To The Dark Star

by Silverberg, Robert

  “On the other hand,” Lynx said, “what did Eliot write? ‘The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.’”

  Voigtland frowned. “Are you trying to say—”

  “And it is true,” Mark cut in, “that you were planning your escape far in advance. I mean, making the cubes and all, picking out the famous men you wanted to take—”

  “As though you had decided that at the first sign of trouble you were going to skip out,” said Lynx.

  “They’ve got a point,” his father said. “Rational self-protection is one thing, but an excessive concern for your mode of safety in case of emergency is another.”

  “I don’t say you should have stayed and died,” Lydia said. “I never would say that. But all the same—”

  “Hold on!” Voigtland said. The cubes were turning against him suddenly. “What kind of talk is this?”

  Juan said, “And strictly as a pragmatic point, if the people were to find out how far in advance you engineered your way out, and how comfortable you are as you head for exile—”

  “You’re supposed to help me,” Voigtland shouted. “Why are you starting this? What are you trying to do?”

  “You know we all love you,” said Lydia.

  “We hate to see you not thinking clearly, Father,” Lynx said.

  “Weren’t you planning to run out all along?” said Mark.

  “Wait! Stop! Wait!”

  “Strictly as a matter of—”

  Voigtland rushed into the control room and pulled the Juan-cube from the slot.

  “We’re trying to explain to you, dear—”

  He pulled the Lydia-cube, the Mark-cube, the Lynx-cube, the father-cube.

  The ship was silent.

  He crouched, gasping, sweat-soaked, face rigid, eyes clenched tight shut, waiting for the shouting in his skull to die away.

  An hour later, when he was calm again, he began setting up his ultrawave call, tapping out the frequency that the underground would probably be using, if any underground existed. The tachyon beam sprang across the void, an all but instantaneous carrier wave, and he heard cracklings, and then a guarded voice saying, “Four Nine Eight Three, we read your signal, do you read me? This is Four Nine Eight Three, come in, come in, who are you?”

  “Voigtland,” he said. “President Voigtland, calling Juan. Can you get Juan on the line?”

  “Give me your numbers, and—”

  “What numbers? This is Voigtland. I’m I don’t know how many billion miles out in space, and I want to talk to Juan. Get me Juan. Get me Juan.”

  “You wait,” the voice said.

  Voigtland waited, while the ultrawave spewed energy wantonly into the void. He heard clickings, scrapings, clatterings. “You still there?” the voice said, after a while. “We’re patching him in. But be quick. He’s busy.”

  “Well? Who is it?” Juan’s voice, beyond doubt.

  “Tom here. Tom Voigtland, Juan!”

  “It’s really you?” Coldly. From a billion parsecs away, from some other universe. “Enjoying your trip, Tom?”

  “I had to call. To find out—to find out—how it was going, how everybody is. How Mark—Lydia—you—”

  “ Mark’s dead. Killed the second week, trying to blow up McAllister in a parade.”

  “Oh. Oh.”

  “Lydia and Lynx are in prison somewhere. Most of the others are dead. Maybe ten of us left, and they’ll get us soon, too. Of course, there’s you.”

  “Yes.”

  “You bastard,” Juan said quietly. “You rotten bastard. All of us getting rounded up and shot, and you get into your ship and fly away!”

  “They would have killed me too, Juan. They were coming after me. I only just made it.”

  “You should have stayed,” Juan said.

  “No. No. That isn’t what you just said to me! You told me I did the right thing, that I’d serve as a symbol of resistance, inspiring everybody from my place of exile, a living symbol of the overthrown government—”

  “I said this?”

  “You, yes,” Voigtland told him. “Your cube, anyway.”

  “Go to hell,” said Juan. “You lunatic bastard.”

  “Your cube— we discussed it, you explained—”

  “Are you crazy, Tom? Listen, those cubes are programmed to tell you whatever you want to hear. Don’t you know that? You want to feel like a hero for running away, they tell you you’re a hero. It’s that simple. How can you sit there and quote what my cube said to you, and make me believe that I said it?”

  “But I— you—”

  “Have a nice flight, Tom. Give my love to everybody, wherever you’re going.”

  “I couldn’t just stay there to be killed. What good would it have been? Help me, Juan! What shall I do now? Help me!”

  “I don’t give a damn what you do,” Juan said. “Ask your cubes for help. So long, Tom.”

  “Juan—”

  “So long, you bastard.”

  Contact broke.

  Voigtland sat quietly for a while, pressing his knuckles together. Listen, those cubes are programmed to tell you whatever you want to hear. Don’t you know that? You want to feel like a hero for running away, they tell you you’re a hero. And if you want to feel like a villain? They tell you that too. They meet all needs. They aren’t people. They’re cubes.

  He put Goethe in the slot. “Tell me about martyrdom,” he said.

  Goethe said, “It has its tempting side. One may be covered with sins, scaly and rough-skinned with them, and in a single fiery moment of self-immolation one wins redemption and absolution, and one’s name is forever cherished.”

  He put Juan in the slot. “Tell me about the symbolic impact of getting killed in the line of duty.”

  “It can transform a mediocre public official into a magnificent historical figure,” Juan said.

  He put Mark in the slot. “Which is a better father to have: a live coward or a dead hero?”

  “Go down fighting, Dad.”

  He put Hemingway in the slot. “What would you do if someone called you a rotten bastard?”

  “I’d stop to think if he was right or wrong. If he was wrong, I’d give him to the sharks. If he was right, well, maybe the sharks would get fed anyway.”

  He put Lydia in the slot. Lynx. His father. Alexander. Attila. Shakespeare. Plato. Ovid.

  lit In their various ways they were all quite eloquent. They spoke of bravery, self-sacrifice, nobility, redemption.

  He picked up the Mark-cube. “You’re dead,” he said. “Just like your grandfather. There isn’t any Mark anymore. What comes out of this cube isn’t Mark. It’s me, speaking with Mark’s voice, talking through Mark’s mind. You’re just a dummy.”

  He put the Mark-cube in the ship’s converter input, and it tumbled down the slideway to become reaction mass. He put the Lydia-cube in next. Lynx. His father. Alexander. Attila. Shakespeare. Plato. Ovid. Goethe.

  He picked up the Juan-cube. He put it in a slot again. “Tell me the truth,” he yelled. “What’ll happen to me if I go back to Bradley’s World?”

  “You’ll make your way safely to the underground and take charge, Tom. You’ll help us throw McAllister out: We can win with you, Tom.”

  “Crap,” Voigtland said. “I’ll tell you what’ll really happen. I’ll be intercepted before I go into my landing orbit. I’ll be taken down and put on trial. And then I’ll be shot. Right? Right? Tell me the truth, for once. Tell me I’ll be shot!”

  “You misunderstand the dynamics of the situation, Tom. The impact of your return will be so great that—”

  He took the Juan-cube from the slot and put it into the chute that went to the converter.

  “Hello?” Voigtland said. “Anyone here?”

  The ship was silent.

  “I’ll miss all that scintillating conversation,” he said. “I miss you already. Yes. Yes. But I’m glad you’re gone.”

  He countermanded the ship’s navig
ational instructions and tapped out the program headed RETURN TO POINT OF DEPARTURE. His hands were shaking, just a little, but the message went through. The instruments showed him the change of course as the ship began to turn around. As it began to take him home.

  Alone.

  WE KNOW WHO WE ARE

  The old-line science-fiction magazines were not completely dead, though. Among the survivors was the venerable Amazing Stories, the oldest s-f magazine of all, which had gone through some hard times but was now enjoying something of a renaissance under the editorial guidance of Ted White, a well-known science-fiction fan who had lately made the move to the professional level. I had been instrumental in getting White chosen for the job; and now he turned around and asked me to do some stories for him. My work schedule was getting increasingly frantic in this phase of my career as editors crowded around asking for material—I didn’t mind being in demand, but I was having trouble meeting all the requests—and in the end I wrote only this one story for White, though I did arrange for him to serialize two of my current novels, Up the Line and The Second Trip. I did “We Know Who We Are” in September of 1969 and it was published in Amazing’s July, 1970 issue.

  I had thought, back in 1958, that my career as a science-fiction writer was just about over, since the market for such fiction had dwindled to the point where it was impossible to earn a reasonable living writing it; and indeed, as I noted in the introduction to this book, four years passed between “Delivery Guaranteed” in 1958, which concludes the first volume of this series, and “To See the Invisible Man” of 1962, which opens this second volume. But by the time we reach 1969 and “We Know Who We Are,” I am back in the science-fiction business with a vengeance, coming into my most fertile era and unleashing a whole swarm of stories and novels that still stand as my most memorable work, and it will take two volumes more just to present the best of the short stories and novellas I did between 1970 and 1973—after which, as I will show in due course, there came yet another crash in science-fiction publishing and yet another retreat by me from writing the stuff. But better to tell that part of the story, I think, in the volumes ahead.

  ~

  “We know who we are and what we want to be,” say the people of Shining City whenever they feel particularly uncertain about things. Shining City is at least a thousand years old. It may be even older, but who can be sure? It stands in the middle of a plain of purple sand that stretches from the Lake of No Return to the River Without Fish. It has room for perhaps six hundred thousand people. The recent population of Shining City has been perhaps six hundred people. They know who they are. They know what they want to be.

  Things got trickier for them after the girl who was wearing clothes came walking in out of the desert.

  Skagg was the first one to see her. He knew immediately that there was something unusual about her, and not just that she was wearing clothes. Anybody who ever goes out walking in the desert puts clothes on, because the heat is fierce—there being no Cool Machine out there—and the sun would roast you fast if you didn’t have some kind of covering, and the sand would blow against you and pick the meat from your bones. But the unusual thing about the girl was her face. It wasn’t a familiar one. Everybody in Shining City knew everybody else, and Skagg didn’t know this girl at all, so she had to be a stranger, and strangers just didn’t exist.

  She was more than a child but less than a woman, and her body was slender and her hair was dark, and she walked the way a man would walk, with her arms swinging and her knees coming high and her legs kicking outward. When Skagg saw her he felt afraid, and he had never been afraid of a woman before.

  “Hello,” she said. “I speak Language. Do you?”

  Her voice was deep and husky, like the wind on a winter day pushing itself between two of the city’s towers. Her accent was odd, and the words came out as if she were holding her tongue in the wrong part of her mouth. But he understood her.

  He said, “I speak Language, and I understand what you say. But who are you?”

  “Fa Sol La,” she sang.

  “Is that your name?”

  “That is my name. And yours?”

  “Skagg..”

  “Do all the people in this city have names like Skagg?”

  “I am the only Skagg,” said Skagg. “Where do you come from?”

  She pointed eastward. “From a place beside the River Without Fish. Is this Shining City?”

  “Yes,” Skagg said.

  “Then I am where I want to be.” She unslung the pack that she was carrying over one shoulder and set it down, and then she removed her robe, so that she was as naked as he was. Her skin was very pale, and there was practically no flesh on her. Her breasts were tiny and her buttocks were flat. From where he stood, Skagg could easily have mistaken her for a boy. She picked up the pack again. “Will you take me into your city?” she asked.

  They were on the outskirts, in the region of the Empty Buildings. Skagg sometimes went there when he felt that his mind was too full. Tall tapering towers sprouted here. Some were sagging and others had lost their outer trim. Repair Machines no longer functioned in this part of the city.

  “Where do you want to go?” he asked.

  “To the place where the Knowing Machine is,” said Fa Sol La.

  Frowning, he said, “How do you know about the Machine?”

  “Everyone in the world knows about the Knowing Machine. I want to see it. I walked all the way from the River Without Fish to see the Knowing Machine. You’ll take me there, won’t you, Skagg?”

  He shrugged. “If you want. But you won’t be able to get close to it. You’ll see. You’ve wasted your time.”

  They began to walk toward the center of the city.

  She moved with such a swinging stride that he had to work hard to keep up with her. Several times she came close to him, so that her hip or thigh brushed his skin, and Skagg felt himself trembling at the strangeness of her. They were silent a long while. The morning sun began to go down and the afternoon sun started to rise, and the double light, blending, cast deceptive shadows and made her body look fuller than it was. Near the Mirror Walls a Drink Machine came up to them and refreshed them. She put her head inside it and gulped as if she had been dry for months, and then she let the fluid run out over her slim body. Not far on a Riding Machine found them and offered to transport them to the center. Skagg gestured to her to get in, but she waved a no at him.

  “It’s still a great distance,” he said.

  “I’d rather walk. I’ve walked this far, and I’ll walk to the end. I can see things better.”

  Skagg sent the machine away. They went on walking. The morning sun disappeared and now only the green light of afternoon illuminated Shining City.

  She said, “Do you have a woman, Skagg?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do you have a woman, I said.”

  “I heard the words. But how does one have a woman? What does it mean?”

  “To live with. To sleep with. To share pleasure with. To have children with.”

  “We live by ourselves,” he said. “There’s so much room here, why crowd together? We sleep sometimes with others, yes. We share pleasure with everyone. Children rarely come.”

  “You have no regular mates here, then?”

  “I have trouble understanding. Tell me how it is in your city.”

  “In my city,” she said, “a man and a woman live together and do all things together. They need no one else. Sometimes, they realize they do not belong together and then they split up and seek others, but often they have each other for a lifetime.”

  “This sounds quite strange,” said Skagg.

  “We call it love,” said Fa Sol La.

  “We have love here. All of us love all of us. We do things differently, I suppose. Does any man in your city have you, then?”

  “No. Not any more. I had a man, but he was too simple for me. And I left and walked to Shining City.”

  She fright
ened him even more, now.

  They had started to enter the inhabited part of the city. Behind them were the long stately avenues and massive residential structures of the dead part; ahead lay the core, with its throbbing machines and eating centers and bright lights.

  “Are you happy here?” Fa Sol La asked as they stepped between a Cleansing Machine’s pillars and were bathed in blue mist.

  “We know who we are,” Skagg said, “and what we want to be. Yes, I think we’re happy.”

  “I think you may be wrong,” she said, and laughed, and pressed her body tight up against him a moment, and sprinted ahead of him like something wild.

  A Police Machine rose from the pavement and blocked her way. It shot out silvery filaments that hovered around her, ready to clamp close if she made a hostile move. She stood still. Skagg ran up and said, “It’s all right. She’s new to the city. Scan her and accept her.”

  The machine bathed both of them in an amber glow and went away.

  “What are you afraid of here?” Fa Sol La asked.

  “Animals sometimes come in from the desert. We have to be careful. Did it scare you?”

  “It puzzled me,” she said.

  Others were nearing them now. Skagg saw Glorr, Derk, Prewger, and Simit; and more were coming. They crowded around the girl, none daring to touch her but everyone staring hard.

  “This is Fa Sol La,” said Skagg. “I discovered her. She comes from a city at the River Without Fish and walked across the desert to visit us.”

  “What is your city called?” Derk demanded.

  “River City,” she said.

  “How many people live there?” asked Prewger.

  “I don’t know. Many but not very many.”

  “How old are you?” Simit blurted.

  “Five no-suns,” she said.

  “Did you come alone?” Glorr said.

  “Alone.”

  “Why did you come here?” Prewger asked.

  She said, “To see the Knowing Machine,” and they moved as if she had proclaimed herself to be the goddess of death.

  “The Knowing Machine is dangerous,” said Prewger.

  “No one may get close to it,” said Simit.