The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume 3: Something Wild Is Loose: 1969-72

by Robert Silverberg

  He does not. Thus he defies entropy. Thus he breaks the chain.

  He peers into the sparkling, shifting little blazes until they kindle his gift, jabbing at the electrical rhythms of his brain until he is lifted into the energy level that permits the opening of a communion. He starts to go up. He reaches forth one tendril of his mind and engages Nissenson. With another tendril he snares Coustakis. Steadily, now, he draws the two tendrils together. He is aware of the risks, but believes he can surmount them.

  The tendrils meet.

  Out of Coustakis’ mind flows a description of the matter-transmitter and a clear statement of the beam-spread problem; Skein shoves it along to Nissenson, who begins to work on a solution. The combined strength of the two minds is great, but Skein deftly lets the excess charge bleed away, and maintains the communion with no particular effort, holding Coustakis and Nissenson together while they deal with their technical matters. Skein pays little attention as their excited minds rush toward answers. If you. Yes, and then. But if. I see, yes. I could. And. However, maybe I should. I like that. It leads to. Of course. The inevitable result. Is it feasible, though? I think so. You might have to. I could. Yes. I could. I could.

  “I thank you a million times,” Coustakis says to Skein. “It was all so simple, once we saw how we ought to look at it. I don’t begrudge your fee at all. Not at all.”

  Coustakis leaves, glowing with delight. Skein, relieved, tells his desk, “I’m going to allow myself a three-day holiday. Fix the schedule to move everybody up accordingly.”

  He smiles. He strides across his office, turning up the amplifiers, treating himself to the magnificent view. The nightmare undone. The past revised. The burnout avoided. All it took was confidence. Enlightenment. A proper understanding of the processes involved.

  He feels the sudden swooping sensations of incipient temporal fugue. Before he can intervene to regain control, he swings off into darkness and arrives instantaneously on a planet of purple sand and blue-leaved trees. Orange waves lap at the shore. He stands a few meters from a deep conical pit. Peering into it, he sees an amoeba-like creature lying beside a human figure; strands of the alien’s jellylike substance are wound around the man’s body. He recognizes the man to be John Skein. The communion in the pit ends; the man begins to clamber from the pit. The wind is rising. The sand, blown aloft, stains the sky gray. Patiently he watches his younger self struggling up from the pit. Now he understands. The circuit is closed; the knot is tied; the identity loop is complete. He is destined to spend many years on Abbondanza VI, growing ancient and withered. He is the skullfaced man.

  Skein reaches the rim of the pit and lies there, breathing hard. He helps Skein get up.

  “How do you feel?” he asks.

  THE REALITY TRIP

  This one also dates from January, 1970. I was thirty-five years old and had spent just about half my life thus far intensely involved with the craft of writing; I had moved from an early apprenticeship as a tireless producer of prefabricated literary merchandise into a maturity of some literary distinction, and the rewards were arriving steadily now, not just financial ones but awards (the Nebula in 1969 for “Passengers,” a Hugo later that year for the novella version of “Nightwings,” and more to come) and accolades (I was named to the presidency of the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1967-68, and I was asked to be the Guest of Honor at the World Science Fiction Convention in Heidelberg in 1970). I was about as well established as a writer could be; virtually everything I wrote was on commission now, and my writing time was committed well into the future while my agent fended off additional requests for contributions.

  I should have been happy with what I had accomplished, and I suppose that much of the time I was. But there was trouble ahead as I edged into the dreaded mid-life years. Already my extraordinary output of words was slackening from the legendary millions and millions of my youth: I managed only a trifling (for me) 668,000 words in 1969 and there was a further drop in production to 571,000 the next year. This was in part due to the increasing care I was devoting to my work, but also I was encountering mysterious resistances to writing at all—as is shown by the steep drop from 1970’s already reduced output to 1971’s even more sharply reduced 269,000 words, not much more than I would have been able to turn out in a single month in a wild year like 1963. In another few years I would find myself unable to write at all. There was the move to California in my future, too, and a marital breakup, and a host of other complexities were looming on the horizon for me as well. In 1970 I had only an inkling of what lay ahead, but it was enough to make me apprehensive and to intensify the already apparent darkening of the tone of my fiction, a development that would culminate in 1971’s The Book of Skulls and Dying Inside and the dramatic changes in my life that would follow later that year.

  Some of that, perhaps, is already evident in “The Reality Trip,” which I wrote in January, 1970 for Ejler Jakobsson, the new editor of Galaxy and If. Ejler published it, with amazing swiftness, in the May, 1970 issue of If. It’s a lighthearted story with some very dark corners; and certainly it demonstrates that I had come a long way indeed from the simplicities of “Gorgon Planet” and “The Silent Colony,” and even from the somber “Road to Nightfall” that stands as a strange beacon almost at the very beginning of my writing career. I see in it a foreshadowing of the volatility to come in my life. A time of changes lay ahead for me; and when it was done I would be a very different person living in a very different place.

  ——————

  I am a redemption project for her. She lives on my floor of the hotel, a dozen rooms down the hall: a lady poet, private income. No, that makes her sound too old, a middle-aged eccentric. Actually she is no more than thirty. Taller than I am, with long kinky brown hair and a sharp, bony nose that has a bump on the bridge. Eyes are very glossy. A studied raggedness about her dress—carefully chosen shabby clothes. I am in no position really to judge the sexual attractiveness of Earthfolk but I gather from remarks made by men living here that she is not considered good-looking. I pass her often on my way to my room. She smiles fiercely at me. Saying to herself, no doubt, You poor lonely man. Let me help you bear the burden of your unhappy life. Let me show you the meaning of love, for I, too, know what it is like to be alone…

  Or words to that effect. She’s never actually said any such thing. But her intentions are transparent. When she sees me, a kind of hunger comes into her eyes, part maternal, part (I guess) sexual, and her face takes on a wild crazy intensity.

  Her name is Elizabeth Cooke.

  “Are you fond of poetry, Mr. Knecht?” she asked me this morning as we creaked upward together in the ancient elevator.

  And an hour later she knocked at my door. “Something for you to read,” she said. “I wrote them.” A sheaf of large yellow sheets, stapled at the top—poems printed in smeary blue mimeography. The Reality Trip, the collection was headed. Limited Edition: 125 Copies. “You can keep it if you like,” she explained. “I’ve got lots more.”

  She was wearing bright corduroy slacks and a flimsy pink shawl through which her breasts plainly showed. Small tapering breasts, not very functional-looking. When she saw me studying them her nostrils flared momentarily and she blinked her eyes three times swiftly. Tokens of lust?

  I read the poems. Is it fair for me to offer judgment on them? Even though I’ve lived on this planet eleven of its years, even though my command of colloquial English is quite good, do I really comprehend the inner life of poetry? I thought they were all rather bad. Earnest, plodding poems, capturing what they call slices of life. The world around her, the cruel, brutal, unloving city. Lamenting the barriers between people. The title poem began:

  He was on the reality trip. Big black man, bloodshot eyes, bad teeth. Eisenhower jacket, frayed. Smell of cheap wine. I guess a knife in his pocket. Looked at me mean. Criminal record. Rape, child-beating, possession of drugs. In his head saying, slavemistress bitch, and me in my head saying, black brother,
let’s freak in together, let’s trip on love—

  And so forth. Warm, direct emotion—but is the urge to love all wounded things a sufficient center for poetry? I don’t know. I did put her poems through the scanner and transmit them to Homeworld, although I doubt they’ll learn much from them about Earth. It would flatter Elizabeth to know that while she has few readers here, she has acquired some ninety light-years away. But of course I can’t tell her that.

  She came back a short while ago.

  “Did you like them?” she asked.

  “Very much. You have such sympathy for those who suffer.”

  I think she expected me to invite her in. I was careful not to look at her breasts this time.

  The hotel is on West 23rd Street. It must be over a hundred years old—the façade is practically baroque and the interior shows a kind of genteel decay. The place has a bohemian tradition. Most of its guests are permanent residents and many of them are artists, novelists, playwrights and such. I have lived here nine years. I know a number of the residents by name and they me—but I have discouraged any real intimacy, naturally, and everyone has respected that choice. I do not invite others into my room. Sometimes I let myself be invited to visit theirs, since one of my responsibilities on this world is to get to know something of the way Earthfolk live and think. Elizabeth is the first to attempt to cross the invisible barrier of privacy I surround myself with. I’m not sure how I’ll handle that. She moved in about three years ago. Her attentions became noticeable perhaps ten months back and for the last five or six weeks she’s been a great nuisance. Some kind of confrontation is inevitable: either I must tell her to leave me alone, or I will find myself drawn into a situation impossible to tolerate. Perhaps she’ll find someone else to feel even sorrier for, before it comes to that.

  My daily routine rarely varies. I rise at seven. First Feeding. Then I clean my skin (my outer one, the Earthskin, I mean) and dress. From eight to ten I transmit data to Homeworld. Then I go out for the morning field trip: talking to people, buying newspapers, often some library research. At one I return to my room. Second Feeding. I transmit data from two to five. Out again, perhaps to the theater, to a motion picture, to a political meeting. I must soak up the flavor of this planet. Often to saloons—I am equipped for ingesting alcohol, though of course I must get rid of it before it has been in my body very long—and I drink and listen and sometimes argue. At midnight back to my room. Third Feeding. Transmit data from one to four in the morning. Then three hours of sleep and at seven the cycle begins anew. It is a comforting schedule. I don’t know how many agents Homeworld has on Earth but I like to think that I’m one of the most diligent and useful. I miss very little. I’ve done good service and, as they say here, hard work is its own reward. I won’t deny that I hate the physical discomfort of it and frequently give way to real despair over my isolation from my own kind. Sometimes I even think of asking for a transfer to Homeworld. But what would become of me there? What services could I perform? I have shaped my life to one end: that of dwelling among the Earthfolk and reporting on their ways. If I give that up, I am nothing.

  Of course there is the physical pain. Which is considerable.

  The gravitational pull of Earth is almost twice that of Homeworld. It makes for a leaden life for me. My inner organs always sagging against the lower rim of my carapace. My muscles cracking with strain. Every movement a willed effort. My heart in constant protest. In my eleven years I have, as one might expect, adapted somewhat to the conditions—I have toughened, I have thickened. I suspect if I were transported instantly to Homeworld now I would be quite giddy, baffled by the lightness of everything. I would leap and soar and stumble and might even miss this crushing pull of Earth. Yet I doubt that. I suffer here; at all times the weight oppresses me. Not to sound too self-pitying about it. I knew the conditions in advance. I was placed in simulated Earth gravity when I volunteered and was given a chance to withdraw and I decided to go anyway. Not realizing that a week under double gravity is not the same thing as a lifetime. I could always have stepped out of the simulation chamber. Not here. The eternal drag on every molecule of me. The pressure. My flesh is always in mourning.

  And the outer body I must wear. This cunning disguise. Forever to be swaddled in thick masses of synthetic flesh, smothering me, engulfing me. The soft slippery slap of it against the self within. The elaborate framework that holds it erect, by which I make it move—a forest of struts and braces and servoactuators and cables, in the midst of which I must unendingly huddle, atop my little platform in the gut. Adopting one or another of various uncomfortable positions, constantly shifting and squirming, now jabbing myself on some awkwardly placed projection, now trying to make my inflexible body flexibly to bend. Seeing the world by periscope through mechanical eyes. Enwombed in this mountain of meat. It is a clever thing—it must look convincingly human, since no one has ever doubted me and it ages ever so slightly from year to year, graying a bit at the temples, thickening a bit at the paunch. It walks. It talks. It takes in food and drink when it has to. (And deposits them in a removable pouch near my leftmost arm.) And I within it. The hidden chessplayer. The invisible rider. If I dared I would periodically strip myself of this cloak of flesh and crawl around my room in my own guise. But it is forbidden. Eleven years now and I have not been outside my protoplasmic housing. I feel sometimes that it has come to adhere to me, that it is by now a part of me.

  In order to eat I must unseal it at the middle, a process that takes many minutes. Three times a day I unbutton myself so that I can stuff the food concentrates into my true gullet. Faulty design, I call that. They could just as easily have arranged it so I could pop the food into my Earthmouth and have it land in my own digestive tract. I suppose the newer models have that. Excretion is just as troublesome for me—I unseal, reach in, remove the cubes of waste, seal my skin again. Down the toilet with them. A nuisance.

  And the loneliness! To look at the stars and know Homeworld is out there somewhere! To think of all the others, mating, chanting, dividing, abstracting, while I live out my days in this crumbling hotel on an alien planet, tugged down by gravity and locked within a cramped counterfeit body—always alone, always pretending that I am not what I am and that I am what I am not, spying, questioning, recording, reporting, coping with the misery of solitude, hunting for the comforts of philosophy.

  In all of this there is only one real consolation, aside, that is, from the pleasure of knowing that I am of service to Homeworld. The atmosphere of New York City grows grimier every year. The streets are full of crude vehicles belching undigested hydrocarbons. To the Earthfolk this stuff is pollution and they mutter worriedly about it. To me it is joy. It is the only touch of Homeworld here, that sweet soup of organic compounds adrift in the air. It intoxicates me. I walk down the street breathing deeply, sucking the good molecules through my false nostrils to my authentic lungs. The natives must think I’m insane. Tripping on auto exhaust! Can I get arrested for overenthusiastic public breathing? Will they pull me in for a mental checkup?

  Elizabeth Cooke continues to waft wistful attentions at me. Smiles in the hallway. Hopeful gleam of the eyes.

  “Perhaps we can have dinner together some night soon, Mr. Knecht. I know we’d have so much to talk about. And maybe you’d like to see the new poems I’ve been doing.”

  She is trembling. Eyelids flickering tensely; head held rigid on long neck. I know she sometimes has men in her room, so it can’t be out of loneliness or frustration that she’s cultivating me. And I doubt that she’s sexually attracted to my outer self. I believe I’m being accurate when I say that women don’t consider me sexually magnetic. No, she loves me because she pities me. The sad, shy bachelor at the end of the hall, dear unhappy Mr. Knecht—can I bring some brightness into his dreary life? And so forth. I think that’s how it is. Will I be able to go on avoiding her? Perhaps I should move to another part of the city. But I’ve lived here so long; I’ve grown accustomed to this hotel. Its e
asy ways do much to compensate for the hardships of my post. And my familiar room. The huge many-paned window; the cracked green floor tiles in the bathroom; the lumpy patterns of replastering on the wall above my bed. The high ceiling, the funny chandelier. Things that I love. But of course I can’t let her try to start an affair with me. We are supposed to observe Earthfolk, not to get involved with them. Our disguise is not that difficult to penetrate at close range. I must keep her away somehow. Or flee.

  II

  Incredible! There is another of us in this very hotel!

  As I learned through accident. At one this afternoon, returning from my morning travels: Elizabeth in the lobby, as though lying in wait for me, chatting with the manager. Rides up with me in the elevator. Her eyes looking into mine.

  “Sometimes I think you’re afraid of me,” she begins. “You mustn’t be. That’s the great tragedy of human life—that people shut themselves up behind walls of fear and never let anyone through, anyone who might care about them and be warm to them. You’ve got no reason to be afraid of me.”