thoughts of love for him. And she looked toward him, and saw his thoughts as well. “We are different now,” Kinnall said, and he did not even need words to convey his meaning, for Thirga understood him as soon as his thought formed. And she replied, “No, we are not different, but are merely able to understand the use of the gifts we have always had.”

  And it was true. For they had many gifts, and they had never used them before. They could rise in the air and travel like birds; they could change the shape of their bodies; they could walk through the Burnt Lowlands or the Frozen Lowlands and feel no discomfort; they could live without taking in food; they could halt the aging of their flesh and become as young as they pleased; they could speak without saying words. All these things they might have done before coming to the spring, except that they had not known how, and now they were capable of using the skills with which they had been born. They had learned, by drinking the water of the bright spring, how to go about being gods.

  Even so, they did not yet know that they were gods.

  They drank at the wonderful spring again, but it taught them nothing that the first gulp had not already showed them, and so they moved onward through Threish. Everything they beheld now was transformed, taking on a jeweled beauty, a magical luminous brilliance, and they were stunned by the wonder of their change. And everything they saw they shared with one another, for their souls were in perfect communion and full harmony.

  After some time they remembered the others who lived in Manneran, and flew back to tell them about the spring. The journey took only an instant. All their friends crowded round as Kinnall and Thirga spoke of the miracle of the spring, and demonstrated the powers they had mastered. When they were done, everyone in Manneran resolved to go to the spring, and set out in a long procession, through Stroin Gap and the Wet Lowlands and up the eastern slopes of the Threishtors to Threish Gate. Kinnall and Thirga flew above them, guiding them from day to day. Eventually they reached the place of the spring, and one by one they drank of it and became as gods. Then they scattered, some returning to Manneran, some going to Salla, some going even to Sumara Borthan or the far continents of Umbis, Dabis, and Tibis, since, now that they were as gods, there were no limits on the speed of their travel, and they wished to see those strange places. But Kinnall and Thirga settled down beside the spring in eastern Threish and were content to explore one another’s soul.

  Many years passed, and then the starship of our forefathers came down in Threish, near the western shore. Men had at last reached Borthan. They built a small town and went about the task of collecting food for themselves. A certain man named Digant, who was among these settlers, ventured deep into the forest in search of meat-animals, and became lost, and roamed and roamed until finally he came to the place where Kinnall and Thirga lived. He had never seen any such as they before, nor they anyone such as he.

  “What sort of creatures are you?” he asked.

  Kinnall replied, “Once we were quite ordinary, but now we do quite well, for we never grow old, and we can fly faster than any bird, and our souls are open to each other, and we can take on any shape we please.”

  “Why, then, you are gods!” Digant cried.

  “Gods? What are gods?”

  And Digant explained that he was a man, and had no such powers as theirs, for men must use words to talk, and can neither fly nor change their shape, and grow older with each journey of the world around the sun, until the time of dying comes. Kinnall and Thirga listened with care, comparing themselves to Digant, and when he was done speaking they knew it was true, that he was a man and they were gods.

  “Once we were almost like men ourselves,” Thirga admitted. “We felt hunger and grew old and spoke only by means of words and had to put one foot in front of the other to get from place to place. We lived like men out of ignorance, for we did not know our powers. But then things changed.”

  “And what changed them?” Digant asked.

  “Why,” said Kinnall in his innocence, “we drank from that glistening spring, and the water of it opened our eyes to our powers and allowed us to become as gods. That was all.”

  Then Digant’s soul surged with excitement, for he told himself that he too could drink from the spring, and then he would join this pair in godhood. He would keep the spring a secret afterward, when he returned to the settlers on the coast, and they would worship him as their living god, and treat him with reverence, or he would destroy them. But Digant did not dare ask Kinnall and Thirga to let him drink from the spring, for he feared that they would refuse him, being jealous of their divinity. So he hatched a scheme to get them away from that place.

  “Is it true,” he asked them, “that you can travel so fast that you are able to visit every part of this world in a single day?”

  Kinnall assured him that this was true.

  “It seems difficult to believe,” said Digant.


  “We will give you proof,” Thirga said, and she touched her hand to Kinnall’s, and the two gods went aloft. They soared to the highest peak of the Threishtors and gathered snowflowers there; they descended into the Burnt Lowlands and scooped up a handful of the red soil; in the Wet Lowlands they collected herbs; by the Gulf of Sumar they took some liquor from a flesh-tree; on the shores of the Polar Gulf they pried out a sample of the eternal ice; then they leaped over the top of the world to frosty Tibis, and began their journey through the far continents, so that they might bring back to the doubting Digant something from every part of the world.

  The moment Kinnall and Thirga had departed on this enterprise, Digant rushed to the spring of miracles. There he hesitated briefly, afraid that the gods might return suddenly and strike him down for his boldness; but they did not appear, and Digant thrust his face into the flow and drank deeply, thinking, Now I too shall be as a god. He filled his gut with the glowing water and swayed and grew dizzy, and fell to the ground. Is this godhood, he wondered? He tried to fly and could not. He tried to change his shape and could not. He failed in all these things because he had been a man to begin with, and not a god, and the spring could not change a man into a god, but could only help a god to realize his full powers.

  But the spring gave Digant one gift. It enabled him to reach into the minds of the other men who had settled in Threish. As he lay on the ground, numb with disappointment, he heard a tiny tickling sound in the middle of his mind, and paid close heed to it and realized he was hearing the minds of his friends. And he found a way of amplifying the sound so that he could hear everything clearly: yes, and this was the mind of his wife, and this was the mind of his sister, and this was the mind of his sister’s husband, and Digant could look into any of them and any other mind, reading the innermost thoughts. This is godhood, he told himself. And he probed their minds deeply, flushing out all their secrets. Steadily he increased the scope of his power until every mind at once was connected to his. Forth from them he drew the privacies of their souls, until, intoxicated with his new power, swollen with the pride of his godhood, he sent out a message to all those minds from his mind, saying, “HEAR THE VOICE OF DIGANT. IT IS DIGANT THE GOD THAT YOU SHALL WORSHIP.”

  When this terrible voice broke into their minds, many of the settlers in Threish fell down dead with shock, and others lost their sanity, and others ran about in wild terror, crying, “Digant has invaded our minds! Digant has invaded our minds!” And the waves of fear and pain coming out of them were so intense that Digant himself suffered greatly, falling into a paralysis and stupor, though his dazed mind continued to roar, “HEAR THE VOICE OF DIGANT. IT IS DIGANT THE GOD THAT YOU SHALL WORSHIP.” Each time that great cry went forth, more settlers died and more lost their reason, and Digant, responding to the mental tumults he had caused, writhed and shook in agony, wholly unable to control the powers of his brain.

  Kinnall and Thirga were in Dabis when this occurred, drawing forth from a marsh a triple-headed worm to show to Digant. The bellowings of Digant’s mind sped around the world even to Dabis, and, hearing those sounds, Kinnall and Thirga left off what they were doing and hurried back to Threish. They found Digant close to death, his brain all but burned out, and they found the settlers of Threish dead or mad; and they knew at once how this had come to pass. Swiftly they brought an end to Digant’s life, so that there would be silence in Threish. Then they went among the victims of the would-be god, and raised all the dead and healed all the injured. And lastly they sealed the opening in the hillside with a seal that could not be broken, for it was plain to them that men must not drink of that spring, but only gods, and all the gods had already taken their draughts of it. The people of Threish fell on their knees before those two, and asked in awe, “Who are you?” and Kinnall and Thirga replied, “We are gods, and you are only men.” And that was the beginning of the end of the innocence of the gods. And after that time it was forbidden among men to seek ways of speaking mind to mind, because of the harm that Digant had done, and it was written into the Covenant that one must keep one’s soul apart from the souls of others, since only gods can mingle souls without destroying one another, and we are not gods.

  33

  OF COURSE I found many reasons to postpone taking the Sumaran drug with Schweiz. First, High Justice Kalimol departed on a hunting trip, and I told Schweiz that the doubled pressures of my work in his absence made it impossible for me to undertake the experiment just then. Kalimol returned; Halum fell ill; I used my worry over her as the next excuse. Halum recovered; Noim invited Loimel and myself to spend a holiday at his lodge in southern Salla. We came back from Salla; war broke out between Salla and Glin, creating complex maritime problems for me at the Justiciary. And so the weeks went. Schweiz grew impatient. Did I mean to take the drug at all? I could not give him an answer. I did not truly know. I was afraid. But always there burned in me the temptation he had planted there. To reach out, godlike, and enter Halum’s soul—

  I went to the Stone Chapel, waited until Jidd could see me, and let myself be drained. But I kept back from Jidd all mention of Schweiz and his drug, fearing to reveal that I toyed with such dangerous amusements. Therefore the draining was a failure, since I had not fully opened my soul to the drainer; and I left the Stone Chapel with a congestion of the spirit, tense and morose. I saw clearly now that I must necessarily yield to Schweiz, that what he offered was an ordeal through which I must pass, for there was no escaping it. He had found me out. Beneath my piety I was a potential traitor to the Covenant. I went to him.

  “Today,” I said. “Now.”

  34

  WE NEEDED SECLUSION. The Port Justiciary maintains a country lodge in the hills two hours northwest of the city of Manneran, where visiting dignitaries are entertained and treaties of trade negotiated. I knew that this lodge was not currently in use, and I reserved it for myself for a three-day span. At midday I picked Schweiz up in a Justiciary car and drove quickly out of the city. There were three servants on duty at the lodge—a cook, a chambermaid, a gardener. I warned them that extremely delicate discussions would be taking place so that they must on no account cause interruptions or offer distractions. Then Schweiz and I sealed ourselves in the inner living quarters. “It would be best,” he said, “to take no food this evening. Also they recommend that the body be absolutely clean.”

  The lodge had an excellent steambath. We scrubbed ourselves vigorously, and when we came out we donned loose, comfortable silken robes. Schweiz’s eyes had taken on the glassy glitter that came over them in moments of high excitement. I felt frightened and uneasy, and began to think that I would suffer some terrible harm out of this evening. Just then I regarded myself as one who was about to undergo surgery from which his chances of recovery were slight. My mood was sullen resignation: I was willing, I was here, I was eager to make the plunge and have done with it.

  “Your last chance,” Schweiz said, grinning broadly. “You can still back out.”

  “No.”

  “You understand that there are risks, though? We are equally inexperienced in this drug. There are dangers.”

  “Understood,” I said.

  “Is it also understood that you enter this voluntarily, and under no coercion?”

  I said, “Why this delay, Schweiz? Bring out your potion.”

  “One wishes to assure himself that your grace is fully prepared to meet any consequences.”

  In a tone of heavy sarcasm I said, “Perhaps there should be a contract between us, then, in the proper fashion, relieving you of any liability in case one wishes later to press a claim for damage to the personality—”

  “If you wish, your grace. One does not feel it necessary.”

  “One wasn’t serious,” I said. I was fidgety now. “Can it be that you’re nervous about it too, Schweiz? That you have some doubts?”

  “We take a bold step.”

  “Let’s take it, then, before the moment goes by. Bring out the potion, Schweiz. Bring ou
t the potion.”

  “Yes,” he said, and gave me a long look, his eyes to mine, and clapped his hands in childlike glee. And laughed in triumph. I saw how he had manipulated me. Now I was begging him for the drug! Oh, devil, devil!

  From his traveling case he fetched the packet of white powder. He told me to get wine, and I ordered two flasks of chilled Mannerangi golden from the kitchen, and he dumped half the contents of the packet into my flask, half into his. The powder dissolved almost instantly: for a moment it left a cloudy gray wake, and then there was no trace of it. We gripped our flasks. I remember looking across the table at Schweiz and giving him a quick smile; he described it to me later as the pale, edgy smirk of a timid virgin about to open her thighs. “It should all go down at once,” Schweiz said, and he gulped his wine and I gulped mine, and then I sat back, expecting the drug to hit me instantly. I felt a faint giddiness, but that was only the wine doing its work in my empty gut. “How long does it take to begin?” I asked. Schweiz shrugged. “It will be some while yet,” he replied. We waited in silence. Testing myself, I tried to force my mind to go forth and encounter his, but I felt nothing. The sounds of the room became magnified: the creak of floorboards, the rasping of insects outside the window, the tiny hum of the bright electric light. “Can you explain,” I said hoarsely, “the way this drug is thought to operate?” Schweiz answered, “One can tell you only what was told to him. Which is, that the potential power to link one mind to another exists in all of us from birth, only we have evolved a chemical substance in the blood that inhibits the power. A very few are born without the inhibitor, and these have the gift of reaching minds, but most of us are forever blocked from achieving this silent communication, except when for some reason the production of the hormone ceases of its own accord and our minds open for a while. When this occurs it is often mistaken for madness. This drug of Sumara Borthan, they say, neutralizes the natural inhibitor in our blood, at least for a short time, and permits us to make contact with one another, as we would normally do if we lacked the counteracting substance in the blood. So one has heard.” To this I answered, “We all might be supermen, then, but we are crippled by our own glands?” And Schweiz, gesturing grandly, said, “Maybe it is that there were good biological reasons for evolving this protection against our own powers. Eh? Or maybe not.” He laughed. His face had turned very red. I asked him if he really believed this story of an inhibitory hormone and a counterinhibitory drug, and he said that he had no grounds for making judgment. “Do you feel anything yet?” I asked. “Only the wine,” he said. We waited. Perhaps it will do nothing, I thought, and I will be reprieved. We waited. At length Schweiz said, “It may be beginning now.”