Collected Short Fiction, page 97
VII
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive
could bear it; it would be hell on earth.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
He raced tip the broad, littered, library steps. “Susan,” he called, joy throbbing in his throat.
Halfway to the door, she met him, hurling herself into his arms, hugging herself to his body, pressing her lips hungrily to his. “D’glas,” she murmured. “I was afraid—oh, it doesn’t matter now what I was afraid of.”
He drew her down onto the loveseat.
Something small and hard pressed into his abdomen. “That’s enough,” she said coldly.
D’glas glanced down. In his right hand was a minim, his barrel trying to leave its imprint on his body.
“Susan,” D’glas said, frowning, “what’s the matter?”
“How do I know you’re not a mech?” she asked. “The Council is infinitely resourceful. Get up!” D’glas stood up. “Walk toward the door, slowly.” D’glas obeyed. “Open it. Take one step forward and turn around. Don’t make any sudden moves. I’ll shoot at your shadow. Now close the door.”
D’glas frowned at the translucent glass panel and the words painted on it, knowing what the panel was, and he thought: This has happened before.
He was turning away when the door was flung open.
“D’glas!” she cried. “It is you!” And then her lips found his, clumsy at first but infinitely educable and learning fast.
He had lived, this moment before, fully, richly, and the reliving was almost enough to silence his doubts—but not quite. Somewhere was an explanation, a reason. He had to search for it. It was important beyond the moment’s pleasure.
He tried to pull her arms away as they clung to him desperately. Where his fingers had grasped her arm, the flesh, surged back, leaving no white imprints to redden.
His hand tightened in agony.
Inside her arm, something snapped, but Susan didn’t move or cry out. Her other hand continued stroking his hair; her mouth made little crooning sounds.
He peeled back the synthetic flesh. Under it, the bones gleamed metallically.
Susan teas a mech.
He tore himself free and stood beside the bed. In that instant, D’glas knew the, terrible meaning of unhappiness . . .
He walked down the long, deep-carpeted hall, feeling very young and excited again, watching the walls flow with shifting colors that changed to match his moods, sniffing the delicate perfumes wafted to him, enjoying the eternal delight of possession-.
The doors opened to him, and he entered the magnificent room. The women pressed around him, begging silently for his touch, his glance, his passing thought; there were all kinds and shapes of them, all colors and textures, all temperaments, but they shared two qualities: they were all beautiful and they all adored him.
He passed among them, the small and the tell, the slim and the generously curved, and he held out his hand to Susan, the shy one. Though the others must never know, it was Susan he loved.
She lifted her face as he touched her; it was shining like a star, dazzling him with its beauty and the sublime trust in her eyes.
Together, he thought, they would discover the meaning of love.
When they were alone in the twilight room, she pressed herself against him hungrily. “D’glas!” she cried. “You chose me!” And then her Ups found his, clumsy at first but infinitely educable.
How his pulse pounded! Joy was like a sickness inside. He hadn’t felt like this since he had been very young.
What was he doing here, back in his adolescence? What was Susan doing in his arms?
His arms tightened in agony.
Inside Susan, something snapped and tore through her back. As he felt it, slick and metallic, her lips kept moving against his.
He tore himself free. In that instant, D’glas knew the terrible meaning of unhappiness . . .
In his cubicle, he waited tautly for the Contest to begin.
When the light flashed on his screen, his hands were instantly busy at the keyboard controls, matching signals with the testing mech. His trained discriminations found minute variations from ideal form, compared measurements, dissected illusions, analyzed sounds and chemicals, odors and pressures. Then the tests grew difficult.
From one word, he constructed a sonnet; from one musical phrase, a song. He wove the two together, and when he was done, he took one color and translated all into visual imagery.
The door of the cubicle swung open. He sprinted into the physical half. He ran that ancient unit of measure, the mile, in three minutes thirty-two seconds, pacing himself perfectly. He high-jumped the three-meter wall Behind, the first competitor started after him.
He swam one hundred meters under water, and he emerged, at last, through the air lock, upon the naked surface of Venus. The air lock opposite was fifty meters away. He ran toward it. His straining body streaming with rain, stung with hurricane winds, without taking the breath that would have meant nausea and unconsciousness. And he went through the air lock into his mother’s arms.
“D’glas!” she cried. “You won’t!” And then her lips found his, fondly.
He held her tight, his chest heaving to draw in the good air, his head pressed to her bosom, his heart filled with a great love. And then, as his breathing calmed, he realized that there was something wrong. His mother had no heartbeat.
He stared at her, understanding what she was, and tore himself away. In that instant, D’glas knew the terrible meaning of unhappiness . . .
There was no happiness like this, to lie nestled in the arms of the big, soft food-creature and be held against her warmth and nurse on the soft part of her which held the food. The food slipped down the throat warmly, filling the stomach, distending it with love, and he was filled with the great happiness and the love that was as big as the universe.
It made him sleepy to feel such love in this, the happy time. He felt himself relaxing. His eyelids began to close.
Contentment. It was being warm and fed and held by love. It was the most basic of securities, without fear—
Pain! Inside! It jerked his legs up toward his belly and wrenched a cry of agony from his lips. There was something wrong with the food, that hurt him inside, that cramped his stomach and turned contentment into torture.
He pushed himself away from the big, soft creature, out of the loving arms that held him, and he fell, spinning, through the void, screaming with fear and pain. In that instant, D’glas knew the terrible meaning of unhappiness . . .
This was happiness. Everything else was imitation.
He floated, effortlessly, within the warm darkness, fed and contented. The shapeless forms drifted slowly through his dreaming mind. He was safe, secure, protected through the long, silent twilight.
There was nothing to think of, nothing to desire, nothing to fear. He was safe, now and eternally, in this, his impregnable fortress.
He was one with love.
The universe and he were the same. He was God, commanding all, receiving all, dreaming the long, sweet dream which was everything that was and everything that had been and everything that would be.
That was what he must believe. If he should question that, his omnipotence would tremble, his universe would shake—
Even now there was a turbulence in the all-pervading fluid which surrounded him. Infinity was constricted. God was squeezed. He struggled against it, but the barrier was rigid, enclosing him on all sides.
He was angry. He did not try to control it with the hedonic techniques. He let his adrenals pump adrenaline into his bloodstream. His heartbeat quickened, his bloods sugar level rose, the coagulability of the blood increased—
It was the ancient reaction to danger, but this time it was under control.
Rhythmically, infinity contracted around him. He fought it. He pushed, he shoved, he struggled to get loose.
He tore himself free of the constrictions; he emerged into the cold, harsh brilliance of reality.
He was born screaming with anger.
D’GLAS stood in the middle of the jungle trail, naked and defenseless, listening. The jungle was deadly, and there was something that followed.
He had never seen a jungle, but he recognized it and knew it for what it was: illusion. This was the jungle from which man had emerged, a toolmaker, a conqueror. A weak-armed, weak-toothed, weak-clawed animal, he had turned himself into the most deadly creature on Earth by making extensions for his arms and sharpening points to replace teeth and claws.
In a more important sense, this was the jungle of the human mind, fraught with personal and ancestral fears which dulled the clean edge of the mind. Only recently, with the tools of hedonics, had man learned to conquer that jungle.
D’glas knew these things with an instinct that seemed almost racial. This was illusion, but it was just as deadly as if it were real.
The Council had attempted to enslave D’glas with his own dreams. That had failed before his unshakeable grasp on reality which intruded, crucially, to shatter the rhythm of each dream. Now the Council sought to conquer him with his own fears. This illusion was its last barrier.
He stood in the middle of the game path, naked, and he knew he would never come out of the jungle alive, or sane, unless he won. Within him, he nursed the clean, protective flame of his anger and listened.
Distantly, danger screamed.
He recognized it now, although he had never heard it before, never seen the creature that made it. It was the black shape of fear, the panther, powerful and silent until it made its kill. Somewhere it came after him, padding along the trail.
He trotted away from it, picking up in stride a stout limb lying beside the trail, torn by some storm from one of the trees. It swung in his hand as he moved warily through the jungle. He had multiplied his strength by the length of the club.
At the end of the trail was Susan.
Slowly the smell of danger grew stronger.
When he was fifty meters away, he saw the fallen log. By the time he reached it, he had the deadfall completely planned.
He propped up the log on a precarious leg, working quickly but never dropping his careful watchfulness. Danger might be creeping upon him.
He fastened a vine to the leg supporting the log and passed the vine across the trail. There was no time to test the trigger. He faded among the trees a few meters away and waited, his back protected, the club ready.
Within minutes, the panther came padding into sight, its head swinging from side to side. It was a lean black beauty, smelling of death.
And yet it brushed the vine. The log fell. The panther screamed. This time the scream was agony. It lay in the middle of the trail, its back broken, its mouth snarling horribly as D’glas approached.
He smashed its skull, mercifully, with one blow of the club.
Distantly, danger screamed!
Another. There is never an end to danger, never an end to fear. Eternally, it comes after.
D’glas turned and trotted away.
Momentarily the jungle ended, giving way to an open space of sawtoothed grass and razor-pointed reeds. Before D’glas had gone more than a few meters along the trail through the clearing, his hands were bloody. He broke off the reeds close to the ground and planted them in the middle of the trail, their points trailing backward the way he had come.
Where the clearing became jungle again, D’glas paused. The panther came quickly, a twin of the one he had killed. It threaded its way along the trail. D’glas stepped into the sunlight, the dub swinging in his hand.
For a moment the panther stopped, studying him, and then it began padding forward swiftly. As it leaped toward him, the reeds stabbed upward, entering its belly with the full thrust of its rush. The black beast fell to the ground, clawing futilely. Its wicked head lunged at the tormenting reeds. They broke off.
It got to its feet again, wounded but still dangerous. Its grace was awkwardness, its lithe speed was a painful limp. It was dying, and it didn’t know it.
D’glas turned and trotted away, leaving the beast to its agonies. It was too powerful to risk an approach, and there was little time for mercy in the jungle.
A few hours later, danger screamed.
D’glas was readier now. Out of a sapling and tough, twisted grass he had fashioned a bow. Arrows, feathered with leaves and pointed with bits of flint, lay beside him. Near them was a spear,.
D’glas had come out of the jungle and reached the foothills of a vast range of mountains, rising peak after purple peak behind. He could go no farther. The trail ended against an impassable cliff, rising all around him until it met the jungle. This was where he would stand and fight until the end.
He waited, his hands busy with rocks, piling them close at hand, and finally the panther came. It took him a long time to make it out, where it stood at the edge of the jungle, watching.
When it moved, it moved swiftly. The first arrow went into its shoulder at thirty meters. The panther came on unheeding. D’glas had time for three more arrows. The third almost disappeared down the panther’s gaping throat.
It died at his feet.
After that they came more swiftly, the black shapes of fear, and, afraid, he killed them, one after one, before they could reach him. And then his arrows were gone.
As the next one came, he threw rocks at it, but they glanced off harmlessly. He waited for it, the spear ready. It approached warily, its nostrils flared with the odor of death, glancing at the black shapes that lay all around him. But it came on.
Suddenly it leaped, D’glas planted the base of the spear against the rock under foot and caught the beast on the point. The spear sank in. The panther fell, clawing with all four feet at the shaft. The shaft snapped.
Slowly, the panther died, taking with it his last weapon.
D’glas sharpened the edge of his anger, standing straight and tall under the unmoving sun, and threw it spearlike at the sky. “Damn you!” he shouted. “There is nothing more you can do! I am not afraid, not of death, not of fear itself!”
In great globs of blue, the sky began to melt.
VIII
Ah Love! could, you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things Entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits—and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s desire!
Rubáiyát of Omar Kháyam
NURSING HIS cleansing anger, D’glas stood, legs spread for balance, staring from the corridor into a room much like the one from which he had escaped. This had a metal bunk built against one wall. On the bunk, her eyes closed as if she were asleep, was Susan.
D’glas reached the bunk, moving slowly, hugging his anger around him like a cloak of invincibility. From the wall came tubes and wires. One transparent tube led to Susan’s arm where a needle entered the antecubital vein. Fluid moved through it slowly. Another tube went to a mouthpiece which marred the perfection of Susan’s lips.
Susan was smiling.
D’glas went down on his knees beside her, sickened, afraid, but more angry than either. Carefully he removed the needle, pressing the vein to suppress bleeding. The blood clotted quickly. He inspected the mouthpiece and then slowly worked it free.
“Susan,” he said softly. “Susan!”
Her eyes flickered, opened, “D’glas,” she murmured sleepily. Her arms came up toward him with dream slowness. Then recognition entered her eyes. Her hands whipped out, caught him by the shoulders. “D’glas! It’s real! It’s you!”
Her arms went around him. She pulled herself up to him, half laughing, half sobbing. “Oh, darling, I thought I’d lost you forever!” Frowning, he held her close. “Get mad, Susan!” he whispered. “Get very mad! Let your adrenals work! Get angry at the Council!”
“I can’t feel angry now,” she protested, puzzled. “I can’t I’m—”
“You must! Everything depends on it!”
“I’ll try,” she said. Slowly her face flushed, her breathing quickened.
Pressed tightly against her, D’glas could feel her heartbeat speed up. He squeezed her arm and felt the flesh and the bone beneath; when he released it, he saw the white fingerprints turn red.
“What happened to you?” he asked harshly.
“I told you. I was safe from the Council as long as I was happy. You came, and I fell in love with you. And then I could no longer be happy. Funny, isn’t it? Through having too much, I became unhappy.”
“The more you have, the more you have to lose.”
“Yes. I read your note. That made me unhappy, but I could fight that I could wait for you. Then I saw you leaving the hotel across the street I knew that you were in the hands of the Council, that you had done something or felt something that gave it power over you, that you were lost to me forever. I couldn’t fight that. A few minutes later, the Council’s mechs were there to take me away.”
“Yes, yes,” D’glas said savagely. “I can see how it happened. I should have thought of it; we should have stayed together.”
“Struggle was pointless and futile. If you were gone, my only chance for happiness was the kind the Council could give me. But it wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t you; it was only my image of you, partial and incomplete, returned to me more vividly. In you there is continual surprise, continual change; there is more than I can ever encompass. What the Council gave me was only my dreams made real.”
“I know. Now your only chance for reality—our only chance—is anger.”
“Why?”
D’glas shrugged. “I can only reason analogically, which can’t be exact. Anger sets off some physiological reaction which acts, I think, as a barrier to the Council’s telepathic senses. It does not understand anger, because it has never had to deal with it. Those who came to it for help were never angry; anger seeks its own satisfaction, Anger is part of that dissatisfaction which has spurred life to its greatest conquests of environment When properly controlled, it makes possible all things.”
“A telepathic race,” Susan said slowly, “if there were such a thing, would have no angers because it would have no frustrations. Emotions are the result of blocked conations, strivings, and telepathic creatures would desire nothing which was unavailable and would deny each other nothing which could be supplied.”
