Ella Freeman sidled up to him and touched her shriveled hand to Staunt’s arm. “Look there: two of his wives. He hadn’t seen one in sixty years. And his sons. All of them, his sons. Two or three by each wife!”
The ceremony, conducted by the relatively young man who was Golding’s Guide, was elegiac in tone, brief, sweet. Standing under the emblem of the Office of Fulfillment, the wheel and the gears, the Guide spoke briefly of the philosophy of making room for others, of the beauty of a willing departure. Then he praised the Departing One in vague, general terms; one of his sons delivered a more specific eulogy; lastly, Seymour Church, chosen to represent Golding’s companions at the House of Leavetaking, croaked out a short, almost incoherent speech of farewell. To this the Departing One, who seemed transfigured with joy and already at least halfway into the next world, made reply in a few faint syllables, blurrily expressing gratitude for his long and happy life. Golding barely appeared to comprehend what was going on; he sat beaming in a kind of throne, dreamy, distant. Staunt wondered if he had been drugged into a stupor.
When the speeches were done, refreshments were served. Then, accompanied only by his closest kin, fifteen or twenty people, Golding was ushered into the innermost room of the Chambers of Farewell. The door slid shut behind him, and in his absence the Leavetaking party proceeded merrily.
There were four such events in the next five weeks At two of them—the Goings of Michael Green and Katherine Parks—Staunt was asked to give the speech of farewell. It was a task that he performed gracefully, serenely, and, he thought, with a good deal of eloquence. He spoke for ten minutes about Michael Green, for close to fifteen about Katherine Parks, talking not so much about the Departing Ones, whom he had scarcely come to know well, but about the entire philosophy of Going, the beauty and wonder of the act of world-renunciation. It was not customary for the giver of the speech of farewell to manage such sustained feats, and his audience listened in total fascination; if the occasion had permitted it, Staunt suspected, they would have applauded.
So he had a new vocation, and several Departing Ones whom he did not know at all accelerated their own Goings so that they would not fail to have Staunt speak at the rites. It was summer now, and Arizona was caught in glistening tides of heat. Staunt never went outdoors any longer; he spent much of his time mingling in the recreation center, doing research, so to speak, for future oratory. He rarely read these days. He never listened to music. He had settled into a pleasing, quiet routine. This was his fourth month at the House of Leavetaking. Except for Seymour Church, who still refused to be nudged into Going, Staunt was now the senior Departing One in point of length of residence. And at the end of July, Church at last took his leave. Staunt, of course, spoke, touching on the Departing One’s slow journey toward Going, and it was difficult for him to avoid self-conscious references to his own similar reluctance. Why do I tarry here? Staunt wondered. Why do I not say the word?
Every few weeks his son Paul visited him. Staunt found their meetings difficult. Paul, showing signs of strain and anxiety, always seemed on the verge of blurting out, “Why don’t you. Go, already?” And Staunt would have no answer, for he did not know the answer. He had read Hallam four times. Philosophically and psychologically he was prepared to Go. Yet he remained.
Twenty-Five
In mid-August Martin Bollinger entered his suite, held out a sheet of paper, and said, “What’s this, Henry?”
Staunt glanced at it. It was a photocopy of the aria from The New Inn. “Where did you find that?” he asked.
“One of the staff people came across it while tidying your room.”
“I thought we were entitled to privacy.”
“This isn’t an inquisition, Henry. I’m just curious. Have you started to compose again?”
“That scrap is all I wrote. It was months ago.”
“It’s fascinating music,” Bollinger said.
“Is it, now? I thought it was rather harsh and forced, myself.”
“No. No. Not at all. You always talked about a Ben Jonson opera, didn’t you? And now you’ve begun it.”
“I was enlivening a dull day,” said Staunt. “Mere scribbling.”
“Henry, would you like to get out of this place?”
“Are we back to that?”
“Obviously you still have music in you. Perhaps a great opera.”
“Which you mean to squeeze out of me, eh? Don’t talk nonsense. There’s nothing left in me, Martin. I’m here to Go.”
“You haven’t Gone, though.”
“You’ve noticed that,” Staunt said.
“It was made clear to you at the beginning that you wouldn’t be rushed. But I’ve begun to suspect, Henry, that you aren’t interested in Going at all, that you’re marking time here, perhaps incubating this opera, perhaps coming to terms with something indigestible in your soul. Whatever. You don’t have to Go. We’ll send you home. Finish The New Inn. Think the thoughts you want to think. Reapply for Going next year or the year after.”
“You want that opera out of me, don’t you?”
“I want you to be happy,” said Bollinger. “I want your Going to be right. The bit of music here is just a clue to your inner state.”
“There won’t be any opera, Martin. And I don’t plan to leave Omega Prime alive. To have put my family through this ordeal, and then to come home, to tell them it’s all been just a holiday lark out here—no. No.”
“As you wish,” Bollinger said. He smiled and turned away, leaving an unspoken question hanging like a sword between them: If you want to Go, Henry, why don’t you Go?
Twenty-Six
Staunt realized that he had taken on the status of a permanent Departing One, a kind of curator emeritus of the House of Fulfillment. Here he was, enjoying this life of ease and dignity, accepting the soft-voiced attentions of those who meant to slide him gently from the world, playing his role of patriarch among the shattered hulks that were the other Departing Ones here. Each week new ones came; he greeted them solemnly, helped them blend with those already in residence, and, in time, presided over their Goings. And he stayed on. Why? Why? Surely not out of fear of dying. Why, then, was he making a career out of his Going?
So that he might have the prestige of being a hero of his time, possibly—an exponent of noble renunciation, a practitioner of joyful departure. Making much glib talk of turning the wheel and creating a place for those to come—a twenty-first-century Sydney Carton, standing by the guillotine and praising the far, far better thing that he will do, only he finds himself enjoying the part so much that he forgets to kneel and present his neck to the blade.
Or maybe he is only interrupting the boredom of a too-bland life with a feigned fling at dying. The glamour of becoming a Departing One injecting interesting complexities into a static existence. But diversion and not death his real object. Yes? If that’s it, Henry, go home and write your opera; the holiday should have ended by now.
He came close to summoning Bollinger and asking to be sent home. But he fought the impulse down. To leave Omega Prime now would be the true cowardice. He owed the world a death. He had occupied this body long enough. His place was needed; soon he would Go. Soon. Soon. Soon.
Twenty-Seven
At the beginning of September there were four days in a row of rain, an almost unknown occurrence in that part of Arizona. Miss Elliot said that the Hopi, doing their annual snake dances on their mesas far to the north, had overdone things this year and sent rain clouds all through the state. Staunt, to the horror of the staff, went out each day to stand in the rain, letting the cool drops soak his thin gown, watching the water sink swiftly into the parched red soil. “You’ll catch your death of cold,” Mr. Falkenbridge told him sternly. Staunt laughed.
He requested another wide-spaced print-out of The New Inn and tried to set the opening scene. Nothing came. He could not find the right vocal line, nor could he recapture the strange color of the earlier aria. The tones and textures of Ben Jonson were gone
from his head. He gave the project up without regret.
There were three Farewell ceremonies in eight days. Staunt attended them all, and spoke at two of them.
Arbitrarily, he chose September 19 as the day of his own Going. But he told no one about his decision, and September 19 came and went with Staunt unchanged.
At the end of the month he told Martin Bollinger, “I’m a fraud. I haven’t gotten an inch closer to Going in all the time I’ve been here. I never wanted to Go at all. I still want to live, to see and do things, to experience things. I came here out of desperation, because I was stale, I was bored, I needed novelty. To toy with death, to live a little scenario of dying—that was all I was after. Excitement. An event in an eventless life: Henry Staunt Prepares to Die. I’ve been using all you people as players in a cynical charade.”
Bollinger said quietly, “Shall I arrange for you to go home, then, Henry?”
“No. No. Get me Dr. James. And notify my family that my Farewell ceremony will be held a week from today. It’s time for me to Go.”
“But if you still want to live—”
“What better time to Go?” Staunt asked.
Twenty-Eight
They were all here, close around him. Paul had come, and Crystal, too, back from the moon and looking feeble, and all the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren, and the friends, the conductors and the younger composers and some critics, more than a hundred people in all coming to see him off. Staunt, undrugged but already beginning to ascend, had moved coolly among them, thanking them for attending his Leavetaking party, welcoming them to his Farewell ceremony. He was amazed at how calm he was. Seated now in the throne of honor, he listened to the final orations and endured without objection a scrambled medley of his most famous compositions, obviously assembled hastily by someone inexpert in such matters. Martin Bollinger, giving the main eulogy, quoted heavily from Hallam: “Too often we delude ourselves into thinking we are truly ready, when actually we have not reached readiness at all, and choose Going out of unworthy or shallow motives. How tragic it is to arrive at the actual moment of Leavetaking and to realize that one has deceived oneself, that one’s motivations are false, that one is, in fact, not in the least ready to Go!”
How true, Staunt told himself. And yet how false. For here I am ready to Go and yet not in the least ready, and in my unreadiness lies my readiness.
Bollinger finished what he had to say, and one of the Departing Ones, a man named Bradford who had come to Omega Prime in August, began to fumble through the usual final speech. He stammered and coughed and lost the thread of his words, for he was one hundred forty years old and due for Going himself next week, but somehow he made it to the end. Staunt, paying little attention, beamed at his son and his daughter, his horde of descendants, his admirers, his doctors. He understood now why Departing Ones generally seemed detached from their own Farewell ceremonies: the dreary drone of the speeches launched them early into the shores of paradise.
And then they were serving the refreshments, and now they were about to wheel him into the innermost room. And Staunt said, “May I speak also?”
They looked at him, appalled, frightened, obviously fearing he would wreck the harmony of the occasion with this unconventional, ill-timed intrusion. But they could not refuse. He had delivered so many eulogies for others—now he would speak for himself.
Softly Staunt said, making them strain their ears to hear it, “I accept the concept of the turning wheel, and I gladly yield my place to those who are to come. But let me tell you that this is not an ordinary Going. You know, when I came here I thought I was weary of the world and ready to Go, but yet I stayed, I held back from the brink, I delayed, I pretended. I even—Martin knows this—began another opera. I was told I could go home, and I refused. Hallam forgive me, but I refused. For his way is not the only way of Going. Because life still seems sweet, I give it up today. And so I take my final pleasure: that of relinquishing the only thing left to me worth keeping.”
They were whispering. They were staring.
I have said all the wrong things, he thought. I have spoiled the day for them. But whose Going is it? Why should I care about them?
Martin Bollinger, bending low, murmured, “It’s still not too late, Henry. We can stop everything right now.”
“The final temptation,” Staunt said. “And I withstand it. Bring down the curtain. I’m ready to Go.”
They wheeled him to the innermost chamber. When they offered him the cup, he seized it, winked at Martin Bollinger, and drained it in a single gulp.
Caliban
Now and then I write a story that strikes me as a comic one, although I’m usually chagrined to discover that most other people don’t see it as particularly funny. This is one of that sort. It makes its comic effects not through jokes or farcical horseplay, but through unexpected reversals. (“In the country of the beautiful people, the ugly man is king.”) But perhaps the comic nature of the piece lies in its verbal play (“I am the latest Thing”) rather than in any inherently funny action.
I wrote it in November, 1970, toward the end of that annus mirabilis that saw me producing a slew of short stories and at least three major novels. (Novels tended to be shorter in those days than they run now, and I wrote faster.) Aside from that hefty fictional output, I managed also in 1970 to write three of the non-fictional books on archaeological and historical themes that I was doing back then—Clocks for the Ages, The Pueblo Revolt, and The Realm of Prester John. The last was quite a major project indeed, running to some 120,000 words and involving a great deal of research. The year’s total output came to more than half a million words, which I’ve never equaled since, nor would I want to try. How I managed to get that much done in a mere twelve months is a mystery to my present self; but being half as old as I am now may have had something to do with it.
~
They have all changed their faces to a standard model. It is the latest thing, which should not be confused with the latest Thing. The latest Thing is me. The latest thing, the latest fad, the latest rage, is for them all to change their faces to a standard model. I have no idea how it is done but I think it is genetic, with the RNA, the DNA, the NDA. Only retroactive. They all come out with blond wavy hair and sparkling blue eyes. And long straight faces with sharp cheekbones. And notched chins and thin lips curling in ironic smiles. Even the black ones: thin lips, blue eyes, blond wavy hair. And pink skins. They all look alike now. The sweet Aryanized world. Our entire planet. Except me. Meee.
I am imperfect. I am blemished. I am unforgiving. I am the latest Thing.
Louisiana said, Would you like to copulate with me? You are so strange. You are so beautiful. Oh, how I desire you, strange being from a strange time. My orifices are yours.
It was a thoughtful offer. I considered it a while, thinking she might be trying to patronize me. At length I notified her of my acceptance. We went to a public copulatorium. Louisiana is taller than I am and her hair is a torrent of spun gold. Her eyes are blue and her face is long and straight. I would say she is about twenty-three years old. In the copulatorium she dissolved her clothes and stood naked before me. She was wearing gold pubic hair that day and her belly was flat and taut. Her breasts were round and slightly elongated and the nipples were very small. Go on, she said, now you dissolve your clothes.
I said, I am afraid to because my body is ugly and you will mock me.
Your body is not ugly, she said. Your body is strange but it is not ugly.
My body is ugly, I insisted. My legs are short and they curve outward and my thighs have bulging muscles and I have black hairy hair all over me. Like an ape. And there is this hideous scar on my belly.
A scar?
Where they took out my appendix, I told her.
This aroused her beyond all probability. Her nipples stood up tall and her face became flushed.
Your appendix? Your appendix was removed?
Yes, I said, it was done when I was fourteen years old,
and I have a loathsome red scar on my abdomen.
She asked, What year was it when you were fourteen?
I said, It was 1967, I think.
She laughed and clapped her hands and began to dance around the room. Her breasts bounced up and down, but her long flowing silken hair soon covered them, leaving only the stubby pinkish nipples poking through like buttons. 1967! she cried. Fourteen! Your appendix was removed! 1967!
Then she turned to me and said, My grandfather was born in 1967, I think. How terribly ancient you are. My helix-father’s father on the countermolecular side. I didn’t realize you were so very ancient.
Ancient and ugly, I said.
Not ugly, only strange, she said.
Strange and ugly, I said. Strangely ugly.
We think you are beautiful, she said. Will you dissolve your clothes now? It would not be pleasing to me to copulate with you if you keep your clothes on.
There, I said, and boldly revealed myself. The bandy legs. The hairy chest. The scarred belly. The bulging shoulders. The short neck. She has seen my lopsided face, she can see my dismal body as well. If that is what she wants.
She threw herself upon me, gasping and making soft noises.
What did Louisiana look like before the change came? Did she have dull stringy hair thick lips a hook nose bushy black eyebrows no chin foul breath one breast bigger than the other splay feet crooked teeth little dark hairs around her nipples a bulging navel too many dimples in her buttocks skinny thighs blue veins in her calves protruding ears? And then did they give her the homogenizing treatment and make her the golden creature she is today? How long did it take? What were the costs? Did the government subsidize the process? Were the large corporations involved? How were these matters handled in the socialist countries? Was there anyone who did not care to be changed? Perhaps Louisiana was born this way. Perhaps her beauty is natural. In any society there are always a few whose beauty is natural.
Something Wild is Loose: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Three Page 18
