Robert Sheckley ⇐[1928-2005] was a prolific short story writer and one of science fiction’s great humorists. He also wrote several novels, and was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001.
∞ A link to his works . . .⇐¤ «In a land of clear colours» ⇓
The forms of things bear their own particular message. Here on Caldoor Five there is an unsettling irrationality about many articrafts: that mountain in the distance; «Undoor» I think they call it. Why should it look like a pyramid, point down? Or take this forest: some of the trees are ten feet in diameter; why should they all lie flat upon the ground? Or those birds, the magpie, who build their nests upon the air and who work in relays to support its weight. Why do clouds regularly form themselves into arches? These are only the more evident mysteries and each mystery has a mystery hidden within it. I suppose they are all rationally explicable, even predictable, but not by me. What worries me most just at the moment is this: why do mirrors in Calddor Five never reflect back what looks into them?
In some ways my position is ridiculous. Thanks to mechanical hypnosis I can speak three of the major languages on Caldoor, but my sense of nuance is completely off – I have the same trouble in speaking Spanish. We, Terrans, tend to believe that language is always intentional, that sentences are equations, denoting operations, orders, sensations, that words mean what they say, but this is untrue, even on Earth, and specially here on Caldoor. Words are intentional here also, but they tend to be used for other purposes. Words are used with extreme indirection. To them, I suppose, it’s all very logical and inevitable. It is not impossible to extract the meaning from most exchanges. What is tedious is the work involved. Because this great effort must be made with everything, nothing comes easy, nothing can be taken for granted. This must explain the high rate of emotional malfunction amongst interactors.
The problems of extraterrestrial exploration are always the same. First problem: how to stay alive. Second, close on its heels: how to stay sane. The uncertainty tends to be maximized. The biggest danger on an alien planet might well be anxiety. Culture shock is the problem. An overload of novelty is insupportable. One tends to blank out, to stop registering, or to do so in a hasty inattentive manner.
Decision making is also effected disastrously. There are too many imponderables to be weighed, too many courses of action to be chosen among, and always on the basis of insufficient information. A paralysis of the will sets in; one reaches a point where you can’t decide whether to make fried eggs or boiled eggs. Everything must stop while this decision is being made; and when it has been made, one is too exhausted to eat. I used to think that exploring an alien planet would be like seeing a very strange movie; I was prepared for that, but I had not counted on the fact that I would be a participant, not a spectator.
Lenaea came by today to see how I was getting on. Or at least I presume that is why she came. I find her presence both disturbing and comforting. I have grown accustomed to her anatomical differences. Her extreme physical flexibility, a trait she shares with most other Caldoorians, is still a wonder to me. The appearance is one of bonelessness, especially in arms, legs, neck. She can turn her head a full 180 degrees and look directly behind her. I’ve asked her not to do this in my presence. I have every reason to believe, though I have not yet verified it, that her sexual structures, concealed under her clothing, are similar to those of a Terran woman. Will I ever find this out by actual experience? I should not be thinking such thoughts.
Her face is a long oval, delicately proportioned, beautiful by Earth standards. She has a faint Eurasian look~, but ironically enough she would not be considered exotic on Earth. She could pass unnoticed in a crowd on Earth, except for her walk, of course, which is sinuous, flowing, faintly repelling, faintly exciting. Her appearance doesn’t bother me, quite the contrary, but her mind. One cannot expect to understand any woman, I suppose, but what is one to do about an alien woman? Nothing, of course. Anyhow, what would Lenaea want with me? In her eyes, I must be a freak, both in appearance and mentality.
Doornish is in his fifties apparently, a lean spare man of great dignity, a holder of a seat on the Council. He came here today and tried to warn me about something. I do not know what it is, despite my best efforts and his I could not make it out. He seems to have no specific danger in mind, yet I cannot believe that a man of Doormish’s intelligence would waste his time and efforts on a general statement about the danger of the world. So I may have missed a subtlety in Doormish’s speech. God knows what else I missed and what wrong assumptions I am operating on here. Still, I wish I knew whether or not there is a specific danger to me .
I was a volunteer in the first extra-terrestrial exploration call. We were all very young and idealistic. I could conceive of nothing more noble and important than the task of exploring the planets, establishing contact with other intelligences, working toward a great harmony and cooperation. Now I can take that sort of thing or leave it, but then I was a zealot; I passed all of the tests, now I was among the first thousand to go E.T.
Our ships were small. They were not places in which to live. They were cocoons in which to hibernate. We were scattered into spade like seeds cast to the winds. Well, we weren’t exactly scattered, we were ‘aimed’ more or less. The ships were contructed to home on various selected planet-bearing stars, to examine those planets with various criteria, to awaken the explorer if the planet proved viable and then to land, or to leave him in hibernation and travel on to an alternate target if the planet were unsuitable. Optimistics thought that half of us might live to see an alien world if we were extremely lucky. Their predictions didn’t matter to us; we considered this work a crusade. Twenty ships were keyed to Caldoor Five; mine seems to be the only one that made it.
Doornish came again today with three other members of the Council. They harangued me for about three hours. They were all dressed in their ceremonial robes, I suppose to underline the seriousness of the occasion. It was hard to take them seriously. The three who accompanied Doornish might have been selected to exemplify the basic somatotypes: Grandignine was a rolly-polly endomorph, nearly bald, choleric, incoherent in his exasperation; Panwolfin was the mesomorph, a powerful man of medium height, blunt-featured, self-possessed, courteous with an athlete’s unconscious grace even in his smallest gestures; and Eliamin was the ectomorph, skinny and intellectual, brilliant and erratic, ancient and boyish at the same time. The four of them had come, I believe, to make me understand the danger I was in, something about night winds, and to make the danger more evident to me despite language difficulties. They supplemented each other’s explanations, interrupted each other to clarify various points, introduced a historical background, argued about the import of various recent events concerning me. The result was chaotic, disturbing to all of us, uninformative and not at all helpful. Doornish asked me to attend an important ceremony or holiday in the city in three days. It seems to be more than a casual invitation so I shall attend. It begins at dawn tomorrow.
There was a stiff breeze last night, the first I can remember in some weeks. Might not that be the night wind they had been referring to?
I ate lunch and Lenaea still had not come. I lay down on the sofa and fell asleep. I had the following dream:
I was walking down a twisty cobblestoned street in an ancient village. Two people came from the left and approached me. I started to ask them a question. They seemed afraid of me. They turned and ran. I ran after them, wishing to reassure them of my good intentions, but they would not listen to me; they ran faster, outdistancing me. Then I reached the centre of the village and there was a great bonfire in the plaza, and it rose higher, higher than the church, but I felt no heat. Then I woke up, shaking, frightened, cold with sweat.
Lenaea came just a moment after that.
Lenaea is very beautiful and loving. There is some compensation for the steady attrition of my humanity. We played a pretty domestic scene, Lenaea and I. She brings me breakfast walking briskly into the bedroom in her swirling morning coat. I drink a warm mild stimulant, about the equivalent of coffee. I am the only person on Caldoor who does this; little habits like that help me to remember who I am; then I work on my notes, slides, tapes.
After lunch I go for a walk; usually I turn away from the city into stubbled fields and second-growth forests. I take along a flute that Woolfin made for me. Its tones are not quite true but I don’t mind. My own tones are not quite true either. There is a hill several miles from here called «Namasi». I usually climb it and sit on its pointed top all alone, playing my flute, and resting my eyes on distant scenery. I play «When You’re A Long Way From Home» and «Amapola» and «Flying Down To Rio» and other songs that have all but forgotten even on Earth. The songs sound strange in this place. The notes are a miniature invasion bravely piped, soon lost in the immensities of Caldoor. While playing, I am a Terran, but at night in Lenaea’s arms I do not know what I am, not a Caldoorian by any means not quite human either, a changeling perhaps. Lenaea knows with her own wisdom who and what I am. Sometimes she holds me very tight as if I might fly off into the vacuum of space. Sometimes she holds my face in her two hands, looks into my eyes and makes a strange sound deep in her throat. Sometimes she squeezes my hand tight, tight… I do not think I will ever be rescued; I will live out my time here. And if there is a heaven or hell it will be a Caldoorian one to which I will be consigned, or perhaps there is a special Limbo for those who have severed their roots, who are no longer of one stock not yet of another. In the meantime, I have no real complaints.
[. . . Keep reading . . .]
Yesterday was «Saramayish», a very special holiday. Lenaea and I were lucky enough to obtain first row seats in the drawing. Woolfin had also drawn a front row seat, which pleased Lenaea and myself very much; it meant that three of our friendship bonds had been lucky today and thus we give luck to the others. I looked round to see where my friends were seated. Eliamin was in a forth row behind a pillar; he smiled his pleasure at our good luck. Grandignine, the lovable fool, had contrived a part for himself in the ceremony, quite superfluously since the Council eyes would have picked him anyhow. And dear Doornish was playing ‘Inga’ to the girls in the procession as he had for the last three years since reaching his fullness. Lenaea and I were excited enough to hold hands; we clutched each other, waiting, scarcely breathing, even though the ceremony is almost the same year in and year out. Still, no-one could contain himself on «Saramayish». Then the procession began. First the young girls, clothed all in white, and then the boys, in russet and forest green. Their dance was the utmost expression of a prayer. Next, the god of discord was brought in on his iron cart. This is all symbolic, of course; no-one believes in a literal god of discord. They are addressing themselves to the attitude. The god was very splendid this year, almost ten feet tall, very portly, brilliantly coloured in metallic blacks, reds, yellows . . He looked impossibly solid and strong, invincible in fact, and there were whispers of consternation throughout the stands, for the artificer’s cooperative has been known to be overzelous of several points in their long history, making durable out of pride of craft what had been intended for a single day only. The cart comes to a stop. There are various propitiatory dancers, several songs, a dramatic recitative, all of this is intoxicating. The finest expressions of theatrical art are saved for this day. All too soon, that part is over. Then Doornish steps forward; he approaches the god with deliberate steps and Lenaea and I can hardly control ourselves for pride and joy that this man is in our friendship group. Doornish stalks the god with slow steps, and some of the children start to cry. But Grandignine and the other clowns come out, dressed as flowers and herbivorous animals. They make jokes, sing nonsense songs, scramble under each other’s legs and over each other’s backs. The children scream with laughter and even we adults must smile at the antics. But our attention is abruptly diverted. Doornish has reached the god. He has mounted the iron cart. Now literally we cannot see the clouds. All of our attention is focused on Doornish. Yes, an all-out concern. Doornish inspects the god and turns his back on him. We applaud. He turns again, takes a piece of the god’s coat and rips it off. We fall silent, barely breathing. With measured movements Doornish rips off all of the god’s clothes, rendering him naked. We wait. Doornish is committed now. He can no longer refuse the job; in his two bare hands the luck of the city resides. He inspects the body of the god, which is made of various metals, and looks as if it could withstand the eruption of a volcano. He touches this part and that, learning the nature of the ultimate evil he’s encountering. His fingers glide over the god’s face, down his massive chest down his hard muscled flanks. Doornish stops; he has found what he was looking for. He lunges suddenly at precisely the right spot, his hand penetrates the thin soft sheet of copper and his fingers ripped upward, stopping only when they encounter bronze. Doornish’s eyes are rolled blindly upward. He explores the hole he’s made with his fingers. He probes, finds softness, rips, moves his hand, rips again, reaches inside the god, rips, he takes his hand out, there is blood on it. He reaches in again. His hand grips. He sets his feet. The chords in his neck stand out. He heaves. We, in the stands, hold our breath and some of us have already begun to curse the artificers, for we are afraid they have ruined the ceremony. But then Doornish relaxes. He’s pulled something loose within the god and he takes it out and shows it to us: an iron stanchion, one of the internal supporting members. He holds it above his head and we applaud and hug each other with relief. It is the same every year and the stanchion always comes free and Doornish makes his muscles stand out for show, but in reality he only must exert a moderate pull and we know all of this. No, that there is no reasonable way that a ceremony can fail. Nevertheless, we are in anxiety until it actually happens; that is always how «Saramayish» affects us. With the iron bar removed, the god’s left arm collapses onto the iron cart. The children shriek. Doornish works quickly now, ripping copper and tearing out the god’s supporting members, which we referred to as its ribs. Doornish’s movements become a dance, which is accompanied by the slow steady collapse of discord. At last he reaches in and plucks out the spine and then steps nimbly out of the way. What was left of the god collapses in on itself. Doornish reaches into the debris and plucks out a double chambered globe of red quartz. This he shatters on the ground. Now, at last, we can applaud, and we do so releasing our tension tumultuously. There are some hours of the ceremony still to go and we stay until the finish, taking part in the dancing and all the rest. But the part that Doornish played with the god of discord was the heart of the Festival, the centre of our mystery. The new apartment is really a fantasy beyond my wildest dreams: fourteen rooms! Can you imagine that? fourteen rooms in the heart of a major city! And we’re still on Chatai Square, which we had grown to like so much. My question is answered: they think pretty highly of their art object around here. This apartment is really the answer to our dreams, with all of us living here together, me, Grandignine, Woolfin, Eliamin, Doornish and our wives. We are able to do without clumsy flow-diagrams. We have changed our sexual practice to «variang», what might be turned «orgy» on Earth. It is not an orgy, however, not in the sense that the word is used on Earth. Here, quite frankly, «variang» is not much more than a convenient way of doing what we are already doing. It saves the tedious shuffling back and forth between rooms and spares one the attendant embarrassment of absent-mindedly going into the wrong bedroom on the wrong night. The purpose of «variang» is suprasexual. It is a state of heightened sensuality, when all of us sleep together in the same room. We had the apartment remodelled to permit this. Questions of precedence are lost when warm bodies touch and mingle. Intercourse, though of utmost importance to us all, becomes secondary to the joy of all of us sleeping together in each other’s arms. «Variang» is practised more or less continually by about a third of the population, I am told. I must admit that it has its drawbacks, albeit minor ones. The cumulative sexual force generated by ten bodies making love together night after night is apt to cause dizziness and hardness of hearing in some people. Then, too, some individuals cannot bear to be together for so long a time. These people, with their lust for solitude, are considered alienated and are the objects of special pity. And finally there are the minor irritations, the tossing and turning, moaning, groaning, snoring… all of which interfere with sleep. One of the biggest public health projects in Caldoor is to search for a universal cure for snoring. One can always take advantage of the various empty bedrooms, of course; and upon occasion I have; but I don’t like to leave my friends; it is a little rude and uncaring, and a native Caldoorian feels that much more strongly than I do. Taken all in all, «variang» is a pleasurable activity and well worth accepting a few minor discomforts for. «Variang» is a social state to which Caldoor officially aspires, for it exemplifies the utmost pinnacle in togetherness. Despite this, Lenaea and I have taken to sneaking off by ourselves to the upstairs storeroom of all places. There, I have put a mattress on the floor and Lenaea and I make love there. I do not know why we wished to be alone and away from all we hold dear. There is a little game that Lenaea and I play with our toes. It is nothing to be ashamed of. But we have never done it in front of the others. Perhaps our desire to be alone comes down to that simple explanation. Lenaea has become a little irritated with me since I formed a «doroman», a complex male sexual group, with Eliamin, Grandignine and Doornish. Woolfin regretfully declined that invitation. He’s spending a few days alone in the hospital, recuperating from overstrained nerves. The poor man found himself in multiple reciprocal «ourmgs» last week with Histaman, Sarah and Mereth, a member of a cognate friendship group. This afforded the rest of us considerable amusement. Since it is one of the standard farcical situations of the local equivalent to the «commedia dell’arte». But it was not amusing for my poor ardent Woolfin. Still, he will recover in time for the feast of passage. Lenaea’s annoyance at my doroman grouping is quite explicable. She herself has been afflicted with hysterical frigidity. She tried various combinations, both male and male-female. Her doctor prescribed strangers, but this also gave no relief. It is not the first time that she has been taken with hysterical frigidity, and it is by no means an uncommon affliction on Caldoor. There are countless theories and a bewildering array of remedies, but most experts agree -as they often do on Earth-that time is the best cure. Our state of love has altered, of course; how could it not? Now we are in «Reofice», asexual caring, and poor Lenaea is afraid to face her friends. I am unable to feel much sympathy for her, though I would like to. When one is in one of the higher states of desire, it becomes almost impossible to achieve empathy with someone in a lower state. I do not wish to be callous. but I do have my «doroman”, which presently occupies my feelings. I suppose «doroman» would be called a homosexual practice on Earth, and would be scorned by the great preponderance of heterosexuals, but here no judgemental distinction is made. The race has a heterosexual bias, as biologically it must, but that has never become a behavioural mandate. I wish I could describe the quality of «doroman», for it is unlike anything else, but it is also like everything else, since it does not carry the weight of centuries, of societal disapproval. Sometimes I still wonder how I, an Earthman, could adapt so easily to these various practices. I suppose it is because it is all so normal here, and one tends to accept the standards of the society one lives with. Whatever the reason, it is all good fun. I should regret the ritual prescription of all sexuality except the religious variety which characterizes the feast of passage.* * *
This is easy country to cross: gently rolling hills, short grass, scattered trees… Even the sun is good to us, shining with moderation and never allowing the nights to get too cold. Doornish tells me that the character of the land will soon change for the worse and the life-giving sun of this region will give way to a piercer deity. But we grow stronger as we continue our march. My feet are callous now and my shoulders have grown accustomed to the pack. I continue to write this record, not out of desire but out of compulsion. It feels so futile. I can’t remember any of the important things that should be noted. The feast of passage, for example, which I thought so memorable at the time, now it is gone from my memory, except for the disconnected flashes that are more disturbing than enlightening. I have asked the others for assistance in reconstructing that event, but they laughed at me rudely and tell me that only practical things are worth remembering. At first, they did not like to see me writing this journal. They feared that I was interfering with supernatural forces. Gandignine specially was upset. Once he tried to burn this journal, half-heartedly though, as he does everything, but Doornish saved the day by declaring that I was obviously the god-struck scribe of the group, that I was writing the heroic account of our journey, and that this account will be sung aloud at the in-gathering and bring all of us prestige. I do not know whether he believed it or not, but it brought about a change of attitude. Now they urge me to write and they make sure I hear about their puny daily exploits. I have only a few disconnected fragments of memory concerning the Festival but I’m haunted by the feeling that something important happened at that time. My feeling is that something bad happened at that time; or perhaps I don’t mean «bad», perhaps I mean monstrous. We all took some drug, I remember that much. It was part of the Festival – had been so from time immemorial. I think it was a root that we washed, sliced and chewed, and we had special silk bags in which to spit the tough strands. We laughed a good deal about the ridiculousness of taking the drug, but Eliamin became serious and said that the drug was not necessary to the Festival: it was used simply to ease the participants and spare them anxiety; and he explained that the drug’s effects were confined to about forty hours, and that mild hallucinations had been known to occur at the peak of the drug’s action but that the experience was controllable and disorientation rarely occurred. Eliamin usually made it his business to find out things like that and he had also discussed with a doctor the advisability of me, an alien, taking the drug. The doctor told him that since I had no apparent difficulty with any of the other foods of Caldoor I presumably would not with this one; but if I had any anxiety, he added, I should desist. I had no anxiety; I took the drug with the others. Then there is a gap in my memory. The next thing I remember is being in a place with many bright colours flashing. The colours were making my head hurt, the reds specially. After a while, they began to take shape. They coalesced first into clouds, then into pillars and finally into naked faceless human shapes. The scorching colours continued to burn my eyes until I, in self-defence, also began to pulse and glow with colour. Earlier, I remember being in a room. The walls were stone and they were covered with inscriptions that I couldn’t read. An oil lamp flickered in one corner. Then I looked up and saw standing before me a naked man with the head of a fox. In one hand he hold a flint knife, the other a pinecone. The fox head was a mask, of course – it had to be a mask – He said to me:
– Now you know.
– What do I know? I asked him.
– You know the face of the future. I hesitated for a long time; then I asked:
– What are you? He replied:
– A mirror.
I reached out to touch him and my hand struck a smooth surface. I put my hand to my face and my fingers touched the long hairy snout. I think I screamed then, but I can’t remember anything past that.
There was a woman’s voice saying: «All of our fine dreams, and now we have come to this.» And then another woman said: «This, too, is part of the dream.»
Our supply of food has been inadequate for some time. Most edible plants seem to grow in the lowlands. We are several thousand feet above sea level, I would estimate, and still climbing. Vegetation of any kind is growing scarce. We use up a lot of energy on the truck, and we are not replacing it. We are undergoing changes in behaviour; all of us have become prone to irritation, depression, sudden inexplicable rages. I do not know if our situation can account for all of this. I think we have undergone changes in personality dating from the Festival. We simply are not who we had been!
Good luck this evening. Just at dusk Woolfin spotted a deer. We all threw rocks at it and through great fortune we broke his right foreleg and then pounded to death with sticks. We built a fire, barely able to contain ourselves, for we had not realized how starved we were. We roasted the meat over an open fire, though this is a wasteful method, and devoured it half raw.
Four sleeps later we wished that we had looted the city when we had the chance, for now the country we passed through is truly barren. We are very high up now; we are beyond the tree line and still climbing. There are shrubs here but very few animals of any description. Leanea no longer speaks to me and she sleeps apart. She scorns me because I am a scribe and because her desires has to be mate to a warrior. She watches Doornish constantly and her eyes tell everything; Doornish pretends not to see for that would be beneath his dignity as clan leader. But the others see and they laugh at me. I don’t know what to do about this.
Why deny it any longer? We all detest each other. But it is a family hatred that we share, not comparable to the hatred we have for other clans. It makes no sense at all when you consider how we had been before the Festival; and perhaps it should be viewed the other way: our life before makes no sense at all in terms of our present condition.
Something truly miraculous. We were reaching the end of our strength and Doornish called a halt to prepare a fire. Eliamin began to chant to the ancestors and we all clapped in time. The holly light was in Eliamin’s eyes, and he danced around the fire with a strength and grace that went beyond anything physical we had ever witnessed. We are very lucky. Doornish tells us that not all clans have a natural priest among them. Eliamin 5 song went on and on, and we danced to it feeling no fatigue. Some time before dawn the strength from the god touched Sarah, and she fell to the ground and tried to bite her tongue, but we put a stick in her mouth and still we danced, for our faith was strong.
Then the god relented and sent us a bear. At first we thought it was a ghost, because bears have no business so high in the mountains, but Eliamin knew it for what it was and he directed us to kill it. That was no easy task. The god permitted us to trap the bear in a little gulley. It had to be the work of the god, for bears do not permit themselves to be trapped so easily. We showered the bear with stones but this had no effect, and our courage began to grow larger than our hunger. We looked to our strong men, Doornish and Woolfin, and they looked at each other. There has been bad blood between them, for they both had the blood of leaders although only one can lead here. But now they composed their differences for the good of the clan and because god was watching to see what we did with his favour. They took their spears and went forward. The rest of us continued to throw stones to distract the bear. The spearmen went to the other side. We didn’t really have spears, only long shafts of wood with fire-hardened points. The bear rose up on his hind legs and his little eyes flashed red. His head swang to and fro, and then he swang around and attacked Doornish. Then things happened fast. Eliamin let loose the god’s screen and that froze the bear in its tracks. Doornish wedged the spear against a rock. Woolfin, whom some of us expected to turn traitor at that moment, attacked the bear from the side, driving his spear deep just below the ribs. The bear lunged at Doornish, but without his full impetus which had been interrupted by the god’s screen Doornish stayed cool and positioned his spear taking the bear in the centre of the throat, and then Doornish rode quickly out of the way of the slashing claws, suffering no more than a deep scratch from his shoulder to his hip, and even that was good, for the scar will win him much prestige. Then the passion went out of us and we stood silently and watched the bear kick and twitch and bleed to death. Eliamin collapsed; he had paid a fearful price for saving us and that will not be forgotten.
All my clan sought me out. They kissed me and said goodbye. They walked away, each person in his own direction. Then I knew, whatever else happened it meant the dissolution of my clan, the loss of my family. Eliamin was the last to go; he was crying, and he said:
– «We all had great pleasure with each other Goldstin, and you were our family as we were yours, but now the law of the universe has been invoked, that like must stay with like, and it is a bitter time for us to go away from you.»
– «For the sake of what we have been to each other,» I said, «tell me what is going to happen.»
– «I cannot tell you.» He said. «I do not know. It is a mystery.»
– «Then, how do you know that it is the end for us?»
– «Because I know,» he said. «That is blood knowledge. It has nothing to do with our heads.»
– «Are you going to die?» I asked. «Is that it?» He shook his head:
– «There is no death on Caldoor. There is only change. Goodbye Goldstin.»
– «Wait!» I cried. «Is there nothing else you can say to me?»
– «I can tell you a story.» He said. «Once there was a baby mouse who lost its family. It wandered alone over hills and down valleys, lonely and afraid, and it grew weaker and weaker and at last lay under a tree near to death. Some grasshoppers came by and felt sorry for the little mouse. They fed it and took care of it, exactly as they would a baby grasshopper of their own; and the baby mouse lived and learned the ways of the grasshoppers and finally came to think that he was a grasshopper. And they were all very happy together and they lived as one big family. And the mouse swore that he would never leave its family. But then winter came, and the grasshoppers died and the mouse was left alone. It was no-one’s fault: grasshoppers live only a single season whereas mice live for several.»
– «But you said there is no death on Caldoor!»
– «Not for us, who were born here.»
– «But for me there is death!»
– «I do not know. Perhaps there is death for you here since you are not of this place. But I do not know. Your life and its changes are a mystery to me, a greater mystery than we are to you.»
– «Is something going to happen to me?» I asked him again.
– «I do not know.» Eliamin said. «You see, the trouble with words, nothing can be explained that you do not already know. I tried to talk about this for your sake, because I love you, but I have said too much, or not enough, and have only caused you anxiety. Keep the memory of our love. Goodbye Goldstin.»
So Eliamin, the last of my clan, went away. People are scattered all over the hills. They seem to be waiting for some great event. I stay and wait, too. What else can I do? It is evening now, and I sit by the fire and the last of my clan. All of the thousands have gone to sleep already, and their fires are burning out. I, alone, bear witness, but I am tired too. I cannot stay awake but in the morning I’m going to take some kind of action.
Now I am alone. The thousands of people who covered these hillsides are gone. This mere absence of something familiar is the most astounding sight I have seen in my travels. They are gone, and they have left behind them only litter. I am surrounded on these hilltops by burned-out fires, weapons, cooking pots, clothing. All of their clothing is here! They left without their clothes. For me, this means that they are vanished. I cannot bring myself to accept what has happened. I suppose they left in the night. One of them may well have given me a drug, then they all went away. Perhaps they left their clothes for some religious reason.
It is only a matter of time before the animals learn what I am, for now I have them fooled too as I have fooled so many others. They are remarkably tame. I don’t think they have ever been exposed to anyone. They are shy, like all animals, but friendly. They come up to me and lick my hand, they sleep near me, but I must not grow accustomed to that. They will go away too. The ones who stayed longest around were those of my totem: the owl and the deer. They are the kindest of the animals. In a way the deer have adopted me; one or more of them always sleep near me. The owls light on my shoulders, the only birds around here to do so. Grass is covering the weapons and clothing. Time is passing. It is passing.
All right, I suppose I can put it together somehow. What the hell is so terrible about saying it? All the people turned into animals. I didn’t because I wasn’t born here. They underwent a metamorphosis, not their first. From the time I came here the strangeness was evident. Their social institutions changed with bewildering speed; overnight the norms had shifted and its highly different standards were accepted. They changed from a formal evasive culture to a loving communal culture to a primitive distrustful culture. But the metamorphosis of their lives go deeper than that. They changed again, a physical change, like that of a butterfly or frog. Their births are somehow connected to the life cycle of the planet, to all of its life cycles, I should say. It is a planet of reincarnation. There is no mysticism here. It is the simplest most basic truth. Men are reborn as animals. And what are the animals reborn as? Here, I don’t believe that the cycle of birth has any value judgements attached. They do not admit the existence of karma. One birth, as one thing, is as good as any other birth, for all things living are worthy of being lived, and besides everyone will in time be born as everything. It is reincarnation without death. Here, there is only birth and change. Naturally enough, there was no way in which I could have joined that cycle.
It is late in the summer. The days are golden. We are getting more frequent rains. I have returned to «MODEIA». Many of the animals have returned with me. They don’t seem to mind the place at all. Of course it isn’t really theirs, it belongs to the next human births. Anyhow, the animals are going away or more probably they are changing, for a new growing season has begun here and plants are crowding out animals.
I have moved out of the city again. It is fall now and I am happiest sleeping among the members of my totem, the pines. I do not have much to write. Time is passing and I am living. I am starting to feel steadier. I’m beginning to come together.
It is winter. The animals are all gone. The plants are dead. The only thing alive in this place is me. There will be new births in the spring, I am sure of that. Perhaps my friends will be reborn then, but perhaps I will be dead, because death is always one of my imminent and unique metamorphosis. I am going to stay here until spring. This will necessitate some hard decisions. I will have to live off the bodies of my friends, animal and vegetable, or perish myself. Perhaps it is ultimate human selfishness, but I cannot permit myself to die, even at this price. So I eat what I must and I try to remember that everything eats and is eaten, and that some day I will provide sustenance for whatever can use me here. I follow the custom: I will not eat those of my clan; I’ll eat as sparingly as I can of anything that once contained life. I wait. I dream. Will they return to me? I pray it will be a short winter.
The recording was released by VOICEPRINT (UK) in 1993
[voice = Peter Sinfield ; music by Brian Eno; illustrations = Leonor Quiles]
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