Collected Short Fiction, page 810
IX
EARTHMEN come rarely to Borthan. Before Schweiz I had seen only two, both in the days when my father held the septarchy. The first was a tall red-bearded man who visited Salla when I was about five years old; he was a traveler who wandered from world to world for his own amusement and had just crossed the Burnt Lowlands alone and on foot. I remember studying his face with intense concentration, searching for the marks of his otherworldly origin—an extra eye, perhaps, horns, tendrils, fangs.
He had none of these, of course, and so I openly doubted his story of having come from Earth. Stirron, with the benefit of two years’ more schooling than I, was the one who told me, in a jeering tone, that all the worlds of the heavens had been settled by people from Earth, including our own, which was why an Earthman looked just like any of us. Nevertheless, when a second Earthman showed up at court a few years later, I still searched for fangs and tendrils. This one was a husky, cheerful man with light brown skin, a scientist making a collection of our native wildlife for some university in a far part of the galaxy. My father took him into the Burnt Lowlands to get hornfowl; I begged to go along and was whipped for my nagging.
I dreamed of Earth. I looked it up in books and saw a picture of a blue planet with many continents and a huge pockmarked moon going around it and I thought, This is where we all came from. This is the beginning of everything. I read of the kingdoms and nations of old Earth, the wars and devastation, the monuments, the tragedies. The going forth into space, the attainment of the stars. There was a time when I even imagined I was an Earthman myself, born on that ancient planet of wonders and brought to Borthan in babyhood to be exchanged for a septarch’s true son. I told myself that when I grew up I would travel to Earth and walk through cities ten thousand years old, retracing the line of migration that had led my forefathers’ forefathers from Earth to Borthan. I wanted to own a piece of Earth, too, some potsherd, some bit of stone, some battered coin, as a tangible link to the world at the heart of man’s wanderings. And I longed for some other Earthman to come to Borthan, so that I could ask him ten thousand thousand questions, so that I could beg a slice of Earth for myself—but none came and I grew up and my obsession with the first of man’s planets faded.
Then Schweiz crossed my way.
Schweiz was a man of commerce. Many Earthmen are. At the time I met him he had been on Borthan a couple of years as representative of an exporting firm based in a solar system not far from our own; he dealt in manufactured goods and sought our furs and spices in return During his stay in Manneran he had become entangled in controversy with a local importer over a cargo of stormshield furs from the northwestern coast. The man tried to give Schweiz poor quality at a higher-than-contracted price; Schweiz sued and the case went to the Port Justiciary. This was about three years ago and a little more than three years after the retirement of Segvord Helalam.
The facts of the case were clear-cut and there was no doubt about the judgment. One of the lower justices approved Schweiz’ plea and ordered the importer to make good on his contract with the swindled Earthman. Ordinarily I would not have become involved in the matter. But, when the papers on the case came to High Justice Kalimol for routine review just prior to affirmation of verdict, I glanced at them and saw that the plaintiff was an Earthman.
Temptation speared me. My old fascination with that race—my delusion of fangs and tendrils and extra eyes—took hold of me again. I had to talk with him. What did I hope to get from him? The answers to the questions that had gone unanswered when I was a boy? Some clue to the nature of the forces that had driven mankind to the stars? Or merely amusement, a moment of diversion in an overly placid life?
I asked Schweiz to report to my office.
HE CAME in almost on the run, a frantic, energetic figure in clothes of flamboyant style and tone. Grinning with a manic glee, he slapped my palm in greeting, dug his knuckles into my desktop, pushed himself back a few steps and began to pace the room.
“The gods preserve you, your grace!” he cried.
I thought his odd demeanor, his coiled-spring bounciness and his wild-eyed intensity stemmed from fear of me, for he had good reason to worry, called in by a powerful official to discuss a case that he thought he had won. But I found later that Schweiz’ mannerisms were expressions of his own seething nature, not of any momentary and specific tension.
He was a man of middle height, very sparely built, not a scrap of fat on his frame. His skin was tawny and his hair was the color of dark honey; it hung down in a straight flow to his shoulders. His eyes were bright and mischievous, his smile quick and sly and he radiated a boyish vigor, a dynamic enthusiasm, that charmed me just then, though it would eventually make him an exhausting companion for me. Yet he was no boy: his face bore the first lines of age and his hair, abundant though it was, was starting to go at the crown.
“Be seated,” I said, for his capering was disturbing me. I wondered how to launch the conversation. How much could I ask him before he claimed Covenant at me and sealed his lips? Would he talk about himself and his world? Had I any right to pry into a foreigner’s soul in a way that I would not dare do with a man of Borthan? I would see. Curiosity drove me. I picked up the sheaf of documents on his case—for he was looking at the file unhappily—and held them toward him, saying, “One places the first matters first. Your verdict has been affirmed. Today High Justice Kalimol gives his seal and within a moonrise you’ll have your money.”
“Happy words, your grace.”
“That concludes the legal business.”
“So short a meeting? It seems hardly necessary to have paid this call to exchange only a moment’s talk, your grace.”
“One must admit,” I said, “that you were summoned here to discuss things other than your lawsuit.”
“Eh, your grace?” He looked baffled and alarmed.
“To talk of Earth,” I said. “To gratify the idle inquisitiveness of a bored bureaucrat. Is that all right? Are you willing to talk a while, now that you’ve been lured here on the pretense of business? You know, Schweiz, one has always been fascinated by Earth and by Earthmen.” To win some rapport with him, for he still was frowning and mistrustful, I told him the story of the two other Earthmen I had known and of my childhood belief that they should be alien in form. He relaxed and listened with pleasure and before I was through he was laughing heartily.
“Fangs!” he cried. “Tendrils!” He ran his hands over his face. “Did you really think that, your grace? That Earthmen were such bizarre creatures? By all the gods, your grace, I wish I had some strangeness about my body that could give you amusement!”
I flinched each time Schweiz spoke of himself in the first person. His casual obscenities punctured the mood I had attempted to build. Though I tried to pretend nothing was amiss, Schweiz realized his blunder and, leaping to his feet in obvious distress, said, “A thousand pardons! One tends to forget one’s grammar sometimes, when one is not accustomed to—”
“No offense is taken,” I said hastily.
“You must understand, your grace, that old habits of speech die hard—and in using your language one sometimes slips into the mode most natural for himself, even though—”
“Of course, Schweiz. A forgivable lapse.” He was trembling. “Besides,” I said, winking, “I’m a grown man. Do you think I’m so easily shocked?” My use of the vulgarities was deliberate, to put him at his ease. The tactic worked; he subsided, calming.
I ASKED him to tell me about Earth, the mother of us all.
“A small planet,” he said. “Far away. Choked in its own ancient wastes; the poisons of two thousand years of carelessness and overbreeding stain its skies and its seas and its land. An ugly place.”
“In truth, ugly?”
“There are still some attractive districts. Not many of them, and nothing to boast about. Some trees, here and there. A little grass. A lake. A waterfall. A valley. Mostly the planet is a dung-hole. Earthmen often wish they could uncover their early ancestors, bring them to life again and then throttle them. For their selfishness. For their lack of concern for the generations to come. They filled the world with themselves and used up everything.”
“Is this why Earthmen built empires in the skies, then, to escape the filth of their home world?”
“Part of it is that, yes,” Schweiz said. “There were so many billions of people. And those who had the strength to leave all went out and up. But it was more than running away, you know. It was a hunger to see strange things, a hunger to undertake journeys, a hunger to make fresh starts. To create new and better worlds of man. A string of Earths across the sky.”
“And those who did not go?” I asked. “Earth still has those other billions of people?” I was thinking of Velada Borthan and its sparse forty or fifty millions.
“Oh, no, no. It’s almost empty now, a ghost-world, ruined cities, cracking highways. Few live there any longer. Fewer are born there every year.”
“But you were born there?”
“On the continent called Europe, yes. One hasn’t seen Earth for almost thirty years, though. Not since one was fourteen.”
“You don’t look that old,” I said.
“One reckons time in Earth-length years,” Schweiz explained.
“By your figuring one is only approaching the age of thirty.”
“Also this one,” I said. “And here also is one who left his homeland before reaching manhood.” I was speaking freely, far more freely than was proper, yet I could not stop myself. I had drawn out Schweiz and felt an impulse to offer something of my own in return. “Going out from Salla as a boy to seek his fortune in Glin, then finding better luck in Manneran after a while. A wanderer, Schweiz, like yourself.”
“It is a bond between us, then.” Could I presume on that bond? I asked him, “Why did you leave Earth?”
“For the same reasons as everyone else. To go where the air is clean and a man stands some chance to become something. The only ones who spend their whole lives there are those who can’t help but stay.”
“And this is the planet that all the galaxy reveres?” I said in wonder. “The world of so many myths! The planet of boys’ dreams! The center of the universe—a pimple, a boil!”
“You put it well.”
“Yet it is revered.”
“Oh, revere it, revere it, certainly!” Schweiz cried. His eyes were aglow. “The fountain of mankind! The grand originator of the species! Why not revere it, your grace? Revere the bold beginnings that were made there. Revere the high ambitions that sprang from its mud. And revere the terrible mistakes, too. Ancient Earth made mistake alter mistake and choked itself in error, so that you would be spared from having to pass through the same fires and torments.” Schweiz laughed harshly. “Earth died to redeem you starfolk from sin. How’s that for a religious notion? A whole liturgy could be composed around that idea. A priestcraft of Earth the redeemer.” Suddenly he leaned forward and asked, “Are you a religious man, your grace?”
I was taken aback by the thrusting intimacy of his question. But I put up no barriers.
“Certainly,” I said.
“You go to the godhouse, you talk to the drainers, the whole thing?”
I WAS caught. I could not help but speak.
“Yes,” I said. “Does that surprise you?”
“Not at all. Everyone on Borthan seems to be genuinely religious. Which amazes one. You know, your grace, one isn’t religious in the least, oneself. One tries, one has always tried, one has worked so hard to convince oneself that there are superior beings out there who guide destiny—and sometimes one almost makes it, your grace. One almost believes, one breaks through into faith, but then skepticism shuts things down every lime. And one ends by saying. No, it isn’t possible, it can’t be, it defies logic and common sense. Logic and common sense!”
“But how can you live all your days without a closeness to something holy?” I asked.
“Most of the lime one manages fairly well. Most of the lime.”
“And the rest of the time?”
“That’s when one feels the impact of knowing one is entirely alone in the universe. Naked under the stars and the starlight hitting the exposed skin, burning, a cold fire—and no one to shield one from it, no one to offer a hiding place, no one to pray to, do you see? The sky is ice and the ground is ice and the soul is ice and who’s to warm it? There isn’t anyone. You’ve convinced yourself that no one exists who can give comfort. One wants some system of belief, one wants to submit, to gel down and kneel, to be governed by metaphysics, you know? To believe, to have faith! And one can’t. And that’s when the terror sets in. The dry sobs. The nights of no sleeping.” Schweiz’ face was flushed and wild with excitement; I wondered if he could be entirely sane. He reached across the desk, clamped his hand over mine—the gesture stunned me but I did not pull back—and said hoarsely, “Do you believe in gods, your grace?”
“Surely.”
“In a literal way? You think there’s a god of travelers, a god of fishermen, a god of farmers and one who looks after septarchs and—”
“There is a forte,” I said, “that gives order and form to the universe, The force manifests itself in various ways. And for the sake of bridging the gap between ourselves and that force, we regard each of its manifestations as a ‘god,’ yes, and extend our souls to this manifestation or that one, as our needs demand. Those of us who are without learning accept these gods literally, as beings with faces and personalities. Others realize that they are metaphors for the aspects of the divine force—and not a tribe of potent spirits living overhead. But there is no one in Velada Borthan who denies the existence of the force itself.”
“One feels such fierce envy of that,” said Schweiz. “To be raised in a culture that has coherence and structure, to have such assurance of ultimate verities, to feel oneself part of divine scheme—how marvelous that must be! To enter a system of belief—it would almost be worth putting up with this society’s great flaws to have something like that.”
“Flaws?” Suddenly I found myself on the defensive. “What flaws?”
Schweiz narrowed his gaze and moistened his lips. Perhaps he was calculating whether I would be hurt or angered by what he meant to say. “Flaws was possibly too strong a word,” he replied. “One might say instead, this society’s limits, its—well, its narrowness. One speaks now of the necessity to shield one’s self from one’s fellow men that you impose. The taboos against reference to self, against frank discourse, against any opening of the soul—”
“Has one not opened his soul to you today in this very room?”
“Ah,” Schweiz said, “but you’ve been speaking to an alien, to one who is no part of your culture, to someone you secretly suspect of having tendrils and fangs! Would you be so free with a citizen of Manneran?”
“No one else in Manneran would have asked such questions as you have been asking.”
“Maybe so. One lacks a native’s training in self-repression. These questions about your philosophy of religion, then—do they intrude on your privacy of soul, your grace? Are they offensive to you?”
“One has no objections to talking of such things,” I said, without much conviction.
“But it’s a taboo conversation, isn’t it? We weren’t using naughty words, except that once when one slipped, but we were dealing in naughty ideas, establishing a naughty relationship. You let your wall down a little way, eh? For which one is grateful. One’s been here so long—years now—and one hasn’t ever talked freely with a man of Borthan, not once! Until one sensed today that you were willing to open yourself a bit. This has been an extraordinary experience, your grace.” The manic smile returned. He moved jerkily about the office. “One had no wish to speak critically of your way of life here,” he said. “One wished in fact to praise certain aspects of it, while trying to understand others.”
“Which to praise, which to understand?”
“To understand your habit of erecting walls about yourselves. To praise the ease with which you accept divine presence. One envies you for that. As one said, one was raised in no system of belief at all and is unable to let himself be overtaken by faith. One’s head is always full of nasty skeptical questions. One is constitutionally unable to accept what one can’t see or feel—and so one must always be alone. And one goes around the galaxy seeking for the gateway to belief, trying this, trying that, and one never finds ” Schweiz paused. He was flushed and sweaty. “So you see, your grace, you have something precious here, this ability to let yourselves become part of a large power. One would wish to learn it from you. Of course, it’s a matter of cultural conditioning. Borthan still knows the gods and Earth has outlived them. Civilization is young on this planet. It takes thousands of years for the religious impulse to erode.”
“And,” I said, “this planet was settled by men who had strong religious beliefs, who specifically came here to preserve them and who took great pains to instill them in their descendants.”
“That, too. Your Covenant. Yet that was—what, fifteen hundred, two thousand years ago? It could all have crumbled by now, but it hasn’t. It’s stronger than ever. Your devoutness, your humility, your denial of self—”
“Those who couldn’t accept and transmit the ideals of the first settlers,” I pointed out, “were not allowed to remain among them. That had its effect on the pattern of the culture. The consenters stayed; the rejecters went.”
“You’re speaking of the exiles who went to Sumara Borthan?”
“You know the story, then?”
“Naturally. One picks up the history of whatever planet one happens to be assigned to. Sumara Borthan, yes. Have you ever been there, your grace?”
