A time of changes, p.15
A Time of Changes, page 15
THIRTY-SIX
LATER I SAID, “Did you get from the drug what you were looking for, Schweiz?”
“Partially.”
“How so, partially?”
“I was looking for God, Kinnall, and I didn’t quite find him, but I got a better idea of where to look. What I did find was how not to be alone anymore. How to open my mind fully to someone else. That’s the first step on the road I want to travel.”
“One is happy for your sake, Schweiz.”
“Must you still talk to me in that third-person lingo?”
“I can’t help myself,” I said. I was terribly tired. I was beginning to feel afraid of Schweiz again. The love I bore for him was still there, but now suspicion was creeping back. Was he exploiting me? Was he milking a dirty little pleasure out of our mutual exposures? He had pushed me into becoming a selfbarer. His insistence on my speaking in “I” and “me” to him—was that a token of my liberation, was it something beautiful and pure, as he claimed, or was it only a reveling in filth? I was too new to this. I could not sit placidly while a man said, “I love you.”
“Practice it,” Schweiz said. “I. I. I. I.”
“Stop. Please.”
“Is it that painful?”
“It’s new and strange to me. I need—there, you see?—I need to slide into this more gradually.”
“Take your time, then. Don’t let me rush you. But don’t ever stop moving forward.”
“One will try. I will try,” I said.
“Good.” After a moment he said, “Would you try the drug again, ever?”
“With you?”
“I don’t think there’s any need for that. I mean with someone like your bondsister. If I offered you some, would you use it with her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you afraid of the drug now?”
I shook my head. “That isn’t easy for me to answer. I need time to come to terms with the whole experience. Time to think about it, Schweiz, before getting involved again.”
“You’ve tasted the experience. You’ve seen that there’s only good to be had from it.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps.”
“Without doubt!” His fervor was evangelical. His zeal tempted me anew.
Cautiously I said, “If more were available, I would seriously consider trying it again. With Halum, maybe.”
“Good!”
“Not immediately. But in time. Two, three, four moontimes from now.”
“It would have to be farther from now than that.”
“Why?”
Schweiz said, “This was my entire stock of the drug that we used this evening. I have no more.”
“But you could get some, if you tried?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, certainly.”
“Where?”
“In Sumara Borthan,” he said.
THIRTY-SEVEN
WHEN ONE IS NEW to the ways of pleasure, it is not surprising to find guilt and remorse following first indulgence. So was it with me. In the morning of our second day at the lodge I awoke after troubled sleep, feeling such shame that I prayed the ground to swallow me. What had I done? Why had I let Schweiz goad me into such foulness? Selfbaring! Selfbaring! Sitting with him all night, saying “I” and “me” and “me” and “I,” and congratulating myself on my new freedom from convention’s strangling hand! The mists of day brought a mood of disbelief. Could I have actually opened myself like that? Yes, I must, for within me now were memories of Schweiz’s past, which I had not had access to before. And myself within him, then. I prayed for a way of undoing what I had done. I felt I had lost something of myself by surrendering my apartness. You know, to be a selfbarer is not a pretty thing among us, and those who expose themselves gain only a dirty pleasure from it, a furtive kind of ecstasy. I insisted to myself that I had done nothing of that, but had embarked rather on a spiritual quest; but even as I put the phrase to myself it sounded portentous and hypocritical, a flimsy mask for shabby motives. And I was ashamed, for my sake, for my sons’ sake, for the sake of my royal father and his royal forefathers, that I had come to this. I think it was Schweiz’s “I love you” that drove me into such an abyss of regret, more than any other single aspect of the evening, for my old self saw those words as doubly obscene, even while the new self that was struggling to emerge insisted that the Earthman had meant nothing shameful, neither with his “I” nor with his “love.” But I rejected my own argument and let guilt engulf me. What had I become, to trade endearments with another man, an Earthborn merchant, a lunatic? How could I have given my soul to him? Where did I stand, now that I was so wholly vulnerable to him? For a moment I considered killing Schweiz, as a way of recovering my privacy. I went to him where he slept, and saw him with a smile on his face, and I could feel no hatred for him then.
That day I spent mostly alone. I went off into the forest and bathed at a cool pond; then I knelt before a firethorn tree and pretended it was a drainer, and confessed myself to it in shy whispers; afterward I walked through a brambly woods, coming back to the lodge thorned and smudged. Schweiz asked me if I felt unwell. No, I told him, nothing is wrong. I said little that evening, but huddled in a floating-chair. The Earthman, more talkative than ever, a torrent of buoyant words, launched himself into the details of a grand scheme for an expedition to Sumara Borthan to bring back sacks of the drug, enough to transform every soul in Manneran, and I listened without commenting, for everything had become unreal to me, and that project seemed no more strange than anything else.
I hoped the ache of my soul would ease once I was back in Manneran and at my desk in the Justiciary. But no. I came into my house and Halum was there with Loimel, the cousins exchanging clothes with one another, and at the sight of them I nearly turned and fled. They smiled warm woman-smiles at me, secret smiles, the token of the league they had formed between themselves all their lives, and in despair I looked from my wife to my bondsister, from one cousin to the other, receiving their mirrored beauty as a double sword in my belly. Those smiles. Those knowing eyes! They needed no drug to pull the truths from me.
Where have you been, Kinnall?
To a lodge in the forest, to play at selfbaring with the Earthman.
And did you show him your soul?
Oh, yes, and he showed his.
And then?
Then we spoke of love. I love you, he said, and one replied, I love you.
What a wicked child you are, Kinnall!
Yes, Yes. Where can one hide from his shame?
This silent dialogue whirled through my brain in an instant, as I came toward them where they sat beside the courtyard fountain. Formally I embraced Loimel, and formally I embraced my bondsister, but I kept my eyes averted from theirs, so sharp was my guilt. It was the same in the Justiciary office for me. I translated the glances of the underlings into accusing glares. There is Kinnall Darival, who revealed all our mysteries to Schweiz of Earth. Look at the Sallan selfbarer slink by us! How can he stand his own reek? I kept to myself and did my work poorly. A document concerning some transaction of Schweiz’s crossed my desk, throwing me into dismay. The thought of facing Schweiz ever again appalled me. It would have been no great chore for me to revoke his residence permit in Manneran, using the authority of the High Justice; poor payment for the trust he showed me, but I came close to doing it, and checked myself only out of a deeper shame even than I already bore.
On the third day of my return, when my children too had begun to wonder what was wrong with me, I went to the Stone Chapel to seek healing from the drainer Jidd.
It was a damp day of heavy heat. The soft furry sky seemed to hang in looping folds over Manneran, and everything was coated in glistening beads of bright moisture. That day the sunlight was a strange color, almost white, and the ancient black stone blocks of the holy building gave off blinding reflections as though they were edged with prisms; but once inside the chapel, I found myself in dark, cool, quiet halls. Jidd’s cell had pride of place in the chapel’s apse, behind the great altar. He awaited me already robed; I had reserved his time hours in advance. The contract was ready. Quickly I signed and gave him his fee. This Jidd was no more lovely than any other of his trade, but just then I was almost pleased by his ugliness, his jagged knobby nose and thin long lips, his hooded eyes, his dangling earlobes. Why mock the man’s face? He would have chosen another for himself, if he had been consulted. And I was kindly disposed to him, for I hoped he would heal me. Healers were holy men. Give me what I need from you, Jidd, and I will bless your ugly face! He said, “Under whose auspices will you drain?”
“The god of forgiving.”
He touched a switch. Mere candles were too common for Jidd. The amber light of forgiveness came from some concealed gas-jet and flooded the chamber. Jidd directed my attention toward the mirror, instructing me to behold my face, put my eyes to my eyes. The eyes of a stranger looked back at me. Droplets of sweat clustered in the roots of my beard, where the flesh of my cheeks could be seen. I love you, I said silently to the strange face in the mirror. Love of others begins with love of self. The chapel weighed on me; I was in terror of being crushed beneath a block of the ceiling. Jidd was saying the preliminary words. There was nothing of love in them. He commanded me to open my soul to him.
I stammered. My tongue turned upon itself and was knotted. I gagged; I choked; I pulled my head down and pressed it to the cold floor. Jidd touched my shoulder and murmured formulas of comfort until my fit softened. We began the rite a second time. Now I traveled more smoothly through the preliminaries, and when he asked me to speak, I said, as though reciting lines that had been written for me by someone else, “These days past one went to a secret place with another, and we shared a certain drug of Sumara Borthan that unseals the soul, and we engaged in selfbaring together, and now one feels remorse for his sin and would have forgiveness for it.”
Jidd gasped, and it is no little task to astonish a drainer. That gasp nearly punctured my will to confess; but Jidd artfully recovered control, coaxing me onward with bland priestly phrases, until in a few moments the stiffness left my jaws and I was spilling everything out. My early discussions of the drug with Schweiz. (I left him unnamed. Though I trusted Jidd to maintain the secrecy of the draining, I saw no spiritual gain for myself in revealing to anyone the name of my companion in sin.) My taking of the drug at the lodge. My sensations as the drug took hold. My exploration of Schweiz’s soul. His entry into mine. The kindling of deep affection between us as our union of spirit developed. My feeling of alienation from the Covenant while under the drug’s influence. That sudden conviction of mine that the denial of self which we practice is a catastrophic cultural error. The intuitive realization that we should deny our solitude instead, and seek to bridge the gulfs between ourselves and others, rather than glorying in isolation. Also I confessed that I had dabbled in the drug for the sake of eventually reaching the soul of Halum; hearing from me this admission of yearning for my bondsister was old stuff to Jidd by now. And then I spoke of the dislocations I had experienced since coming out of my drug-trance: the guilt, the shame, the doubt. At last I fell silent. There before me, like a pale globe glowing in the dimness, hung the facts of my misdeeds, tangible and exposed, and already I felt cleaner for having revealed them. I was willing now to be brought back into the Covenant. I wanted to be purged of my aberration of selfbaring. I hungered to do penance and resume my upright life. I was eager to be healed, I was begging for absolution and restoration to my community. But I could not feel the presence of the god. Staring into the mirror, I saw only my own face, drawn and sallow, the beard in need of combing. When Jidd began to recite the formulas of absolution, they were merely words to me, nor did my soul lift. I was cut off from all faith. The irony of that distracted me: Schweiz, envying me for my beliefs, seeking through the drug to understand the mystery of submission to the supernatural, had stripped me of my access to the gods. There I knelt, stone knees on stone floor, making hollow phrases, while wishing that Jidd and I could have taken the drug together, so there might have been true communion between us. And I knew that I was lost.
“The peace of the gods be with you now,” said Jidd.
“The peace of the gods is upon one.”
“Seek no more for false succor, and keep your self to yourself, for other paths lead only to shame and corruption.”
“One will seek no other paths.”
“You have bondsister and bondbrother, you have a drainer, you have the mercies of the gods. You need no more.”
“One needs no more.”
“Go in peace, then.”
I went, but not in his kind of peace, for the draining had been a leaden thing, meaningless and trifling. Jidd had not reconciled me to the Covenant: he had simply demonstrated the degree of my separation from it. Unmoved though I had been by the draining, however, I emerged from the Stone Chapel somehow purged of guilt. I no longer repented my selfbaring. Perhaps this was some residual effect of the draining, this inversion of my purpose in going to Jidd, but I did not try deeply to analyze it. I was content to be myself and to be thinking these thoughts. My conversion at that instant was complete. Schweiz had taken my faith from me, but he had given me another in its place.
THIRTY-EIGHT
THAT AFTERNOON A PROBLEM came to me concerning a ship from Threish and some false cargo manifests, and I went to a pier to verify the facts. There by chance I encountered Schweiz. Since parting from him a few days before, I had dreaded meeting him again; it would be intolerable, I thought, to look into the eyes of this man who had beheld my entire self. Only by keeping apart from him could I eventually persuade myself that I had not, in fact, done with him what I had done. But then I saw him near me on the pier. He clutched a thick sheaf of invoices in one hand and was shaking the other furiously at some watery-eyed merchant in Glinish dress. To my amazement I felt none of the embarrassment I had anticipated, but only warmth and pleasure at the sight of him. I went to him. He clapped my shoulder; I clapped his. “You look more cheerful now,” he said.
“Much.”
“Let me finish with this scoundrel and we’ll share a flask of golden, eh?”
“By all means,” I said.
An hour later, as we sat together in a dockside tavern, I said, “How soon can we leave for Sumara Borthan?”
THIRTY-NINE
THE VOYAGE TO THE southern continent was conducted as though in a dream. Not once did I question the wisdom of undertaking the journey, nor did I pause to ask myself why it was necessary for me to take part in person, rather than let Schweiz make the trip alone, or send some hireling to gather the drug on our behalf. I simply set about the task of arranging for our passage.
No commercial shipping goes regularly between Velada Borthan and Sumara Borthan. Those who would travel to the southern continent must charter a vessel. This I did, through the instrumentality of the High Justiciary, using intermediaries and dummy signatories. The vessel I chose was no Mannerangi craft, for I did not care to be recognized when we sailed, but rather a ship of the western province of Velis that had been tied down in Manneran Harbor for the better part of a year by a lawsuit. It seemed there was some dispute over title to the ship going on in its home port, and the thicket of injunctions and counterin-junctions had succeeded in making it impossible for the vessel to leave Manneran after its last voyage there. The captain and crew were bitter over this enforced idleness and had already filed a protest with the Justiciary; but the High Justice had no jurisdiction over a lawsuit that was being fought entirely in the courts of Velis, and we therefore had had to continue the stay on the vessel’s departure until word came from Velis that title was clear. Knowing all this, I issued a decree in the High Justice’s name that would permit the unfortunate craft temporarily to accept charters for voyages to points “between the River Woyn and the eastern shore of the Gulf of Sumar.” That usually was taken to mean any point along the coast of the province of Manneran, but I specified also that the captain might hire himself out for trips to the northern coast of Sumara Borthan. Doubtless that clause left the poor man puzzled, and it must have puzzled him even more when, a few days later, he was approached by my agents and asked to make a voyage to that very place.
Neither Loimel nor Halum nor Noim nor anyone else did I tell of my destination. I said only that the Justiciary required me to go abroad for a short while. At the Justiciary I was even less specific, applying to myself for a leave of absence, granting it at once, and informing the High Justice at the last possible moment that I was not going to be available for the immediate future.
To avoid complications with the collectors of customs, among other things, I picked as our port of departure the town of Hilminor, in southwestern Manneran on the Gulf of Sumar. This is a medium-sized place that depends mainly on the fishing trade, but which serves also as a halfway stop for ships traveling between the city of Manneran and the western provinces. I arranged to meet our chartered captain in Hilminor; he then set out for that town by sea, while Schweiz and I made for it in a groundcar.
It was a two-day journey via the coastal highway, through a countryside ever more lush, ever more densely tropical, as we approached the Gulf of Sumar. Schweiz was in high spirits, as was I. We talked to one another in the first person constantly; to him it was nothing, of course, but I felt like a wicked boy sneaking off to whisper “I” and “me” in a playmate’s ear. He and I speculated on what quantity of the Sumaran drug we would obtain, and what we would do with it. No longer was it just a question of my getting some to use with Halum: we were talking now of proselytizing everyone and bringing about a wholesale liberation of my self-stifling countrymen. That evangelical approach had crept gradually into our plans almost without my realizing it, and had swiftly become dominant.
We came to Hilminor on a day so hot the sky itself seemed to break out in blisters. A shimmering dome of heat covered everything, and the Gulf of Sumar, as it lay before us, was golden-skinned in the fierce sunlight. Hilminor is rimmed by a chain of low hills, which are thickly forested on the seaward side and desert on the landward; the highway curved through them, and we stopped at one point so that I could show Schweiz the flesh-trees that covered the parched inland slopes. A dozen of the trees were clustered in one place. We walked through crackling tinderdry underbrush to reach them: twice the height of men they were, with twisted limbs and thick pale bark, spongy to the touch like the flesh of very old women. The trees were scarred from repeated tapping of their sap, making them look all the more repugnant. “Can we taste the fluid?” Schweiz asked. We had no implements for making the tap, but just then a girl of the town came along, perhaps ten years old, half-naked, tanned a deep brown to hide the dirt; she was carrying an auger and a flask, and evidently had been sent out by her family to collect flesh-tree sap. She looked at us sourly. I produced a coin and said, “One would show his companion the taste of the flesh-tree.” Still a sour look; but she jammed her auger into the nearest tree with surprising force, twisted it, withdrew, and caught the gush of clear thick fluid. Sullenly she handed her flask to Schweiz. He sniffed it, took a cautious lick, finally had a gulp. And whooped in delight. “Why isn’t this stuff sold all over Velada Borthan?” he asked.
