The Totems of Abydos

CHAPTER 2





“So you are at the beginning of your career?” said Emilio Rodriguez.

“Or perhaps at the end of it,” smiled Allan Brenner.

“For you are on your way with old Rodriguez to Abydos?” smiled the other.

“Something like that,” said Brenner. He was not certain, really, how to address Rodriguez. Should it be as “Mister,” as “Professor,” as “Doctor”?

“Didn’t they teach you grantsmanship?” inquired Rodriguez. “Is this the best you could land?”

“I was assigned,” said Brenner.

“To keep an eye on me?”

“I don’t think so,” said Brenner. He didn’t.

“What time is it?” asked Rodriguez.

Brenner smiled. That was an odd question. Did he want a body-time, indexed to some recent port, perhaps one where they had had a layover for bioadjustment; did he want a local time, and if so, indexed to what world, and to what coordinates on what world; would he like a solar time, a sidereal time, or one indexed to the half-life of a specified element, or what? The ship functioned on commercial time, of course, indexed to the prime meridian on Commonworld, a neutral wilderness of little note or interest in the galaxy other than the fact that its imaginary gridwork of coordinates provided more than four thousand worlds with a common frame of reference.

Rodriguez answered his own question. “It’s late,” he said. That seemed an odd answer to an odd question. “It’s late,” he repeated. Brenner assumed he meant that he was tired. That was probably what he meant.

“You have kept much to your cabin,” said Brenner.

“Surely you have no objection to that,” said Rodriguez.

“No,” said Brenner. “But if we are to be colleagues—”

“There are strong worlds and weak worlds,” said Rodriguez.

“What?” said Brenner.

“We come from a weak world,” said Rodriguez.

“You shouldn’t smoke those things,” said Brenner, “and drink that stuff.”

“It will make my heart like the hoof of a four-horned korf,” said Rodriguez, perhaps quoting some authority, and this stuff,” said he, raising his closed mug, the slurp hole closed, “is a bladder irritant, a disaster to the liver, a poisoner of the bloodstream, and a destroyer of brain cells.”

“That is about it,” granted Brenner.

Rodriguez sat back in the webbing. He puffed on a roll of Bertinian leaf. It was outlawed on many worlds, but could be obtained, as one might expect, in various black markets, to which the digital purses of various officials owed remarkable economic latencies, available upon the punching of special numbers, putatively not on file with the state.

An odious cloud, like some noxious fog or lethal gas, drifted toward Brenner but never reached him, being caught up in the intake of the filtering system. In one hand, Rodriguez, his large, slovenly frame back in the webbing, grasped the zero-gravity mug, a stein of Velasian Heimat. “I take a modest pride in being a man of many vices.” he said.

Brenner wondered why Rodriguez didn’t partake of the various lozenges and wafers, the candies, or medications, available on many worlds, and even from the small commissary on the freighter, which provided relatively innocuous intoxicants and controllers, stimulants, euphoriants, anesthetics, depressors, inhibitors and such. But Rodriguez, it seemed, preferred the naivety and violence of more primitive poisons, poisons of a sort which on many worlds had not been known for millennia.

“I have, until now,” said Rodriguez, idly, “courted death.”

“And it seems you are still at it,” said Brenner.

Rodriguez looked up at him.

“With weed and brew,” smiled Brenner.

“I have sought her on mountains, and in the depths of gaseous seas, on fields of war stretched between stars, in the bistros of subterranean worlds, amongst thieves and assassins, in jungles and ice deserts where my footstep was the first from the beginning of time.”

Brenner was silent.

“Do you know why these things are outlawed?” asked Rodriguez.

“Certainly,” said Brenner, “they are poisonous substances.”

“Because,” said Rodriguez, a little wildly, “they are the counterfeits of life, and that it what is fearful about them.

They are false images which call to mind a reality, a reality which is secret.”

“You are drunk,” said Brenner.

“In their pernicious way they point to life,” said Rodriguez, “like a lie points to the truth.”

Brenner was quiet.

“Life, and truth, are illegal, like reality,” said Rodriguez. “The small people, the mice, the insects, the flowers, are afraid of them. They do not even recognize the battlefields in their cellars, the jungles beneath their porches.”

“No one is small,” said Brenner.

“True,” said Rodriguez. “All are the same size, by fiat. No one is small, no one is weak, no one is stupid, no one is petty, no one is futile, no one is failed, all are marvelous, and wonderful, and precious, and, a statistical anomaly, all are the same size, except that the smallest are the best, the noblest, and the largest.”

“Do not be bitter,” said Brenner. Difficulties of the sort to which Rodriguez might be alluding had been resolved on certain worlds by court rulings long ago, in particular, those having to do with the oneness and brotherhood of life, in which all life forms on a planet, without discrimination with respect to arbitrary placement on a phylogenetic scale, became citizens of the planet, their votes, in many cases, being cast by proxies. Needless to say, severe political conflicts had occurred over the control of these proxies.

“Do you realize that most of the people you meet are dead?” asked Rodriquez.

“Come now,” said Brenner.

“Yes!” said Rodriguez.

“I never noticed,” Brenner admitted.

“They have never been alive,” said Rodriguez, wiping his face. An escaped droplet of Heimat, like a small, luminescent world floated toward the steel ceiling of the lounge. “And that is the same thing. Then, eventually, their bodies will cease to function and they will never even find out they were never alive. They will never have discovered they were never alive!”

“They are alive,” said Brenner, moodily.

“Yes, I suppose so, in a way,” said Rodriguez.

“Certainly,” said Brenner.

“Chemically,” said Rodriguez.

“More than that,” said Brenner.

“You are a humanist,” said Rodriguez.

“A lifest,” said Brenner. The current conditioning programs instituted in most school systems had rendered the term ‘humanist’ odious, because of its ethnocentric connotations.

“Yes,” said Rodriguez, thoughtfully. “They have their small glow.”

“Certainly,” said Brenner.

“Like the grub, and the flea,” he said.

“Not at all,” said Brenner.

“At one time,” said Brenner, “I courted death, for I thought to find her hand in hand with life. But I do so no longer now, for I am come to Abydos.”

Brenner, who was young and blond, and innocent, and perhaps bright, regarded Rodriguez, puzzled.

“In the end,” said Rodriguez, “do we not all come to Abydos?”

“I have read your writings,” said Brenner.

At this point in their conversation one of the panels in the lounge, some feet from the floor, slid back, it opening to the network of access spaces outside, leading even to the vast hold spaces, some of which were closed, and some open, with the cargo floating in its nets, and the engines, and the captain entered, unblinking, the long digits of his appendages spread, open, climbing across, adhering to it with a secretory fluid, what was to Rodriguez and Brenner, relative to their position and the placement of their webbing, the ceiling, and then down one wall until he rather squatted before them, his hind legs outstretched, only their nails in contact with the floor, the nails of the forward appendages, the digits widely spread, hovering in space. He exchanged pleasantries with the two passengers, who were his only passengers. He seldom had passengers and his ship, a medium-class freighter of the R-series, registry Noton II, with barges in tow, was designed neither for the accommodation or comfort of such and its route was one not likely be taken except by those who did so in the line of business. To be sure, these were not his first passengers. He had occasionally had Ellits, Bellarians, and the tiny Zevets aboard, generally prospectors and mining engineers. Also, he had sometimes had organisms of the sort of Rodriguez and Brenner. It was for such as these that four cabins had been welded onto the girderwork abutting certain closed holds and the small lounge, with its now-closed, shielded port, installed. The conversation, brief and polite, for the captain was a shy, reticent sort, was accomplished by means of a nearby cabinet, of a not very sophisticated design, for it was an old freighter, which translated certain hissing sounds into visual displays, and responsive auditory vibrations, of a sort naturally produced by Rodriguez and Brenner, into variant displays, unintelligible to them but apparently meaningful to the captain. As all were visually oriented organisms all went smoothly, and they felt a certain bond, to some extent, unworthy though it might be, between them, predicated as it was on so arbitrary a basis. With the tiny Zevets the captain had never managed to feel at ease, with their detestation of light and the swift, snapping movements of their tiny wings, so sudden that they had more than once provoked the darting forth of the captain’s tongue, to the embarrassment of all.

“I have a heard a noise,” said Rodriguez, addressing the captain, though speaking toward the cabinet.

The captain’s head lifted politely, peering at the cabinet. Such things, thought Brenner, have long necks.

“It comes from somewhere in one of the holds,” said Rodriguez.

The captain’s head turned toward Rodriguez.

Brenner had heard the noise, too, usually in the sleeping period, late at night, so to speak. He had heard it several times. He, too, was curious about it. On the other hand, in his occasional meetings with the captain, or one of the small crew, for the ship was largely automated, there had been no cabinet at hand.

Brenner noted that the captain was looking at Rodriguez, almost as though he could understand him without the cabinet. Its neck is long, thought Brenner.

The captain then turned to the machine. A soft stream of sound, carefully modulated, almost thoughtfully, as though steam escaping from a valve might become a medium of communication, impinged on the receptors of the cabinet. “It is an animal,” flashed on the display panel.

“It must be a very large animal,” said Rodriguez.

“Yes,” said the captain.

Brenner, whose cabin was closer to the sound than was that of Rodriguez, though the cabins of neither directly abutted its presumed holding area, presumably as a tactful gesture on the part of the captain, or of the officialdom of the company whose vessel this was, had often heard it.

“What sort of animal is it?” asked Rodriguez.

“I do not know its code, or its classification,” said the captain.

“Do you know its common name?” asked Rodriguez.

“No,” said the captain.

“It is probably enroute to the games at Megara,” said Rodriguez to Brenner.

Brenner shivered. He did not doubt that Rodriguez, who had seen so much, had looked upon the games of Megara, or games similar to them. Onlookers, tourists, thrill-seekers, gamblers, the jaded of a thousand worlds, the gourmets of the spirit, tasters of exquisite refinements, came from the remote corners of the galaxy to witness such games.

“Perhaps to the preserves on Habitat,” said Brenner, “or to the field laboratories of Freeworld.” These, in effect, were planetwide zoological gardens, with restricted areas for scientists and naturalists.

“It is mammalian, or mammalianlike, and carnivorous,” said Rodriguez.

“Yes,” said the captain.

Brenner, too, had surmised that, from the sounds of the animal. He had often heard it, and was much more aware of it, really, than Rodriguez, as his cabin was much closer to its holding area. Indeed, he sometimes fancied, during the quiet watches, when he was lying buckled in his webbing, trying to sleep, the ship and its barges drifting with their momentum in the loneliness and stillness of space, their path occasionally altered by as little as a finger’s breadth by the brief whisper of a vernier in the night, attended by its vigilant guidance system, that he could detect its pacing, a restless, energetic, relentless, seemingly unceasing pacing. Too, sometimes he heard, with no mistake about it, the scratching of claws on steel, and the hurling of a body with its mass and weight against bolted plates. It did this again and again, but, of course the plates held. It could only hurt itself by doing this, but it did not stop. But there would be no mistaking, either in Rodriguez’ cabin, or elsewhere on that ship, containing more than three cubic acres of interior space, the screams of the animal, or its howlings, or those thunderous roars, those challenges to steel, those protests against a fate not understood but resented, those utterances which came angrily, unresigned, unforgiving, unreconciled, from its dark beast’s heart. Brenner was pleased that there were no pacifiers about, to release the beast, pledged to be the first to die that it might be free. Such things would dominate most food chains. It was for that reason he suspected that the beast was not bound for the gardens of Habitat or Freeworld. He did not think that even the zoologists would care to share their world with it. Only in more natural places, in darker, crueler jungles, could such a thing find its throne.

“In the morning, at ten, we will enter orbit at Abydos,” said the captain. This would be ship time, in this case, commercial time, indexed to Commonworld. The ship would not dock at Abydos, of course, but would, so to speak, lie off the reefs, and be served by lighters. Abydos was not an outpost planet, not one lying at the fringes of known life forms, but a backward planet, in its way. It had, in effect, been noted, charted, cataloged, and then left behind in the march of a thousand life forms across the galaxy, with whom folk such as Rodriguez and Brenner had come along, more as passengers than explorers or frontiersmen. Their own world, long ago, had turned inward on itself. It had, as a world, long ago, forgotten to look at the stars. It had turned rather toward comfort, obedience, law, sameness. It was now one of the homogenized worlds which prided itself on its superiority to more ambitious, curious, aggressive worlds, habitats to more ambitious, curious, aggressive species. The promise of the world of Rodriguez and Brenner had never been fulfilled. After all, the stars are far away, and not everyone could reach them. And the long, painful climb toward the stars requires not only strength, but sternness, and will, and hardness, and power, vices of a troubled youth now happily outgrown in the maturity of a species. And so the promise of the world of Rodriguez and Brenner, were it ever truly a promise, had never been fulfilled. Their world had made its decision, cloaked as all such decisions are, and must be, else their pathetic horror might be more easily detected, in moral fervor, and a righteous vocabulary: It had become not great, but nice, not hot and needful, but tame and warm.

“At ten,” repeated the captain.

Rodriguez nodded.

There was little of interest on Abydos to the rest of the galaxy other than its fueling station, one of the several such between certain mining worlds, the charters to which were held by various corporations. To be sure, beyond this, at least in the area of the depot, there were some company dormitories, a parts warehouse, a few muddy streets, some bars, a few small businesses, a barber shop, such things. It did have an atmosphere which might be breathed by both the captain, and his sort, and Rodriguez, and his sort. It was not one of those worlds to which one must take oneself in a bottle, so to speak, enclosing oneself in a surrogate of one’s home world, without which appurtenances an unpleasant death would promptly ensue. If there were difficulties to be met with on Abydos they were not such as to require the encapsulation of visitors in friendly gases and temperatures. Rodriguez and Brenner could walk on Abydos without fear. Its atmosphere was benign, its surface temperatures were within tolerable limits, its water was drinkable, its soil, though thin, was not poisonous, its rain was not lethal, its gravity was not crushing, and its invisible life forms were such that they could be dealt with by the natural defenses of most organic systems. Moreover, its diurnal and annual cycles were similar to those of many comparable worlds, a fact which to many species is morally and psychologically, and even biologically, important. In a sense no species is satisfied until it has come home. Had its soil been more fertile, its mineral resources more remarkable, its vegetation more appealing, its scenery less tenebrous, its mountains less bleak and forbidding, or even if its location had been more propitious, Abydos might have been better known. But as it was, it was not even strictly analogous to a small town, overlooked by progress, on a more favored planet, far off the beaten pathways between more interesting places. Rather it was more, or at least in the vicinity of the depot and yards, a company camp, a merely dirty, unpleasant place, where rough men of ill-favored visage spent brief tours of duty, little more than a convenience to a corporation, to most of whose officers, of those who knew of it, it was no more than an entry on records. Even the captain of the vessel, for example, though he was surely not important in the corporation, had never been on its surface. His first officer, however, had. Still it was not a likely place to put ashore. As you may be interested in knowing what might be the interest of Rodriguez and Brenner in Abydos it had to do with the Pons.

“At ten, then,” said Rodriguez.

The captain then lifted an appendage and Rodriguez, clamping the smoking Bertinian leaf between his teeth, and transferring his stein of Heimat to his left hand, shook one of the extended claws. Brenner, in turn, did the same, leaning forward in the webbing. The claw was dry and well polished. The captain then clapped together his jaws twice, a gesture of contentment and warmth amongst his kind, for even their gods are said to do so, and, with a tiny pressure from his back feet, rose up, turned about, rather like a balloon, in the zero-gravity field, and took his departure.

“Damned reptile,” said Rodriguez.

“He is a nice enough fellow,” said Brenner.

“I like him,” admitted Rodriguez. “At least he can look at you.”

He then swirled the stein about, mixing the remainder, popped open the slurp hole on the mug and sucked up some of the fermented poison within.

The captain, of course, was not really a reptile. It was only such things as the skin, the tail, the appendages, the neck, the long tongue, and such things, which suggested that. To be sure, perhaps the captain’s species, in some sense, at some time in the past, might have evolved from reptiles, or something like reptiles, but then, so, too, if it must be known, had that of Rodriguez and Brenner, and from other things before that, which were not even reptiles.

“You are pleased that I called him a reptile,” said Rodriguez, looking narrowly at Brenner.

Brenner blushed. “Was it a test?” he asked.

“No,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner felt ashamed. Although he himself was pleased to hear things said which he himself found amusing, or true, or both, but would not have dared to say himself, he did tend to suffer for it. This was an effect of his conditioning program. But perhaps it had not been totally efficient, or had not fully “taken,” so to speak, for he was not sickened at the vulgarity of Rodriguez, his offensiveness, his abusive honesty, or at least his attempt to speak and say the world as he saw it, as accurate or awry as his perceptions might be. Rodriguez was more free, and more terrible, and more abominable, and more glorious than any human being Brenner had ever known. He did not know how it was that such a man, who in his time it was said, had been a wastrel, a gambler, a freebooter, a smuggler, a soldier, had become involved in his own field.

“Are you afraid the machine is recording?” asked Rodriguez.

“Do you think it is?” asked Brenner.

“No,” said Rodriguez.

“Oh,” said Brenner.

“What if it is?” asked Rodriguez.

“Nothing, I suppose,” said Brenner.

“I don’t think it is,” said Rodriguez. “If I thought it was I would have been more outspoken. There are a few things about the company I would have said.”

This worried Brenner. He did not wish to be stranded on Abydos for an extra three or four of its revolutions, if not indefinitely.

“The politeness titles are not in force out here,” said Rodriguez.

This was good news to Brenner. The politeness titles, some two hundred and six, or so, of them, with their numerous subsections, specified in some detail various behaviors, thoughts and actions which might be construed as impolite. For example, Rodriguez’s referring to the captain as a reptile, regardless of the accuracy or inaccuracy of this reference to the captain’s ancestry, or his own satisfaction with it, or even his own rightful pride in such a line of descent, or his indifference or insensitivity to it, could be, in various places, subject to various sanctions, ranging from nuisance demands for hypocritical apologies to the removal of a means of livelihood. The politeness titles were usually monitored by bureaucrats, and involved processings which were both lengthy and expensive. These things, interestingly, had usually emerged in putatively democratic societies, much to the surprise of the great majority of the putatively free individuals in such societies, who did not understand how they could have come about. Political scientists still spoke of the “plural-elite” model of governance in which law and policy emerged from the conflicts and compromises of lobbies and power groups, to which groups the putatively freely elected representatives of the putatively free electorate, were beholden, functioning, if they would survive and maintain their own places, positions, and powers, such as they were, as overt or covert agents. Some poets, in underground writings, had likened the politeness titles to the webs of spiders and the bureaucrats to the spiders. The analogy, of course, was not perfect, for a natural spider would eventually in the way of nature, in its directness and cleanliness, devour its prey. With the politeness titles, however, it was more as if a spider’s webbing was hung everywhere, and nothing, not even the zealous bureaucrats themselves, so self-righteous, so eagerly, and narrow-liddedly watchful, so jealous of their modicum of power, could move. And there was nothing to eat the victims. They would just be left in the webbing, unable to fly, unable to move, left there immobile, helpless and tangled, not even to be eaten, just to be left trapped and helpless until they died, with other thousands, just additional nodules in that black, dry carpet of death, over which new insects could scarcely crawl.

“Do you want me to unplug it?” asked Rodriguez.

Brenner looked at him.

Rodriguez stretched out his foot and carefully wound the cable twice about his foot, soberly, and then jerked the cable out of the machine. With a swirl of his foot, rather neatly done, he freed the cable and it floated away like a buoyant snake until it stopped and waved about, as though it had its tail stuck in the wall. Such crude mechanical connections, cords and cables, and such, were inexpensive, and tended on the whole, to be more reliable in the long run than the contrivances responsible for more subtle connections. Similarly many folk preferred, even today, to wrap packages with tape and string, and, similarly, staples, rubber bands and paper clips were still known, as they had been in medieval times.

“You don’t think the captain would really care, do you?” asked Rodriguez.

“No, not the captain,” said Brenner.

“He is a good fellow,” said Rodriguez. “To be sure, he is a bit formal, but his species tends to be reticent.”

Brenner nodded. That was true. Members of the captain’s species had sometimes squatted before emissaries, and even one another, when time permitted, for several divisions, as though absorbing one another’ presence, and the warmth of a benign sun, before, subject to the imperatives of, say, business or diplomacy, eventually breaking the thitherto sustained purity of silence, muchly prized amongst them, with an almost apologetic courtesy. The entire crew of the ship, incidentally, was of the captain’s species. Very few ships maintained mixed crews. There were a number of excellent reasons for this, having to do with several matters, such as optimum atmospheres and temperatures, difficulties of communication, particularly in emergency situations, diverse chemical requirements, diverse parameters pertinent to comfort and accommodation, numerous diverse methods-engineering factors, such as colors most easily discriminated and odors most easily detected, suitable placement of instrumentation, and numerous diverse devices, designed for convenience, depending on the prehensile appendages in question, for controlling the ship’s systems. There were senses in which many species did not even see, feel, hear, smell, or taste the same world, so to speak, that is, that their experiences would have been exotic and perhaps even unintelligible to those of other species. To be sure, these numerous experiences would presumably be related in some topological manner to an independent reality, or, at least, that seemed the most economical hypothesis to explain how two different species, say, Zatans and Ellits, could get different ships to the same place by prearrangement at the same time. Without some such accommodations interstellar commerce, warfare and such, would have been almost impossible. Certain of the manufacturing worlds did design ships for diverse species. There were even ships in the galaxy which were designed for, and had been purchased by, and were flown by, representatives of Brenner’s and Rodriguez’ species, to be sure, those of colonial worlds, that is, of individuals whose ancestors had purchased passage on alien vessels to other worlds, often individuals who had been uncomfortable, inefficient, or unsuccessful on the home world. Indeed, some such individuals had been deported, that their ideas could remain in quarantine, so to speak, in remote asylums, unlikely to contaminate the ideal tepidities, or, more kindly, the serenities, of the home world, achieved at such cost over many centuries. To be sure, this was now seldom done, because of advances in neurological engineering achieved over the past two centuries, in virtue which triumphs many notable successes had been achieved in reforming the eccentricities of such deviants. Indeed, some of these individuals had climbed to unusual heights in the bureaucracy, and even, it was rumored, in the metaparty, the existence of which was often denied. The convert, after all, is the most zealous of adherents, as he must, before his own stern tribunals, before his own doubts and remorse, suspecting himself, not certain of his true motivations, defend and justify his decision, or betrayal. Another technique was that of the postnatal abortion, in which a mother’s oversight, forgivable given her ignorance, her lack of foresight, was rectified by court order and the state at a later time. The state, after all, and the metaparty, with which it was in effect identical, if such a party existed, surely in its collective wisdom, knew better than any particular individual. Indeed, Rodriguez had fled more than one world to escape such a termination, not of his person, of course, which would have been heinously immoral, but, retroactively, of his judicially decided nonperson. Postnatal abortion had replaced capital punishment, the immorality of which was notoriously transparent. On some worlds populations had been subjected to such abortion. An additional argument of great force in favor of such merciful termination, done with all kindness, and all possible avoidance of pain, was that the state, the people, the community, or whatever putative entity might be involved, or the metaparty, if there were such an organization, was asserted to be the truest “Mother,” and accordingly, at her discretion and convenience, had inalienable death rights over whatever might be temporarily housed within her.

“We can get away with a great deal,” said Rodriguez to Brenner, “as we are known as slovenly creatures in the galaxy, and little is expected of us. For example, if a Narnian were to have said what I said, there might have been something of a flap.”

“I see,” said Brenner.

“Our species is despised throughout the galaxy,” said Rodriguez.

“Absurd,” said Brenner.

“And quite rightfully so, in my opinion,” said Rodriguez, “in spite of the titles of politeness. They change nothing of importance, you know, at least when we consider the interstellar expanses, the multiplicity of worlds, and such. Only people like you take them seriously.”

“Surely that’s not true,” said Brenner.

“So don’t worry,” said Rodriguez, blearily.

Sometimes Brenner did not care to talk with Rodriguez, though, to be sure, he had really not often done so, not to a great extent at any rate. It was not as though they were cronies or confidants, in spite of the months they had spent, even at hyperlight velocities, making their way from one port of call to another, from one system to another, sometimes on commercial lines, of one grade or another, sometimes on military vessels, patrol ships, and others, sometimes on research ships, most often, on one or another of the out-the-way routes, on one freighter or another. Rodriguez, except when drunk, tended to keep his own counsels, and if Brenner belonged to a species Rodriguez felt was rightfully despised throughout the universe, he had little doubt but what his own particular portion of that species, in the lofty criticality of Rodriguez, within the scope of which he undoubtedly, with magnanimous consistency, included himself, was not likely to be much more exempt, if that, than any other. Talking with Rodriguez was a bit unnerving at times, much like handling an unfamiliar piece of charged apparatus, not wholly understood, which occasionally, for no clear or obvious reason, reciprocated the attentions bestowed upon it with a series of unpleasant shocks. Brenner did know, of course, that his species was not generally regarded as one of the serious life forms of the galaxy, which discovery by the species, which had stood at the top of its own food chain for centuries, had come as a disillusioning surprise. A great deal of literature, poetry, and philosophy had come, almost immediately, to be seen in a quite different perspective. But then his species had encountered such surprises before. It did disturb Brenner to know that his species, a backward one, except in its own view, a view adjusted in such a way as to define progress in its own terms, commanded so little respect in the galaxy. It was generally regarded as a set of weak, uninteresting, self-righteous mediocrities. It was not a species with a project, not a species with a dream, to accomplish which it was willing to work and sacrifice. It was not, many said, a species which belonged amongst the stars. It would stain the stars or demean them. There was some agitation to keep it isolated, and treat it as unwholesome vegetable matter, not to be brought across stellar borders. It was better left, some said, to crawl on the surface of its own world, like worms, looking for small comforts. They were not giants, whose hands might pull them upward, from planet to planet, scaling the cliffs of space, giants whose brows might crash against stars, in whose hair would race the stellar winds. It did not strive, it did not care, except for itself; it did not think in terms of millenniums, but in terms of the day. Take one day at a time, it said. And that is how many of its members managed it. They took one day at a time, until one day came along on which they died. So, asked Brenner to himself, are we really no more than the clowns and cabin boys we are taken for, no more than tiny riders clinging in the fur of more venturesome, nomadic animals, in effect, parasites surviving in the chinks permitted to us by higher forms of life? How something deep in Brenner rebelled at this thought, yet, how quickly, he censured himself for his unworthiness, his envy, and rebellion, his defiance, and ambition, such atavistic temptations belonging to violent, archaic eras. “If you cannot kick, you cannot run,” had sung a poet of such a violent time. “If you cannot form a fist, you cannot grasp.” Brenner shuddered. Rodriguez was looking off, across the lounge, lost in his own thoughts, and the smoke, and the Heimat. No, thought Brenner, there are few mixed crews. How different it turned out from the crude fantasies of the early medieval period, days when it had been conjectured that his species would set the pace to the stars, joining in joyous brotherhood with other life forms. Indeed, such fantasies, until a century ago, had still been popular on the home world, where the real truth was not generally known, or, at any rate, much publicized. The naivety of such fantasies, their neglect of thousands of practical factors, had not militated against their popularity. And, indeed, they had even been used as devices to propagate the very values which would preclude their accomplishment in reality. On the other hand, they were now outlawed because they did call attention to the stars, and to what the species was not. They directed attention, you see, upwards and outwards, rather than downwards and within. They spoke, even in their beautiful, childlike simplicity, of unfavored ends, and of action, and of ardor and achievement, not of tranquility; too, they challenged the imagination; they issued, in their way, a rallying cry in a world weary of rallies, a world which suspected them, and feared them, and perhaps for good reasons; and they suggested a goal, a project, an adventure, and projects and adventures are always dangerous, even in the imagination. The stars, you see, may lure and summon, much as mountains did once, and then later, the sky; and there might be those who would hear this call, really hear it, and actually, completely misunderstanding the matter, place their feet upon such trails. Rejecting the values, and the absurd means, they might accept the end, the goal, the adventure. This would be dangerous, and jeopardize the hard-won victories of centuries. And so such things, innocent as they might seem, were outlawed. Yet, their outlawry was probably not essential, for in a leveled world, where even the tallest, their backs aching, must bend down and pretend to be little, in a world in which elites, whether they existed or not, were illegal, a world which would by statute subvert, squander, and repudiate its occasional gifts won in the genetic lottery, its own pathfinders, its own commanders, its own aristocracy, as it might spring up here and there, like flowers and trees, the stars could not be achieved. How insignificant are the parameters of physics compared to the gravity of the mass. From that bulk what must be the accumulated force, the consolidated and directed power, that could achieve escape velocity? And so organisms such as Brenner and Rodriguez were, on the whole, little more than passengers, neglected and scorned, amongst the stars. Yet Brenner did not begrudge his fortunes. He would have come, really, even in spite of his being “assigned,” for he could have challenged the assignment, with anyone to the stars, even such as the captain, even such as Rodriguez. He was there, and this was enough for him. He would have been happy, could he have afforded it, to have purchased passage in steerage; he would, like many others, if he had received the opportunity, have been delighted to work his passage from system to system; he would have cheerfully kept cabins and polished brass; he would cheerfully have carved strange vegetables in the galleys; he would cheerfully have cleaned the cages of transported animals, even those of the blue-skinned Serian slave girls, bred for beauty and passion over generations, as loving as dogs, as incapable of rebellion as cattle and sheep; or even the slaves taken from his own planet, many of them, in their cages and chains, as lovely and as needful as the Serian sluts, women who had been homeless on a world shut against them and their deepest, loving nature. They would find worlds on which they were prized, worlds on which they brought high prices.

“I was saying,” said Brenner, returning to what had been on his mind before the visit of the captain, a visit a consequence perforce perhaps of etiquette, or perhaps even of his own innate politeness, as landfall, so to speak, at Abydos was to occur in a few divisions, ship time, or, to be more precise, a.s.t., adjusted ship time, her governing chronometer having been set, as was typically the case, and has been suggested, to commercial time, indexed to Commonworld, “that I have read your writings.”

“No, you haven’t,” said Rodriguez.

“I beg your pardon?” said Brenner. To be sure, he had probably not read everything which Rodriguez had written, but he had done his best to find what he could, shortly after learning the identity of his projected senior colleague. For the most part he had secured monographs in the library of his base university, to the faculty of which he was attached as an adjunct researcher, certain sections of which he had extracted for personal notes.

“What did you read?” asked Rodriguez.

“Congenital Heraldic Design: An Analysis of the Shells of Holarians,” said Brenner. “The Phratries of Chios, Ritual Meiosis: An Essay on Segmentation in Tunnel Societies, Avoidance Behaviors amongst the Milesian Amphibians, Asymmetrical Endogamy amongst Four-Spined Creodonts: A Study in Genetic Randomization, Aquatic Clans, Rites of Passage in Seven Societies, such things.”

“Rites of Passage?” asked Rodriguez, looking up.

“I found it in paper,” said Brenner.

“And you weren’t afraid to read it?”

“No,” said Brenner.

“Good,” said Rodriguez. “That was the first book I wrote which was banned.”

“I do not see why,” said Brenner. “It did little more than collect and record indisputable observations.”

Rodriguez laughed, a not pleasant laugh. Then he said, “My real writings are all in paper.”

“In books—with pages?” asked Brenner.

“That sort,” he said, moodily, “not the sort on spheres, not the sorts on cubes and plates. You can’t broadcast selective magnetic erasure signals, coded to the sphere, the plate, or cube, and destroy the manuscript, simultaneously, wherever it might exist, on an entire world.”

“‘Book burning’?” said Brenner.

“One match does for the entire pile,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner nodded.

“But with pages, with books with pages,” said Rodriguez, with a sort of grim satisfaction, apparently considering the labors set authorities, “you have to hunt down each one, each one, slowly, painfully, expensively. And how can you be sure you have them all, even if you have? There might be one in hiding, one you do not know of. What do you think of that? Does that not worry you? That is how a book with pages can survive, by hiding. By hiding, and by being copied, often by hand, and passed from one reader to another. Such manuscripts are precious. They are carried from place to place, in knapsacks and boots, like contraband.” He slurped some more Heimat, a word which, incidentally, in a once subtle, expressive, beautiful language, now muchly improved, simplified, and functionalized, had meant “Home” or “Homeland.” Indeed, several such languages had been similarly improved by grammar engineers, until their loftiest flights, those incipient twitches in the wing muscles, were now well within the reach of, could now be easily understood by, the most elementary, or most occupied, or most casual or careless mind. Prose inaccessible to, or not easily comprehended by, the mass violated basic principles of egalitarianism. Its discriminatory nature had been proven in various courts of law, in various historic decisions, by suitable, clear-thinking, humane political appointments. Dissenting judges had occasionally been removed from the bench on the basis of judicial incompetence. On the other hand, the important matter was always the majority, and a token opposition, futile and ineffectual, was desirable, guaranteeing, as it did, the openness and objectivity of the judicial process. To be sure, on some worlds collectors of incunabula, of antique manuscripts, were permitted to pursue their eccentric hobby, and in this way, if no other, certain fragments of a pernicious, superseded literature, putatively valued for its historical value, survived. One manuscript, a tattered hand-copied manuscript of a book called Pride and Prejudice by a J. Austen had brought seven thousand, two hundred and twenty-one Commonworld Credits, a standardized economic unit, interestingly indexed to an imaginary economic system on the wilderness of Commonworld, that system itself representing a correlation of more than four hundred common currencies, at a small auction on Naxos. To be sure, at the same auction, a beverage can dating from more than eight centuries ago, had brought more than nine thousand. Interstellar commerce, incidentally, was founded largely on barter, involving a great deal of compromising and bargaining. More than one world’s currency had been subverted through sudden unilateral revisions of its worth, based against the Commonworld Credit. Also, wholesale unilateral abolitions of debts, contract cancellations, expropriations and such, based on perceived internal need or newly discovered moral principles, tended to make interstellar transactions a matter of serious economic risk. It was easier to decide on the value of a weapon-system powerpack or a sack of Bellarian flour, from one’s point of view, as compared to a quantity of ore or a bushel of Velasian grain than on any one of these to a given number of credits, even those of the Commonworld. Speculators in currencies, of course, throve. So, too, did various forms of insurance companies, the professed objective of which was to provide some measure of protection against statistically predictable fluctuations and disasters.

“I would like to read some of your other works,” said Brenner.

“You are better off not knowing about them” said Rodriguez.

“Thank you,” said Brenner.

“They might confuse you,” said Rodriguez. “They might make you think.”

“Thank you,” said Brenner.

“That is a kindness on my part toward you,” said Rodriguez, “indicating I have some concern for your future. Why should I risk you, as I saw fit to risk myself? Too, it is a compliment, as it suggests that I regard you as being capable of thought.”

Brenner was silent.

“Yes,” growled Rodriguez. “You are still young. You are still naive. You are still prizing the rhetoric of inquiry and truth. And you have not yet learned that it is just that, the rhetoric which is to be prized, not the realities, which can be embarrassing, and dangerous.”

Brenner did not understand this.

“I suspect you have not yet learned to dismiss canyons and mountains where none appear on the maps you have been given,” said Rodriguez, looking off toward the end of the room. “I suspect you would be actually troubled to give the map priority over the canyon, to award it precedence over the mountain. You do not yet realize that it is not the canyon and the mountain which are important, but the map. And the map is important not as a representation of reality, which it is not, but as a putative representation of reality, which it is; it is important not because it is true, which it is not, but because it is useful, because of its social utility, its political value. You have not yet learned to dismiss these unmapped canyons, these unrecorded mountains, to keep them to yourself, to publicly deny them. They are there, of course, in all their formidable height, in all their quantitative massiveness, however ignored, and in all their terrifying widths and depths, dark and unsounded, however denied, however neglected, Perhaps it is as though, in a sense, they are really on the maps, but in invisible ink, and have been for centuries, at least in the works of some cartographers, some explorers, and that they await only the proper social reagent to suddenly emerge, then appearing openly on the map, as they have in the reality. To be sure, some of these mountains lie in remote regions, in the mind; some of these canyons are in dark places, in the heart. But perhaps this will never occur. Surely reality is more hazardous than the map. How many have been injured falling off a map, or tumbling into one? We can control the map; it can be done with a formula, a compass, a straight edge, a little care; the reality is more recalcitrant.”

“I have understood nothing of what you have been saying,” said Brenner.

“Good,” said Rodriguez, blowing out a dark cloud of smoke.

Brenner watched the smoke disappear through the filtering system. He was pleased that the lounge was equipped with this device.

“Do you have any of your other works with you?” asked Brenner.

“No,” said Rodriguez. “I am not stupid.”

Brenner nodded. It might have been difficult to bring certain materials through customs.

“They have been published here and there?” asked Brenner.

“Yes,” said Rodriguez, “here and there.”

“Anonymously?” asked Brenner.

“Sometimes,” said Rodriguez.

“And under various pseudonyms?” asked Brenner.

“Sometimes,” said Rodriguez.

“And under your own name?”

“But not number,” said Rodriguez.

“I see,” said Brenner.

“It depends on the world,” said Rodriguez.

“Of courser” said Brenner. Here and there, of course, there were open worlds, quite different from most worlds, which had almost uniformly discovered the perils of openness. To be sure, almost every world claimed to be an open world. But there were in the galaxy few Hollands, so to speak.

“The sheep,” said Rodriguez, “are told they are gods and with tears in their eyes they yield themselves up to be sheared by their own kind.”

“What?” asked Brenner.

“Nothing,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner was silent.

“Better they were sheared without apology,” said Rodriguez, “as what they are, as what they were born to be, as what they should be, as what more than which they can never be, should never be, and will never be. Better not to lie to them. That truly demeans them. Let them joyously yield up their wool without lies. The hypocrisy is what I most object to. Rather let them joyously yield up their wool as what they are, the givers of wool.”

“You are quite drunk,” said Brenner.

“On so many worlds there are the shearers and the shorn,” said Rodriguez.

“And which are you?” asked Brenner.

“Neither,” said Rodriguez, gloomily. “I am one who stands outside the fence, one who observes, one who laughs, and cries.”

“I see,” said Brenner.

“And there are masters and slaves,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner was silent. Too often had he himself been troubled by such thoughts.

“Should those who should be servants not be servants?” asked Rodriguez. “Should those who should be slaves not be slaves?”

“All are the same,” said Brenner.

“It is not so on the strong worlds,” said Rodriguez, moodily.

“The strong worlds?” said Brenner. Rodriguez had used that expression before, he recalled.

“Yes,” said Rodriguez.

“Openly stratified worlds?” asked Brenner.

“For the most part,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner shuddered. He had little doubt that Rodriguez had in mind, at least for the most part, the numerous worlds, tending muchly to keep to themselves, in which social structures were explicitly stratified, as opposed to being implicitly, or covertly, stratified. Rodriguez would like that. He would like the honesty of that. He was the sort of fellow who found intellectual dishonesty distasteful, however expedient. He might even regard it as undignified. Such worlds tended to be characterized by rank, distance, and hierarchy, expressed in a variety of forms, or structures. There were, for example, familial structures, clan and subclan structures, class structures, merit structures, hereditary structures, feudal structures, caste structures, and such. In such worlds, in one fashion or another, the aristocracy of nature tended to be revealed in civilization, rather than distorted and concealed, or, as the case might be, subverted by those whose talents and self-interest lay largely in the corridors of subterfuge, prevarication, and manipulation.

“I refer, of course,” said Rodriguez, “to stratification within the same species.”

“Of course,” said Brenner. He knew, of course, that even on the artificial worlds, or worlds of convention, or most of them, even on those worlds which pretended to the homogenized sameness of the dominant life form, for political reasons, despite all evidence to the contrary, other species, such as his and Rodriguez’, might not be accorded similar dignities. On some such worlds certain species, such as their own, were not permitted except in specified zones, and only at certain times or seasons, could not openly and freely obtain food or rest space in all hostels, required papers or licenses for debarkation, business, and travel, could not obtain citizenship, were not permitted to maintain a permanent residence, and such. Indeed, sometimes ambassadors of one species or another, in early contacts with newly discovered civilizations, a situation in which those of Brenner and Rodriguez’s species were seldom involved, found themselves incarcerated in zoological gardens, or being presented, as exotic fauna, or pets, by one potentate to another. And indeed more than one member of Brenner’s and Rodriguez’ own species, given by one alien life form to another, had served in similar capacities. Moreover, it was not unknown for them, on dark streets, in lonely areas, unwary in a bar, to be seized for diverse purposes, usually as simple as serving in some menial capacity in a passing vessel.

“Are these various writings of yours known?” asked Brenner.

“Some,” said Rodriguez.

“And others must be suspected,” suggested Brenner.

“Doubtless,” said Rodriguez.

“Is this why you have been sent to Abydos?” asked Brenner.

“To get me out of the way?” smiled Rodriguez. “Maybe. But I could have wrangled other assignments. They would have served, as well.”

“The work of yours which I have read, the Phratries of Chios, and such,” said Brenner, “was edited, was it not?” There had been certain roughnesses and gaps in it, not so much in the prose, where transitions had been supplied by a editor apparently concerned to conceal his work, but in the thought. It is hard for an editor to clip thoughts smoothly. The hole in the thought remains, suggested by a subtle cognitive incoherence, alerting the reader, perhaps intriguing him.

“Yes,” said Rodriguez. “That is why it is still on the cubes and such. But unedited versions are available elsewhere, not on the home world, unless they have found their way back there, but elsewhere, in separate books.”

“I have one objection to your work, what I have read of it,” said Brenner.

“What?” asked Rodriguez.

“It does not seem scientific,” said Brenner.

“You mean in not agreeing with the official science?” asked Rodriguez.

“No,” said Brenner. “Rather it does not seem value-free.”

“Like the official science?” asked Rodriguez, interested.

“No, obviously the “official science,” as you call it, has its own values, its own ends to subserve.”

“You recognize that?” asked Rodriguez.

“Yes,” said Brenner.

“Good,” said Rodriguez. His Bertinian leaf was now no more than a stub. He put it out, scraping it in a black sooty smear, on the webbing.

We are slovenly creatures, indeed, thought Brenner. This conjecture was further confirmed when Rodriguez crumbled the stub into a confetti of flakes and, with one hand, tossed them into the air, to be attended to by the filtering system.

“You think science should be value-free?” asked Rodriguez, intrigued. “That is interesting. How could anything we care about be value-free?”

“Oh, I accept the metavalues,” said Brenner, “the value of the enterprise itself, the values of honest inquiry, of testing, of subjection of one’s results to public scrutiny, such things. It is rather that value seems to enter directly into your work, into your reporting, so to speak.”

“It does!” said Rodriguez.

“Your approval and disapproval shows,” said Brenner.

“Should I have attempted to conceal them?” asked Rodriguez.

“At least,” said Brenner.

“A form of unspoken lie?” said Rodriguez.

“Better, of course, not to have values, feelings, and such,” said Brenner.

“But what of the love, joy and brotherhood of all life, and such,” asked Rodriguez, “the embracing of the cockroach, the admiration of the worm, the camaraderie of the viper, and such?”

“I am not speaking of the prescribed values recognized by all right-thinking moral agents,” said Brenner, “but those of science.”

“I think that my researches have been conducted carefully, and my results arrived at in an objective, verifiable manner,” said Rodriguez.

“I cannot fault you there,” admitted Brenner. Indeed, the work of Rodriguez, or at least his observations and compilations of data, were occasionally cited, by politically naive, or careless, colleagues, as a model of scrupulous exactitude.

“Indeed,” said Rodriguez, “most of it is quite low level, almost at the level of reportage. We are still theoretically primitive in our science. Indeed, I often envy the fellows who only have to worry about what molecules do, and not what they meant by it, what they had in mind, whether or not it makes sense, what was the point of it, how it came to be done in the first place, whether it should have been done in the first place, how it should best be interpreted, and such.”

“Be serious,” said Brenner.

“Do you have something particular in mind?” asked Rodriguez.

“It was clear in your work, in the Aquatic Clans book, that you disapproved of the sacrifice lotteries of the Zenic crustaceans.”

“They were rigged,” said Rodriguez.

“And that was the foundation of your objection?” asked Brenner.

“I did not think highly of them, independently,” admitted Rodriguez.

“More deplorable was your reference, in the Phratries book, to the feces-tasting ceremony of the feather-gilled Humblers of Lesser Carthage as disgusting.”

“I would not have wanted to do it,” said Rodriguez.

“A great many people on the home world regard that particular ceremony as being very meaningful and beautiful, finding in it a veritable celebration in its way of oneness and love, an emblem of joy and humility, a way in which one life form, with gracious delicacy, acknowledges its own small place in the palace of life.”

“That sounds to me like a value judgment,” said Rodriguez.

“It is not claiming to be science,” pointed out Brenner.

At the time I wrote that,” said Rodriguez, “I had not realized that Humbler missionaries had made so many converts on the home world, but, even so, I would have written it.” A great Humbler prophet, incidentally, over a century ago, had taught the proud, vainglorious Humblers that one did not have to have feather gills to be a Humbler. From his time on, this lesson having been absorbed with due repentance and guilt, Humbleism had been preached even to the diverse assortments of gentiles, so to speak, available in the galaxy. There were many Humbler martyrs.

“We are not supposed to make judgments,” said Brenner. “We are not supposed to prescribe, but to describe. It is not the business of science to change things, or to reform the galaxy, but to explain things, to give accounts of them.”

“Did you have any difficulty telling the facts from the values?” asked Rodriguez.

“Of course not,” said Brenner, irritatedly.

“It is possible to understand something,” said Rodriguez, “and still not like it.”

“Perhaps,” said Brenner.

“Indeed,” said Rodriguez, “it is sometimes difficult to understand things without finding oneself feeling one way or another about them, without coming to like them or dislike them, so to speak.”

“Perhaps,” said Brenner.

“And what better grounds on which to form a liking or a disliking than on an understanding?”

“But anyone could do that sort of thing,” said Brenner.

“Of course,” said Rodriguez.

“Where is your frame of reference?” asked Brenner.

“I carry it with me,” said Rodriguez.

“And so, too, does every Narnian and crocodile in the galaxy.”

“Not mine,” said Rodriguez.

“It is your own gauge,” said Brenner.

“Why then should I throw it away?” asked Rodriguez.

“At best it is relativized to a species,” said Brenner.

“To my species,” said Rodriguez. “That is important.”

“Galactically, that is unimportant,” said Brenner.

“But then I am not a galaxy,” he said.

“I am a modernist, and a lifest,” said Brenner.

“You are a traitor to your species,” said Rodriguez, “or are trying to be, but I suspect you will not manage it.”

Brenner smoldered in fury.

“Others, too, may have suspected it,” said Rodriguez.

“What?” said Brenner.

“That may be why you have been sent to Abydos,” said Rodriguez.

“Nonsense,” said Brenner.

“We are more alike than you know,” said Rodriguez. “But others know it.”

“I am not like you,” said Brenner.

“No species chauvinist?” smiled Rodriguez.

“No,” said Brenner.

“Yet you have come to Abydos,” mused Rodriguez.

“The assignment seemed interesting,” said Brenner. “I did not challenge it.”

“I see,” said Rodriguez.

“What do you think to find on Abydos?” asked Brenner.

“I do not know what I will find,” said Rodriguez. “But I know for what I am searching.”

“What is that?” asked Brenner.

“The beginning,” said Rodriguez.

For those of you to whom this might not be clear Rodriguez and Brenner are anthropologists. To be sure, this designation had become something of an anachronistic misnomer, suggesting, as it does, in its root, that it had to do with a particular species. At present, of course, its meaning was no longer limited in such a provincial and circumscribed fashion. Earlier its scope, in virtue of certain interdisciplinary connections, had been extended to certain organisms on a given home world which were not always of the same species as that of Rodriguez and Brenner. After this, of course, there was not the least difficulty in extending it to numerous life forms in various systems, life forms which had little in common but the possession of some form of what we might think of as a cultural complexus. To be certain, the boundaries of the discipline were quite unclear, and the relationships with numerous kindred sciences, collateral or contained, as might be argued, such as sociology, political science, ethology, ecology, and genetics, were still a matter of disputed demarcations. Some individuals preferred to think not so much of separate countries of inquiry, each jealousy guarding its own borders, so to speak, as of inquiries themselves into which light might be shed from various directions. To be sure, the matter was complex. There was a sense, of course, in which some still thought of “anthropology” as being the “science of Man,” and that was the sense in which many now used the expression ‘man’ to refer to many sorts of creatures which would not have originally been regarded as “men” or, say, “human,” in the archaic sense of the word. For example, the captain of the star freighter, who had paid his respects earlier to Rodriguez and Brenner, might, in that extended sense, have been regarded as a “man.” You have probably been assuming, incidentally, that Rodriguez and Brenner are men. I shall not challenge this assumption, but, given the broad sense of the term, as it is now used, I think it only fair to point out that it is, on your part, an assumption. For example, you have not really seen Rodriguez and Brenner. If you were to see them, of course, you might more easily then decide whether or not you felt comfortable in calling them men, and, if so, in what sense.

At this point Rodriguez finished his Heimat with a noise for which even Brenner would have been hard put to find an epithet more accurate than ‘disgusting’. Rodriguez then thrust the emptied stein, which was his own, into which earlier in the commissary, open between certain ship hours, had been drawn a specified quantity of Heimat, into a pack at his belt, unbuckled his webbing, and, leaning forward, and with a small push away from the webbing stocks, moved toward the wall. There, arresting his progress with his finger tips, he reached for, and grasped, a wall bar and, with his other hand, his feet a few inches off the floor, pressed in sequence two buttons, both recessed in the plating, in response to the signal of the first of which the illumination in the lounge was extinguished, and in response to the signal of the second of which the shielding of the observation port slid to one side.

Brenner eagerly unbuckled his own webbing and, in a moment, had joined Rodriguez at the port.

Some said it was the only way to see the stars, from such a perspective, within deep space, outside the distorting effects of an atmosphere, preferably at a sublight velocity. They were now at such a velocity, of course, having been decelerating for more than three Commonworld rotations, or Commonworld days. They were on their approach to Abydos.

“There it is,” said Rodriguez, pointing.

“Abydos?” asked Brenner.

“Her sun,” said Rodriguez, patiently.

Of course,” said Brenner.

It was natural for Rodriguez to have spoken of the star whose satellite was Abydos as “her sun.” Both Rodriguez and Brenner, and many of their kind, particularly those who had undertaken long voyages on dark, empty seas, tended to think of worlds in the feminine gender. Even some of their species whose archaic languages might have prescribed differently in this respect, as they had entered space, had adopted this custom. The world, far off, gleaming, beckoning, was the hearth against cold, the shelter against storms and loneliness, the haven, the home, the harbor, the precious thing, the womb of life, the platform of her strivings or ineffectualities, of her choices, of histories, and of refusals of history. It was in this sense then, as the light in the window, as the harbor, as the home, arrival at which betokened the end of long journeys, as the vast mysterious matrix from which consciousness and curiosity, and meaningfulness, had emerged, that one might think of the world in the feminine gender, or, more simply, as the mother. To those who might think of worlds as mineralogical curiosities, consequent upon remote condensations, living upon their familiar surfaces, but not really seeing them, they might continue to be “it.” To those who viewed them from space, however, they would remain “she.”

“It is on Abydos,” said Rodriguez, “that I hope to find out something.”

Brenner looked into the night.

“It is not much, of course,” said Rodriguez. “It is not the key to the universe, or anything. It is only a little something that I have been curious about, for a long time.”

“The beginning?” asked Brenner, recollecting something from earlier, not clearly grasped.

“Yes,” said Rodriguez. “How it started, what it all means, what it is all about, so to speak.”

“You should have gone into cosmology,” said Brenner.

“Oh, no,” said Rodriguez. “I am not talking about those walls, against which so many heads have been bloodied, about the worlds, the metaworlds, the metatimes, and, at the end, the mystery met with once more, concealed beneath yet another mask. No, no. I am talking about a small problem, about something which may well have an answer, even a discoverable one.”

“Perhaps in the end there is no answer,” said Brenner. “Perhaps in the end there is nothing.”

“I will not accept that,” said Rodriguez.

“You have considered the possibility, I trust,” said Brenner, not pleasantly, “that reality may not be much concerned about what you are or are not willing to accept.”

“I only want to know a little thing,” said Rodriguez. “I am not an ambitious man.”

“And what is that?”

“I would like to understand myself,” said Rodriguez, “who I am, who we are, how we came to be as we are, what my species is, how it came to be as it is, what it is all about.”

Brenner thought it possible that there might an answer to that question, at least if it were subjected to certain clarifications. It was another question, of course, as to whether such an answer could be found. It was, he speculated, much like trying to discover the origin of a custom, or a practice, what it meant, or what it used to mean, or what it might mean now. Certainly anthropologists could speculate on such matters, and might, indeed, hit upon correct answers, even if they would never be able to demonstrate their correctness. To be sure, it seemed as if Rodriguez might have something in mind which was more primitive, more fundamental, than a given custom or practice, or even a constellation of such.

“Hitherto,” said Rodriguez, “as it is said, we have only been picking up shells on the beach.”

“That is worthwhile,” said Brenner.

“But where have the shells come from?” asked Rodriguez. “Surely you have wondered about that. What lies behind them?”

“You wish to see the sea?” smiled Brenner.

“Yes,” said Rodriguez. “I wish to see the sea.”

“Perhaps the origin is not the sea,” said Brenner, “but an artifact, or a deed.”

“The first firebrand, snatched from a flaming forest, the stone knife, the social compact?” said Rodriguez.

“Let us be content to pick up shells, and describe them,” said Brenner.

Rodriguez was silent.

“Surely you do not think to find what you seek on Abydos,” said Brenner.

“What I seek lies everywhere, I think, but it is feared, and lies well hidden,” said Rodriguez.

“And you hope to find it on Abydos?”

“Yes,” said Rodriguez. “I hope to find it on Abydos.”

“It would be less hidden there?” asked Brenner.

“I think so,” said Rodriguez.

“That seems a strange place to search for a secret local to our species,” said Brenner.

“I am interested in this, of course, for its pertinence to our species,” said Rodriguez. “That is my personal motivation, self-regarding as you might expect. But I think it lies at the root not only of our species, but perhaps at the root of a billion others, perhaps, in one form or another, at the root of all.”

“All?” asked Brenner.

“Those of interest to our science,” said Rodriguez.

“Those who have attained some form of culture?” said Brenner.

“Yes,” said Rodriguez, “those capable of standing at crossroads, those who have sundered the bonds of elementary circuitries, those who are no longer simple, who are no longer like rain and wind, those who have put behind them the innocence of the barracuda, those who have discovered choice, and questions.”

“There is nothing important on Abydos,” said Brenner.

“Why did you come?” asked Rodriguez. “Why did you not protest your assignment? Surely you had not expended your set of refusal rights.”

“It gave me an opportunity to step off the porch,” said Brenner, “to see the stars.”

“You should not have come,” said Rodriguez. “There is nothing for you on Abydos.”

“I might find a shell or two,” said Brenner.

“I am intrigued by Abydos,” said Rodriguez. “On Abydos is to be found one of the few remaining, and perhaps the most pure, of the totemic cultures.”

“It is known only by a footnote in old texts,” said Brenner. He had, of course, as far as he could, in the university retrieval system, researched the matter.

“Also in company records, of course,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner’s visage clouded. Such records, of course, would not be in the university’s library. Indeed, most of the corporations were rather secretive about records, or at least their personal records, as opposed to their official records, readily available for public review.

“The totemic cultures,” said Rodriguez, “are the oldest known to our species. They lie not only before civilizations as we know them today, but even before earlier civilizations. They are older even than the gods and the heroes. They may be at the beginning itself.”

The theme here, of course, was a common one to anthropology, the thesis that the earlier stages of more complex civilizations may be discovered in more primitive cultures. In the examination of such cultures, for example, in a consideration of their customs and beliefs, their monuments and tools, their works, ways, and traditions, their stories, their songs, their drawings, their legends and myths, their religions and sciences, their feelings, there might be found, in such rubble, so to speak, the origins and meanings, perhaps elaborated or distorted, of more complex modern forms. And, to be sure, there seemed little doubt that many such remnants, or relics, of one sort or another, sometimes primitive, if not actually embarrassing, lingered into more enlightened eras. To be frank, of course, much of this was controversial, for a number of reasons, and it must be pointed out, as well, that it was not always clear as to whether a culture was truly primitive or not. For example, a culture which had achieved no technology other than what might be attained with a hammer and a blade might be as old in its way, and have a history, however quiescent, behind it as ancient as that of the most advanced star world, routinely exploiting triumphs in hyperspace navigation. Too, of course, even totemic institutions might develop, undergoing various refinements and elaborations. Accordingly, one might even distinguish between, say, primitive totemisms and, so to speak, developed, or advanced, totemisms.

Brenner did not respond to Rodriguez. He was familiar with such matters, and speculations, of course. Rather he was enrapt with the vistas before him, and reminded himself that he was, in a sense, looking backward into the past, and that many of the lights which he saw, as those which he had seen from the surface of the home world, had begun their journeys thousands upon thousands of years ago. The light of the sun of Abydos, on the other hand, had begun its journey but a moment past. Astronomically, on standardized star charts, the sun of Abydos was identified by its catalog number, and the identificatory numbers of Abydos and its satellites, if it had had them, would have been indexed to this same number. For example, although the number of the sun of Abydos had several digits, let us suppose that its number was as simple as 17. The number of Abydos, then, would have been 17.3. You would then know that Abydos was the third planet from its star. If Abydos had had satellites, say, three of them, and we wished to refer to the second of them, figuring outward from the parent body, in this case Abydos herself, it would have been identified as 17.3.2. Abydos, on the other hand, as we have mentioned, had no satellites. It had once, incidentally, had a satellite but it, a long time ago, had been fragmented and removed from its orbit, in connection with a mining operation conducted by an advanced star world, which had need of its materials. The operation was a legitimate one, unlike certain shadowy operations conducted here and there in the galaxy, having been cleared with, and approved by, appropriate authorities.

“How glorious are the suns, and worlds!” exclaimed Rodriguez.

“Yes,” said Brenner.

There was something awesome, and beautiful, and terrible, about the universe, about space, the stars, the worlds, the grandness of it, the mystery of it.

In this portion of the galaxy, with the naked eye, from the perspective of the port, one could see several thousand stars.

The night of space blazed with the light of these myriads of far-flung mornings.

Some sixty-two percent, or so, statistically, of the visible stars in this portion of the galaxy controlled the orbit of one or more habitable worlds, on most of which, given customary interactions, life had actually developed, expressing itself in one set of forms or another. And Abydos, it might be added, did not lie near the populous center of the galaxy. Its location, rather, was somewhat more toward the periphery.

“What do you know about the Pons?” asked Rodriguez.

“Very little is known about them, as far as I have been able to determine,” said Brenner. “They are extremely simple, extremely primitive. They lack even pottery. They are small, timid, furtive, isolated, few in number, and given to secrecy. We may expect, of course, the usual features of a totemic complexus, in particular, the reverencing of the totemic animal and exogamy.”

“Company records provide further information,” said Rodriguez, “but nothing much of scientific interest. Pons occasionally, individually, or in small delegations, have in the past, at certain intervals, made contact with company employees, usually at Company Station, for purposes of trade, exchanging gathered forest products, commonly pods of various sorts, for diverse manufactured articles, in particular, a small metallic tool manufactured to their specifications, called a scarp, used for a variety of purposes.”

“They do not have any native metallurgical capability?” asked Brenner.

“One gathers not,” said Rodriguez.

“They live near Company Station?” said Brenner.

“No,” said Rodriguez. “They live somewhere back in the forests.”

Brenner looked at him, startled.

Rodriguez nodded, and returned his attention to the stars.

“You are familiar with the eco-profiles of the forests?” said Brenner.

“Of course,” said Rodriguez.

Even surveying crews from Company Station, it seems, had seldom penetrated far into the adjacent forests. To be sure, parts of them had been flown over in various cars, rovers, vans and such. And they had been extensively surveyed from orbit. The probes however had revealed little of mineralogical interest. The temperate latitudes of Abydos, in both hemispheres, were heavily forested, usually with varieties of deeply rooted, seasonally foliaged trees. Brenner’s surprise was occasioned primarily by his recollection of the eco-profiles of the forested areas, which suggested a rich variety of fauna, several of which, given their natural camouflage and predatory habits, might be supposed to be distinctly unpleasant.

“And,” added Rodriguez, “the Pons eschew weapons.”

“I find that hard to believe,” said Brenner.

“You will like them,” said Rodriguez. “They are your sort of people. They are amongst the most innocent, kindly, humble, harmless, and inoffensive creatures in the galaxy.”

“How do they live in the forest?” asked Brenner.

“They have apparently done so for thousands of years,” said Rodriguez.

“Apparently there is something to totemism,” said Brenner.

“One gathers so,” laughed Rodriguez.

As this was a joke which is likely to be obscure to those not of Rodriguez’ and Brenner’s field, I shall, with your permission, explain it. The relation between the totem and the totemic group is complex but it is usually understood that the totemic animal, perhaps in exchange for certain considerations, such as veneration and honor, and in the light of the special relation in which it stands to the group, understood as that of father and ancestor, will provide certain services to the totemic group, its children, for example, that it will look after their welfare, that it may be inform them of the future, and so on.

“What is the totemic animal of the Pons?” asked Brenner.

“A very fitting one,” said Rodriguez. “The Abydian mouse.”

“That?” asked Brenner. We may think of the Abydian ground git, or as it sometimes referred to, the Abydian mouse, as a small, stub-tailed rodent. That seems reasonable, given its habits and the nature of its incisors, which continue to grow during its lifetime, necessitating their reduction by gnawing. The git is primarily herbivorous, but is not above scavenging, and often cleans the bones of prey abandoned by larger animals, bones which it can climb, and cling to, with its tiny, clawed feet; the ground git, incidentally, is not to be confused with the tree git, a similar sort of animal, but one which has skin stretched between the front and hind legs on each side, which enables it to glide from tree to tree, and swoop down on food sites; sometimes there is an sudden, small, dry sound, like a tiny, firm clack, and one turns about and finds one clinging to, say, the exposed rib of a fallen animal; the tree gits usually nest in dead trees, and the ground gits usually nest in burrows; both are almost always black in color, which coloration blends in with the dark “greenery” of Abydos, so efficient in light-energy absorption. They are small creatures, both the ground and tree git, and might be held in one of Rodriguez’ or Brenner’s hands, usually weighing between one hundred and one hundred and fifty grams.

“Have you kept up with your exercises?” asked Rodriguez.

“Yes,” said Brenner. The ship did not, like some of the more impressive ships, sphere, wheel and cylinder ships, provide an artificial gravity in virtue of rotation. At certain points on such ships, for example, on the equatorial deck of a simple sphere ship, or at the circumference of a simple wheel or cylinder ship, one might think oneself, in a careless moment, on one’s native world. The force of the artificial gravity, of course, by means of controlling the rotational speed, could be indexed to a diversity of home-world masses. On this ship, however, Brenner had attempted to resist the deconditioning which was such a natural concomitant of long-term exposure to low-gravity conditions by more direct and mechanical means, by recourse to special apparatus integral to his cabin, an apparatus consisting of harnesses, hand grips, pedals and such, attached to resistant springs. The captain, and his crew, in their own quarters, incidentally, had similar devices, adapted to their particular physiques. Even so, an adjustment was almost always required after debarkation.

“I am puzzled to know how this contact came about,” said Brenner. “That was never explained to me.”

“That is an excellent question,” said Rodriguez. “I shall tell you what I know. We, of the home world, you understand, have known obscurely of the Pons for hundreds of years. They were often thought extinct. Company Station, built on the sites of previous camps, exploration base camps, navigational beacons, outposts for early-warning systems, neutral trading points agreed upon by diverse systems not wishing to risk contamination of their own worlds, and such, is itself, as you know, more than four hundred years old. Indeed, the Pons are well hidden in their forest. The agents at Company Station did not even learn of their existence until more than a hundred years after the founding of the town. The second contact occurred some one hundred years later. In the meantime it had been conjectured the Pons had perished. Recently, however, in the last hundred years, there have been more recent contacts, perhaps as many as two dozen in that time.”

“What of scientific and cultural contacts?” asked Brenner.

“The first was made, apparently, or the first we know of, given the records of Naxos, when they became available to us, more than two thousand years ago. And then, following the records of Eos, another was made something like a thousand years later.”

This was interesting, thought Brenner, as his own species was common on both Naxos and Eos.

“You are speaking in very general terms, of course,” said Brenner.

“Not really,” said Rodriguez. “If we adjust for the revolutionary period of Abydos herself, the time she takes to complete her orbit about her star, these two contacts occurred exactly one thousand revolutions, or years apart, in Abydian time, so to speak.”

“These were both contacts invited by the Pons?” asked Brenner.

“It seems so,” said Rodriguez.

“And now,” said Brenner, “it is a thousand Abydian years later?”

“Precisely,” said Rodriguez. “In about two Commonworld months.”

“You accept this as an unusual coincidence, of course,” said Brenner.

“Consider the probabilities,” said Rodriguez.

“I do not care to,” said Brenner.

“There is a cycle here,” said Rodriguez. “It is not necessary that there is a cycle here, of course, but I think there is one. I really do.”

“The Pons are primitive,” said Brenner. “They do not even have kings, or chieftains.”

“Many primitive peoples are sophisticated with respect to calendars,” said Rodriguez, “particularly peoples who depend on agriculture. It is only necessary to mark out the exact point of the rising of a given star on a given day. One can even use the mother star for this purpose, but it is better not to do so, because of its apparent dimension at the horizon. When the star, preferably not the mother star, rises in exactly the same place a second time a year, or a revolution, has occurred. One may mark this place with a portal, an altar, an obelisk. One may count the days between the risings, and divide the year into smaller or larger units, say, weeks and months, or whatever units will serve. Leftover units, say, days, or hours, may be intercalated. From the thousand-years cycle I think we may conjecture the Pons have a base-ten mathematics.”

“And a five-digited hand,” said Brenner.

“We know they have that,” said Rodriguez.

“They do not even have pottery,” said Brenner.

“If I am right,” said Rodriguez, “they can at least count to a thousand. That is not so complicated. It is a convenient multiple of ten digits. Ten digits times ten digits, two hands times two hands, so to speak, is one hundred digits, and then if one again multiplies this by the base, by two hands, or, better, by ten digits, one arrives at a thousand. This can also be done by addition, of course. The whole calculation might well, to a primitive mind, seem to have a certain naturalness, or mystic rightness, about it.”

“One thousand is a nice round number,” said Brenner.

“More so than two hundred and sixteen, or one thousand, seven hundred and twenty-eight, or two thousand, seven hundred and forty-four?” asked Rodriguez.

Brenner regarded him.

“You have a five-digited hand,” said Rodriguez, “not one with three digits, or six digits, or seven digits.”

“And I am a primitive mind?” inquired Brenner.

“Possibly,” said Rodriguez. “On the other hand, you are probably capable of making a distinction, at least intellectually, between a felt aptness, one particular to a given species, and a key to the universe.”

“One thousand is a nice, round number,” said Brenner.

“I agree,” said Rodriguez, “but I do not know if the captain would. He might prefer five hundred and twelve.” The captain, it might be mentioned, had four digits on the forward appendages. The six-digited rear appendages were not used for precision gripping. “The Pons, of course, would presumably side with us,”

“You are doing these calculations in your head?” asked Brenner.

“Of course,” said Rodriguez. “They are simple multiples.”

Brenner then began to understand why Rodriguez was so unpopular with many of his colleagues, why they scrutinized his works for the tiniest of errors, why they pounced like Chian zibits on sentences which did not seek to conceal their power, their significance, and passion, why they disdained his affection for the odd, the real, the ancient, and the beautiful, as though orchards and roses, and old clocks, might be less perfect than subway stations and plastic cups, why they were eager to disparage what they could not equal, why they were eager to denounce as execrable insights of which they were incapable. To be sure, Brenner was well aware that these casual calculations were little more than parlor tricks, such things, and many more of their sort, far more complex, being well within the reach of many idiot savants.

“They are indeed beautiful,” said Rodriguez, regarding the vast lamplit night, “the suns, and the worlds.”

Rodriguez had spoken of strong worlds and weak worlds. Brenner had attempted to twist this distinction into one of diversities of stratification, which was a perspective adequate in its way, but yet perhaps slightly awry. Certainly one might have explicitly stratified worlds which might not be aptly characterized as “strong”; they might be rigid, degenerate, fossilized, brittle, arrested, frozen into obsolescent social crystallizations, worlds dominated by perpetuated but failed aristocracies, worlds closed to the fresh blood of the more knowing, the higher and the more meaningful, those capable of the greatest pain, the most profound agonies, and the ecstasies of the most unspeakable joys. Once, Brenner recalled, long ago, in ancient times, on some worlds, the word ‘democracy’ had meant horizons, and the opening of a thousand doors; it had constituted not a denial of the aristocracy of nature, but had projected a path to its achievement. To be sure that would be a path which few, even of those capable of the ascent, would care to climb. The trail is narrow and steep, and dangerous. The mountains do not issue their call to all alike. There are some musics which can be heard only by the ear that is born to hear them. One might have spoken, as well, Brenner supposed, of natural worlds as opposed to artificial worlds, of reality worlds as opposed to convention worlds, or even of harmonious worlds, worlds which were harmonious wholes, worlds with social ecosystems, the parts fitting one to the other, in a whole grander than any part in itself. A democracy of opportunity is one thing, thought Brenner. A democracy of fictionalized sameness, of hypocritical pretense, was something different. One was an interesting, if precarious, possibly dangerous, social experiment, dangerous for many reasons, because of its likelihood to lead to instability, to conflict, to the subordination of the best interests of the whole to those of certain more determined, or better organized, or less scrupulous parts of the whole, to the eventual compromise with quality, to the undermining of difference and meaning, to the putative obliteration of distinctions, to the subtle control of a manipulated mass, regulated by secret Caesars, to the world of the hive. The other was a lie. But then, thought Brenner, perhaps it is better to be lied to than told the truth. Surely there was no particular reason to suppose that the truth must be in the best interest of a species. What would be the likelihood of such a coincidence? Perhaps the ideal was to proclaim one’s allegiance to truth while avoiding it at all costs. Surely Brenner’s species, on the whole, had tended to live from one lie to another. Brenner wondered what it might be for a society to live in terms of truth. He wondered if it would be possible. He wondered if somewhere societies might live in terms of truth. Perhaps on some of the “strong worlds,” he thought.

“Never old, always new,

Crowned with clouds,

Enrobed in blue,”

quoted Rodriguez.

Brenner completed the poem:

“I shall not seek another.

You are my world, my mother.”

“But rather we approach Abydos,” said Rodriguez.

“How is it that you are here?” asked Brenner. It was one thing that Rodriguez might have wished to come to Abydos, for one reason or another. It was quite another that one such as he, presumably out of favor, would have been permitted to do so.

“The directress,” said Rodriguez, “wanted me out of the way, off the home world, of course, somewhere else, probably as a result of some pressure from some quarter.”

“Anywhere would have done?” asked Brenner. Brenner could imagine several quarters from which such a pressure might have emanated.

“Provided it was sufficiently obscure, and sufficiently far away,” said Rodriguez.

“But you wrangled Abydos?”

“Yes,” said Rodriguez, chuckling. “I wanted Abydos. I have always been curious about her.”

“It is surprising, from what I know of the directress,” said Brenner, “that you were permitted to come here, supposing she knew that that was what you wished to do.” The directress was a young woman, but vain and petty. She regarded herself as being of unusual importance, and, as if this importance required it, or merited it, enjoyed exploiting, and nursing, the crumb of power to which she had access, often using it to surprise and frustrate colleagues. Perhaps her sense of self-importance, and her consciousness of her own power, required its unexpected, arbitrary or capricious exercise, else it might have seemed that circumstances, criteria, and such, regulated its activity, and not her personal will. Too, she was the sort of woman who enjoyed censoring, censuring, obstructing, thwarting, and ruining, where possible, men such as Rodriguez. Perhaps she felt that the artificiality of her position, and the sensed political fragility of it, sustaining it, required such.

“She didn’t know it, of course,” said Rodriguez. “Indeed, I even let her think it was the least interesting and most distasteful of the possibilities at her disposal. This was touchy, of course, as she did not even realize the alternative of Abydos at the time, though she pretended to, after I had mentioned it.”

“She loathes your work,” said Brenner.

“Yes,” said Rodriguez. “On the other hand, as you might expect, she has never read it. But this is not unusual. Most form their opinions, and with great firmness, on the basis of the reports of others who, also, may not be acquainted with the original texts. Most opinion, even the most fanatic, is founded on hearsay. There is something to be said for this approach, as it saves time. To be sure, if she had’ read it, I do not doubt but what she would have loathed it, as she would understand that that is what, in her particular personality network, her particular power structure, would be expected of her. Very few individuals have the intelligence for private judgment, and of those who do, very few will dare to differ. With respect to the latter point, the matter has been made clear by numerous psychological experiments.”

“She did not know about the thousand-year cycle?” asked Brenner.

“No, did you?”

“No,” said Brenner.

“I did not care to mention it to her, as she might have found it of interest.”

“Nor to me, it seems,” said Brenner.

“You don’t have to disembark,” said Rodriguez.

“You did not trust me?” said Brenner.

“Why should I have trusted you?” asked Rodriguez. “I do not even know you.”

Brenner was forced to concede the point, which he did, in silence.

“It might be only a coincidence,” said Brenner.

“Of course,” said Rodriguez.

“So how did you obtain your grant?” asked Brenner.

“My exile credits?” said Rodriguez.

“If you like,” said Brenner.

“The clincher,” said Rodriguez, chuckling, “was when I let it drop that the Pons trace lineage through matrilineal descent.

That decided it.”

“But that is almost universal amongst totemic groups,” said Brenner.

“She does not know that,” said Rodriguez.

“I thought her background was in anthropology,” said Brenner.

“No,” said Rodriguez.

“But she is directress of the anthropology division of the consortium,” said Brenner.

“She is a political appointment,” said Rodriguez.

“But not one with her background in anthropology?”

“No,” said Rodriguez. “Indeed, she wanted to be the directress of the division of physics.”

“Her background is in physics,” said Brenner.

“No,” said Rodriguez. “But that division is thought to have greater prestige. Besides you do not have to know anything about anthropology to be directress in the anthropology division or anything about physics to be directress in the physics division. The posts are primarily administrative. If one wants some help, one can always ask a question or two, or take an opinion or two, and then make some decision or another. In these fields it doesn’t much matter, as all that is sacrificed is knowledge, which, in effect, was given up long ago. Besides, anyone can do anything. All are the same, and so on.”

“I see,” said Brenner. Sometimes Brenner did not care for Rodriguez’ mocking his politics. Surely Rodriguez had been exposed to the same conditioning programs as himself, conditioning programs which inculcated suitable values, opinions, and attitudes, reviewed and approved by appropriate authorities. Had Rodriguez grown up in a social vacuum, or was he one of those aberrant types who made up his own mind, who, in effect, dared to form his own opinions on matters? Did he put himself above the people, the community, the local interspecific consortium, the authorities, the metaparty, if it existed?

“Her background is in interspecific group relations,” said Rodriguez. “Her work was characterized by duplicativeness, triviality, unimaginativeness, and mediocrity. In addition, and of even greater importance, it was consistently and unquestioningly politically orthodox. It was natural then that she should have petitioned for, and been granted, a more lucrative post, one in administration.”

“I see,” said Brenner.

“To be sure,” he said, “even that would probably not have been enough. She owes her position to being the niece of an individual in the metaparty.”

“There is such a thing?” asked Brenner.

“Of course,” said Rodriguez.

“She is a member of it?”

“I do not know,” said Rodriguez. “Somehow I regard it as unlikely. I think she lacks the intelligence, the ultimate ruthlessness, for that.”

“I see,” said Brenner.

“She should be on her knees, scrubbing floors, in chains,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner looked at him, horrified.

“Stripped,” said Rodriguez.

“Rodriguez!” protested Brenner.

“Surely you found her curves of interest,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner gasped.

“Wouldn’t you like to have her at your feet, in a collar?” he asked.

“Stop!” said Brenner.

“There are worlds where that is where such as she would be,” said Rodriguez. “I have seen such worlds.”

“You’re joking,” said Brenner.

“No,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner regarded him, horror-stricken.

“Not every world is like the home world,” said Rodriguez.

“There are mediocrities in all fields, male and female,” said Brenner.

“True,” said Rodriguez, affably. “But she would still look well in a collar.”

“But what if she were not as she is, not merely attractive, if she is, not that I would notice such a thing, but was exquisitely beautiful, sensitive, even brilliant?”

“She would still belong in a collar,” said Rodriguez.

“A collar?” asked Brenner.

“An animal collar, a pet, or a slave collar, such things, in any case, owned.”

“I do not understand,” said Brenner.

“She is a woman,” explained Rodriguez.

“I do not understand,” said Brenner.

“That is what they need, what they want,” said Rodriguez.

“I do not understand,” said Brenner.

“One must own, or be owned,” said Rodriguez. “In their hearts they know that it is they who are to be owned. Not owned, freed by men too weak to own them, it is natural that they lash out in frustration. Denied their identities, they attempt to usurp spurious identities, turning their lives into pretenses; too, in their frustration and pain, they will attempt to punish men, as they can, for their weakness, for denying them to themselves.”

“What of the previous expeditions, the scientific and cultural expeditions, to the Pons,” asked Brenner, “that from Naxos, that from Eos?” Brenner thought it well to change the subject.

“I suppose they were completed,” said Rodriguez. “But in interlink I could do little more than pull their departure dates.”

“Their reports were not filed, their studies?” asked Brenner.

“I do not know,” said Rodriguez. “Perhaps they were destroyed, or lost.”

“When did the expeditions return?” asked Brenner.

“I do not know,” said Rodriguez.

“Is it known that they returned?” asked Brenner.

“Why would they not have returned?” asked Rodriguez.

“I do not know,” said Brenner.

“Surely we may presume they returned safely,” said Rodriguez, puzzled.

“You have consulted records, of course?” said Brenner.

“Of course,” said Rodriguez.

“What did you learn?” asked Brenner.

“The records are silent on the matter,” said Rodriguez.

“They could have been lost,” said Brenner.

“That is possible,” said Rodriguez. “There are surely dangers in space, technological failure, miscalculation, meteor storms, mutiny on long voyages, war, piracy, any number of possibilities.” Indeed, we might note, there might have been any number of possibilities. It was not, you see, even in these modern times, the case that the rational species had conquered space. At best, they seemed to have won a certain, perhaps begrudged, toleration.

“Those expeditions were presumably fully fledged expeditions, properly staffed, suitably equipped, and provisioned, and such,” speculated Brenner.

“Presumably so,” smiled Rodriguez.

“With their own ship, or ships,” said Brenner.

“Ships which might have a considerable value, if obtained in a relatively undamaged condition.”

Brenner swallowed, hard.

A state-of-the-art starship, if taken in salvage, was a trove of equipment and fuel elements.

“But I do not think that we have to worry much about that,” said Rodriguez. “Besides, this is a company ship.” The great companies, of course, maintained their own police, their private armies, and such. Their ships, broadcasting their identificatory signals, commonly negotiated the silent seas of space with impunity. The annual budgets of some of these companies, it might be noted, in passing, exceeded the gross estimated wealth of many worlds.

“But we do have information on the Pons,” said Brenner.

“Certainly,” he said, “but from surveyors and traders, and, in the last century or so, largely from contacts at Company Station.”

“I do not like it,” said Brenner.

“In all likelihood,” said Rodriguez, “the expeditions returned in good order and, in time, filed their reports, their studies and such, and then these documents were later destroyed, or lost, perhaps in one politically mandated revision of knowledge or another.”

“You think then there might be something of interest on Abydos?”

“I think it is possible,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner looked out the port. Perhaps he imagined it, but it seemed to him that the star of Abydos, a yellow star, might appear to a bit larger now than it had earlier.

“We will conduct our researches at Company Station?” said Brenner.

“No,” said Rodriguez. “We are going back, into the forests.”

“That could be dangerous,” said Brenner.

“You won’t find out anything of interest at a trading point,” said Rodriguez. “Besides, we have been invited in, by the Pons themselves.”

“That seems surprising,” said Brenner.

“Yes,” said Rodriguez.

“Perhaps they want to open themselves to cultural contacts,” said Brenner.

“Undoubtedly,” said Rodriguez.

“If we discover anything uncongenial to the home world,” said Brenner, “presumably it, too, in its turn, would be suppressed.”

“Doubtless,” said Rodriguez. “But we will have known it, for a moment at least.”

Brenner shuddered, understanding then a little better the nature of his senior colleague.

“You think there may be something about the “beginning” on Abydos?” said Brenner.

“I think that is possible,” said Rodriguez.

“Totemic societies are unimportant,” said Brenner. “They are an anthropological dead end.”

“That is the official position,” said Rodriguez. “Indeed, if the Pons were thought to be of any serious interest, the sort which might improve a scholar’s credentials, earn him a promotion, secure future fellowships and grants, win prizes, bring recognition and honor to the consortium, and such, it is not we who would be here now, but others, the highly placed sycophants of the metaparty.”

“I am not eager to go back in the forests,” said Brenner.

“You can stay on board,” said Rodriguez. “I can punch enough credits for your return, on the back loop, to some port or another, from which your own credits should suffice for passage back to the home world. Indeed, I suspect that the captain, who seems a good fellow, would be willing to overlook your presence on board, at least to Chios.”

Brenner was silent.

“I’ll speak to the captain in the morning,” said Rodriguez.

“No,” said Brenner.

Rodriguez turned away from the port and stars, to look at Brenner, the adjunct’s face pale in the light from without the port.

“I’ll come with you,” said Brenner.

“Why?” asked Rodriguez.

“It is a voyage of months back to the home world,” said Brenner. “Besides, I accepted the assignment.”

Rodriguez did not free Brenner of his gaze.

“I, too, from what I have heard, am curious about Abydos,” said Brenner.

Rodriguez returned his attention to the vistas beyond the port.

“You were assigned?” asked Rodriguez.

“Yes,” said Brenner.

“I wonder why,” mused Rodriguez.

“I suppose I was suitably unimportant,” said Brenner.

“You are not politically suspect?” asked Rodriguez.

“No,” said Brenner.

“You have not expressed unapproved opinions, or been lax in your overt and frequently reiterated subscription to approved opinions, have you?” asked Rodriguez.

“Certainly not,” said Brenner.

“You have adequately guarded your expressions, and your behaviors, even subtle ones?”

“It is not necessary for me to be on my guard in such matters,” said Brenner.

“You have not betrayed atavistic tendencies?” asked Rodriguez.

“I would think not,” smiled Brenner.

“You have not alienated the directress, have you?”

“Not to my knowledge,” said Brenner.

“She may have sensed something in you that she feared,” said Rodriguez.

“Preposterous,” said Brenner.

“Something that makes her uneasy,” said Rodriguez, “something that even you yourself are unaware of.”

“That seems to me preposterous,” said Brenner.

“I did consult your records,” said Rodriguez, “your origins.”

Brenner stiffened.

“Then you realize that I am unimportant,” said Brenner. To be sure, Brenner was, in effect, without connections, relationships, and family. He was, at any rate, not integrated in one of the major matriarchally traced kinship networks.

“You never knew your father or mother?” asked Rodriguez.

“Of course not,” said Brenner.

Brenner was, in his way, rather the result of an experiment. He was what was known, somewhat disparagingly, even in a time which disparaged disparagements, as a “vat brat,” the result of a fertilization of stored gametes, the development of which was brought to term in vitro. The Brenners of Home World tended to be embarrassments, in their way, lingering holdovers from earlier times, from more benighted eras. Most of these materials had been disposed of.

“I am a modernist, and a lifest,” Brenner reminded Rodriguez.

Rodriguez nodded. “I understand,” he said. It would be particularly important to Brenner to fit in, he supposed, to repudiate a dubious, obsolescent genetic heritage which had, in effect, through an eccentric byway of science, found itself precipitated into a time not its own. Perhaps that is why he was given this assignment, Rodriguez speculated to himself, because his genes were feared. On various worlds Rodriguez’ own genetic heritage, and that of those like him, and of other sorts, as well, in the name of the good of the community, had been outlawed. His was a genotype the community was not eager to see perpetuated. No longer did it fit in. The time of the captains, the commanders, the explorers, on such worlds, was gone. There had been agitation on more than one world for Rodriguez to be “smoothed,” or anatomically perfected, that his energies, his passion, his drives, the cutting edge of his intellect, be dulled into conformity. It was not easy, however, to pick up Rodriguez, as it was a more inconspicuous victim and remand him for therapeutic surgery. He was known and, in some circles, seemed to have power. It was even speculated he had connections with various hypothesized underground organizations whose interests might not be identical with those of the community as a whole. Two police who had called for him had been found dead. No further police called for him. It would be enough then to deport him, and deny him future entrance visas to such worlds.

“I knew my father and mother,” said Rodriguez, “when I was little.”

“That is nice,” said Brenner.

“I was about ten,” said Rodriguez, “in Commonworld revolutions,” looking out absently into the stars, at the sun of Abydos, in the distance. “I caught my father abusing my mother. I killed him.”

Brenner was startled, and felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.

“I was her champion, you see,” he said.

“You didn’t know what you were doing,” said Brenner.

“No, I didn’t,” said Rodriguez, “but in a sense more profound than you realize.”

“What happened?” asked Brenner.

“My mother cast me out of the house,” he said. “I lived in the streets. I was alone. I survived.”

“What of your mother?” asked Brenner.

“Shortly after she had cast me out,” he said, “she committed suicide.”

Rodriguez then pressed the first of the recessed buttons at the side of the port, and then the second. The illumination in the lounge was restored, and the plating of the port closed. “Until tomorrow at ten,” said Rodriguez.

“What is wrong?” asked Rodriguez.

“Nothing,” said Brenner.

Rodriguez, with a small motion, pushing off, floated back to the webbing he had occupied. There, steadied by a hand on it, he turned back to regard Brenner.

“Are you afraid?” asked Rodriguez.

“Yes,” said Brenner.

“Of me?” asked Rodriguez.

“No,” said Brenner, after a moment.

“Of the Pons?” asked Rodriguez, skeptically.

“No,” said Brenner. “They are innocent, simple, and inoffensive.”

“Of the forest?” asked Rodriguez.

“From what I have heard of it, yes,” said Brenner.

Rodriguez hooked one arm in the webbing. “Don’t be,” he said. “Come here. Look.”

Brenner, with some skill, that which he had developed in the past weeks, joined Rodriguez at the webbing, and clung to the straps.

Rodriguez opened his small pack, which he seemed never without, that into which the emptied stein had been placed.

“What is it?” asked Brenner.

“It appears to be a telescope, collapsed, does it not?”

“Yes,” said Brenner.

Rodriguez then removed the object from the pack, rotated it 180 degrees and extended it. He also slid a panel back, revealing a breech. Following another adjustment, a trigger, housed in its guard, dropped into view below. “It is a Naxian rifle,” said Rodriguez.

“That is a forbidden weapon,” whispered Brenner, with an eye to the translating equipment, that by means of which they had communicated with the captain. “How did you get it through customs?”

“I picked it up on Chios,” he said. “Things are less tight out here. Too, I did punch out a bribe to a private number twice.”

“It is illegal to have it,” said Brenner.

“Not everywhere,” said Rodriguez.

“Certainly on a company ship, without authorization,” said Brenner.

“And at Company Station, without authorization,” said Rodriguez.

“I would suppose so,” said Brenner.

“Certainly,” said Rodriguez.

In order that this matter may be more clear I might mention that on many worlds weapons were not permitted to citizenries. The result of these ordinances, naturally, was that the citizenries of these worlds, for the most part, found themselves at the mercy of two groups which were somewhat diverse, but were in fact occasionally allied, to speak briefly, authorities and criminals. The means for their own protection was removed from them for their own protection. Interestingly enough, private transportation on various worlds was usually responsible for hundreds of times the deaths that had been wrought by the use of certain classes of weapons in the past, but such transportation was seldom removed from citizenries for their own protection. It might also be noted that private citizens who wished, for one reason or another, to do away with other private citizens, now denied the use of certain classes of weapons, did find themselves forced to new recourses, such as piercing with pointed tools, striking with heavy objects, and administering toxic substances.

“The Naxian rifle is a powerful weapon,” said Brenner.

“This model is,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner looked at the object, alarmed.

“With three charges from this,” said Rodriguez, confidingly, “I could open the side of the ship. One charge would be enough to cut a bull of Sybaris in two.”

“How many charges do you have?” asked Brenner. This was not a simple beam weapon, of the sort with which one might etch patient laceries in steel. The power of this weapon was discharged in concentrated bursts.

“Several,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner looked at him.

“Concealed in rolls of Bertinian leaf,” he said.

“Be careful what you smoke,” said Brenner.

“The charge is armed only in the breech,” grinned Rodriguez.

Brenner nodded. Heat, then, was not the precipitating agent. In that case, one could presumably hold a lighter to one of the cartridges, or charge casings, without getting more than a bad smell.

“What about impact?” asked Brenner.

“Hardly,” said Rodriguez.

“Of course,” said Brenner. Impact-activated charges, connected with firing pins, and such, were seldom found on civilized worlds. To be sure, they were still found here and there, in certain systems. But so, too, here and there, were pointed and edged weapons. Indeed, there were certain interesting worlds which had adopted sophisticated techniques, vehicles, and weapons for interplanetary aggression or planetary self-defense but which, on their own surfaces, had achieved carefully constructed neoprimitivisms, by means of which they sought to exercise ecological caution and liberate the processes of natural selection. On such worlds, by a sort of progress in reverse, were the rights, the ranks, and the glories of nature restored. Some of these worlds were of the sort which Rodriguez would presumably have characterized as “strong.” To be sure, there were features of such worlds which Brenner would doubtless have found deplorable. On them, for example, martial arts were practiced; and on them might be found warring camps, and not infrequently, it must be admitted, slave markets.

So do not fear the forest,” said Rodriguez, closing the weapon, which action restored it to the appearance of a simple telescope.

“I do not want anything killed,” said Brenner.

Some brief indications of Brenner’s concerns are in order. On his home world, long ago, the horrors of killing anything had become clear. This was no longer viewed as the way of life. Life had been improved upon, succeeded by certain moral postures. It had begun in particular with the illegalization of utilizing certain privileged sets of life forms as food. One popular expression was that it was wrong to “enslave animals for food purposes” which slogan indicated a confusion of slavery with animal husbandry, two quite disparate institutions, and was not regarded as requiring any plausible explanation, defense, or justification. Shortly thereafter it was pointed out by botanically sensitive individuals that vegetable matter, too, was alive, and might well have some dim sort of consciousness. Various bills intended to outlaw the enslavement of vegetables, fruit trees, and such, for food purposes just failed of enactment in certain areas, after lengthy expert testimony was taken from the scientific community on the minimalistic, if that, nature of the mentality of these various plants, and such, as though the mere minimality of the mentality were at all germane to the question. Where the bills were enacted they tended to be popularly ignored, though some individuals, as a moral duty, starved to death, attended by widespread publicity in the press, rousing general sympathy but in the end accomplishing little with respect to altering the ultimate fate of most vegetables. It had also been observed that the meaning of the command, “Thou shalt not kill,” had only recently been discovered, after several thousand years. It was noted that the original community to which this directive had been issued and which, presumably, would have been in an ideal position to understand it, had failed to grasp its import. Several members of that community, for example, had been shepherds, and others had been farmers and vintagers, and such. Too, one supposes that some amongst them would not have been above angling. Also, they seem to have had few scruples about putting tribal enemies to the sword, and, indeed, in certain cases, seem to have undertaken it as a duty incumbent upon them in virtue of obedience to the will of the very entity which had issued the original injunction pertaining to killing, an anomaly, at best. The injunction against killing would apply, of course, not only to animals and plants which might be utilized for food, but, naturally, more generally. An obvious, even painfully so, life form, was the insect. Insecticides, of course, were banned. A number of other accommodations were also in order, such as screened bulbs to prevent injury to flying insects and special shoes designed both for comfort and support and reduction of the number of contact surfaces with the ground, the latter to minimize the danger to crawling insects. Children were warned to be specially watchful not to step on six-legged brothers, and so on. These were, of course, negative precautions. The next logical step was insect welfare, putting out food for them, encouraging their breeding, etc. In some communities of the more enlightened variety special walkways were designed to protect individuals from hovering swarms. Insect welfarists often tore down these screens, as artificial barriers. Some individuals would wander about with serene smiles upon their countenances, their bodies swarming with insects, providing the little fellows with harbors and refuges, and nourishing them even, depending upon the variety, with their own blood. Whereas the saintliness of these individuals was readily admitted by the community at large, it must be admitted that their example, however inspiring, seldom elicited, or was honored by, emulation. Whereas it was true that a certain amount of edible material could be synthesized from certain chemicals these processes tended to be complex and expensive. Aside from questions of the nutritional equivalence of this material, if this was thought important, which still remained controversial, there were additional problems connected with its palatability, which might be ignored, and its long-term side effects which did not yet seem to be fully understood. But this sort of thing was not practical economically for most individuals, and of those to whom it was economically practical, few seemed to be interested in it. Most would make do with some forms of mashes and pulps. It might be added, for what it is worth, that various species of animals which had hitherto been enslaved, if one may so speak, for certain values or products, such as eggs, fur, or meat, had now lapsed into extinction. Naturally the enslavement of animals such as dogs, cats, tropical fish, torgos, inwits, and canaries was also outlawed. On several worlds these animals, too, were now extinct. Happily they survived on others. A further natural development, earlier mentioned, was the extension of the franchise to these fellow citizens of worlds, to be exercised, of course, by proxies, the control of which was a matter of great political moment. On the other hand, it seemed these life forms should have a say, too, or that there should be a say on their behalf, in various parliaments, diets and congresses. Things, of course, were not quite as one might expect on Brenner’s home world, given these axiological principles and commitments, because of the recrudescence of the “reality principle,” so to speak. Many of the subscribed values were given little more attention than was required by deference to the militant minorities, suffused with righteous zeal, that championed them. Many an insect, guilty of no more than the attempt to exercise his natural rights, was doubtless done in the privacy of one’s own compartments. There were, of course, certain individuals who committed suicide, overcome by guilt at the perpetuation of these secret murders, confessed to in notes left behind, and there were occasional mothers who, in view of the clearly stated utilitarian principles of the equivalence of all life forms, had sacrificed their child to save two cockroaches, but these were rare. The rational races tended to be saved, once again, by hypocrisy, the value of which is perhaps too little understood as a facilitator of social survival. Too, certain historic decisions, still controversial, emanating from high judiciaries, perhaps expressing the opinion of an alarmed metaparty, had made it clear that it was not morally incumbent upon the rational races, no more than other life forms, to surrender and depress the quality of their own life, or to seek their own extinction, no matter how moral the cause. To be sure, these matters remained legally and morally confused. It might be mentioned, lastly, that a black market thrived on most of the civilized worlds in which certain goods, foodstuffs, and such, for a price, remained available. To use a metaphor, many individuals who would not have enjoyed sticking a pig continued to relish pork chops. Too, the rich, and the powerful, as one might expect, had things much their own way. Even on the home world, it was rumored that they could buy anything, even women.

“I do not want anything killed,” said Brenner, repeating himself, firmly.

“It is sometimes necessary to kill,” said Rodriguez.

“Never,” said Brenner.

“I suppose you are right, or at least generally,” said Rodriguez. “One could just do nothing, or die, or let something else die.”

“Of course,” said Brenner.

“What of the bird that captures and eats an insect?” asked Rodriguez. “Has it committed murder?”

“I am not responsible for the bird,” said Brenner.

“Do you regard it as guilty?” asked Rodriguez.

“No,” said Brenner.

“Why not?” asked Rodriguez.

“That is just the way of life,” said Brenner.

“And you do not regard yourself as part of the way of life?” asked Rodriguez. “You exempt yourself from its ways?”

Brenner was silent.

“Every time you take a breath, every time you move, every time you lie down, every time you step,” said Rodriguez, “you kill, say, some tiny thing, some bacterium, some virus, some mite, such things. Your very body, with its natural defenses against disease, is designed by nature to survive, and to survive by killing.”

Brenner said nothing, but was angry.

“You live,” said Rodriguez, “because it is a killing machine.”

Some individuals, incidentally, sensitive, unusually morally motivated individuals, aware of, and horrified by, these possibilities, and attempting to curtail, or minimize, breathing, to avoid movement, and such, had gone insane. Most, however, in virtue of the predictable reassertion of what might be spoken of as “the reality principle,” as we have called it, in a disgusted spasm of health, rather reflexively, threw off these ideas, almost as one might vomit poison, no longer attending to them, rather getting on with the business of living, accepting themselves at last honestly as one animal amongst others in the kingdom of life, and one with its own nature, concerning which it need not be apologetic, and a nature with a potentiality for dominance, one with its place in the order of nature, one with a right to its place in the food chain.

“You are angry,” said Rodriguez, closing the pack.

“No, I am not,” said Brenner, heatedly.

“Answer me this, truthfully,” said Rodriguez, looking at Brenner. “Let us suppose some predatory animal were intent upon devouring a child, and you could save the child by killing the animal. Would you do so?”

“Yes,” said Brenner, angrily.

“You would give priority to your own life form?”

“Yes, said Brenner, in fury.

“Then you do not, truly, believe in the equivalence of life forms.”

“It seems not,” said Brenner.

“Then you are a species chauvinist,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner said nothing, but was furious.

“And so perhaps it is appropriate that you, too, have been sent to Abydos,” smiled Rodriguez.

“Perhaps,” said Brenner.

“Have you never wondered what it would be like, to breathe freely, to walk free, to fulfill yourself, to be yourself, as what you really are, truly?”

“I do not understand,” said Brenner.

“Good night,” said Rodriguez.

“About the directress,” said Brenner.

“Yes?” said Rodriguez.

“I think you owe me an apology, on her behalf,” said Brenner, “for how you spoke of her.”

“I do not understand,” said Rodriguez.

“Having to do with your offensive remarks about “curves” and “collars” and such.”

“Oh,” said Rodriguez.

“I really feel you should apologize.”

“Look there,” said Rodriguez. “There on the plating at your feet, in that exact place.”

“Yes?” said Brenner, puzzled, complying.

“Imagine her there now, in a slave collar, perhaps in chains, if you like, at your feet, stripped.”

Brenner, startled, stared down at the plating.

“Is she in chains?” asked Rodriguez.

“Yes,” said Brenner, hesitantly.

Rodriguez laughed.

Brenner reddened, angrily.

“Now,” said Rodriguez, “she lies at your feet, docile, curled up, in her chains.”

“Stop!” said Brenner.

“She is a woman,” said Rodriguez. “Let them lie there, at your feet, in the shadow of your whip, knowing they must obey. They will lie there, and purr with contentment.”

“Stop! Stop!” said Brenner.

“What is wrong?” asked Rodriguez.

“I will not have you uttering such words!”

“Are her lineaments, so soft and well turned, so luscious, not of interest to you?”

“I must not think such thoughts!” cried Brenner.

“Why?” asked Rodriguez. “Do they make you uncomfortable? Do they make you too conscious of your manhood?”

“I am not a man,” cried Brenner, “or not in what I take to be your dreadful sense! I must not be a man, not in that terrible sense! No! I am a person! I must be a person! Manhood, in your sense, is an anachronism, belonging to more primitive times, less enlightened eras. It is now, in that sense, as you well know, outlawed.”

“Yet in you, deny it as you will,” said Rodriguez, “is a man.”

“No,” wept Brenner.

“And in the old sense, that which you find so frightening, that of pride and power.”

“No!” said Brenner.

“Accept it, fulfill it, and relish it,” said Rodriguez.

“No, no!” said Brenner.

“You find these things reprehensible, objectionable?” asked Rodriguez.

“Yes!” said Brenner.

“But the pupils of your eyes are dilated,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner turned swiftly away, that Rodriguez could not see his face, or body.

“Well,” said Rodriguez. “Dream of the directress, and as you would have her.”

“No,” said Brenner. “No!”

“Good night,” said Rodriguez, and, releasing the webbing, moved lightly across the plating, toward the exit from the lounge.

“Doubtless you will dream of her!” cried Brenner, clinging to the webbing, like a rope in the sea.

Rodriguez turned about, at the exit, and, one hand on the handle of the panel, grinned. “Perhaps,” he said, “but I think not. I have others in mind who I think would be even more interesting subjects of such dreams.”

“Monster,” said Brenner.

“And surely you, too, might do better than the directress,” he suggested, “not that she is bad, in her essentials, you understand.”

“Monster, monster!” said Brenner.

Rodriguez spun lightly about, preparing to leave.

“Rodriguez!” called Brenner.

Rodriguez, his feet a bit from the floor, turned back. “Have you had such women,” asked Brenner, “women in such a way.

“Such women, women in such a way?” asked Rodriguez.

“You know what I mean!” said Brenner.

“Slaves, female slaves?” asked Rodriguez.

“Yes!” said Brenner.

“Of course,” said Rodriguez. “They are common, on various worlds.”

“But the women of Home World do not even know of such things, do they?”

“I would suppose that most do not,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner regarded him.

“There are, of course,” said Rodriguez, “some such, even on Home World.”

“Impossible!” said Brenner.

“Kept secretly, of course,” said Rodriguez.

“Impossible,” insisted Brenner.

“Their chains are as real as those of the girls on Megara, kept as prizes, awarded in the games,” said Rodriguez.

“Impossible,” repeated Brenner.

“Not everything on the home world is on the surface,” said Rodriguez.

“What are slaves like?” asked Brenner.

“Once you have tried one,” said Rodriguez, “you will never be content with anything less.”

Brenner swallowed, hard. He knew that the home world, and such worlds, were notorious for the low quality of their female companionship.

“And,” said Rodriguez, “I have little doubt that even the directress, properly embonded, and brought under suitable discipline, might prove to be not without interest.”

Brenner regarded him, aghast.

“It would certainly shake up her frigidity at any rate,” he said.

“Please,” protested Brenner.

“Consider her at your feet, begging, with tears of need in her eyes,” he said.

“Stop!” said Brenner.

“Dream of the directress,” smiled Rodriguez.

“No!” said Brenner.

“Or others,” said Rodriguez.

“No, no!” said Brenner.

But then Rodriguez had left.

Brenner clung for a time to the webbing, and then, for no reason he clearly understood, made his way back to the far side of the lounge, where he extinguished the lights and retracted the port shielding. Then he hovered there, at the port, looking out into the night of space, at the stars, alone. It was clear now that the sun of Abydos, which he recognized, in spite of the slightly different orientation of the ship, was larger. By morning it would be painful to look at it, and some of its worlds, perhaps even Abydos, might be visible, like small disks basking in its light. Brenner was angry, and muchly agitated by his disturbing conversation with his senior colleague, so unlike typical colleagues, sheltered children of the universities, unfamiliar with dark streets and the night. How had such a person as Rodriguez, who had done many things, come to the academic world, to his own field, anthropology? He had wanted to understand reality, it seemed, but not by means of categories and classifications, important though they might be, but by handling it himself, by digging into it, with his own hands, so to speak. Perhaps that was the main difference between Rodriguez and so many other colleagues, thought Brenner. Rodriguez was ignorant. He was naive. He did not truly understand the ways of academia. He was not yet content to substitute concepts for the concrete. He had not yet learned to replace reality with abstractions. As for the ship, Abydos would be no more than a convenience, a depot at which to draw fuel, at best a mere way station on routes to points of greater importance. Brenner looked at the distant star. On one of the worlds of that star, on Abydos, back in the forests, were the Pons, one of the few remaining totemic groups known to the civilized worlds. The field, of course, was no longer interested in totemic groups. It regarded them as unimportant. Rodriguez, on the other hand, had been curious about them.

Indeed, it seemed he thought there might be something of interest to be discovered in the forests. He had even spoken, somewhat cryptically, of learning something about the “beginning.” But there was nothing of importance on Abydos, not of serious importance. Brenner was sure of that. If there was anything of importance down there, it would not have been given to an over-the-hill, scarred, irascible, controversial, dissolute, politically suspect reprobate like Rodriguez, abetted by no more than himself, an inexperienced adjunct. Then, looking out upon the stars, and wondering about worlds, Brenner felt his agitations returning, and hastily slid shut the shielding for the port. In this fashion he did not have to look out upon stars which might shine upon worlds which he might have found objectionable, worlds of which he might have disapproved, deplorable worlds whose values might not be identical with his own. Interesting that the suns should shine with the same neutrality, the same equanimity, thought Brenner, on such diversities of worlds. And how difficult it was to tell, from far away, the differences amongst these worlds. The instruments of astronomy, it seemed, required refinement. How can one ascertain the distances, the rotations, and revolutions of meaningfulness, the patterns of values, the magnitudes of significance? But Brenner reminded himself, angrily, that he knew the good, the true, the beautiful, the meaningful, the correct. He had been taught them. Why then, Brenner asked himself, was there so much diversity amongst the worlds, even the civilized, or, better, the technologically advanced, worlds on such matters. Too, if his world were right in the ten thousand proprieties, and such, why was there so much misery, so much pain and unhappiness on it, not the misery and pain, the unhappiness, of basic negativities, such as inadequate shelter or food, or care, but the leaden miseries, the gray, dismal miseries, the seemingly hopeless miseries, the constraints, the inhibitions, the boredoms, the ennui, the pretences, the lies, the hypocrisies, the frustrating awarenesses, on the part of some, of dupery and manipulation, the special emptiness, and pain, that could remain, even in a warm, dry room, even after the receipt of certified nourishments? Could there be other nourishments, Brenner wondered, nourishments on which the heart, and the hope, and the cry for significance and meaning, might feed? Perhaps that is what is missing, he speculated. Then he put his hands on the plating. “No,” he thought to himself. “No, no!” But his world was correct, he knew, for it had been arrived at by correct procedures, developed by behavioral and axiological engineers sensitive to, and responsive to, the most enlightened political imperatives and nuances. But then why the pain, the misery, the ennui, the frustration, the grief, the sorrow, he asked himself. But then he thought how foolish this was, for why, really, should there be some striking congruence between the “good” and what people might find to their liking, or between the right, or the correct, and that which might prove productive of fulfillment, satisfaction, or happiness? Perhaps the entire issue had been viewed askew, and actually it was good and right, or appropriate, or correct, that the members of his species be unhappy, that they suffer emptiness and misery, that they remain unfulfilled. But Brenner did not care for this possibility at all, perhaps as a consequence of some insistent, unreconciled deviation in an uncorrected genetic makeup. Besides, he asked himself, how then should matters be determined. If there were no necessity for the good and the right to conduce to satisfaction or happiness, then presumably there would be no necessity that they should conduce to dissatisfaction or unhappiness either. Would one not expect random correlations? But the correlations on the home world did not seem to be random. They seemed on the whole detrimental to human satisfaction, to human welfare, happiness, and meaningfulness, at least if these things were taken in an uncritical, primitive sense. Was it essential that civilization prove inimical to human fulfillment, Brenner wondered. Were these two values, if values they were, antithetical, mutually exclusive, incapable of accommodations, incapable of achieving simultaneous fruition. That did not seem likely. To be sure, certain modalities of civilization might require the rejection, the repudiation, of human fulfillment, but surely, amongst all the dazzling infinities of social possibility, such were not the only conceivable modalities. And, too, what then were the touchstones for good or right, or for the proper, or the correct, he wondered, if not just such things as happiness, satisfaction, and meaningfulness, things so often, and so grievously, impaired and thwarted, if not actually absent, from the world he knew. But perhaps there is no common will, he thought. Perhaps there is no common interest. In the end perhaps there is only the struggle, the conflict, and the fraud, the victory of some announced as the victory of all. What was his species, he wondered. Brenner then became alarmed for he had lost touch with the plating. As he had closed the port and not yet reillumined the lounge he had been in the utter darkness. Suddenly he was no longer certain of his orientation, or bearings. He did not now know where he was, what was up or down, relative the webbings, or what was left or right. He reached out, turning in the darkness, out of touch with contact points as simple as the grip near the port. Suddenly the lights went on in the lounge. At the entrance panel, with a certain rather puzzled attitude of head and neck, was one of the crew. Immediately Brenner could obtain his bearings. Gratefully, when he could get a hand on a solid object, in this case, the wall at the side of the port, he pushed toward the webbing, and, in a moment, had it in hand. The crew member with loping strides, and a series of small clicks on the floor plating, as tiny magnetized disks attached to the first clawed digits of its rear appendages made their contact with the metal, went to the observation port and checked its closure. It then turned about to regard Brenner. It was making its rounds, clearly, and on these rounds one of its duties was apparently to check the closure of port shieldings. The port shielding, incidentally, when opened, activated the lounge entrance lock, closing off the lounge, except to authorized crew members.. In this fashion if the port should be shattered any attendant decompression would be limited to the lounge. To be sure it would take a considerable impact to threaten the quartz of the port, and any object capable of injuring it would presumably have been picked up long ago by the ship’s sensors, their signals feeding into the guidance system in such a way as to initiate an evasive action, to be followed by a later return to course. Brenner waved to the crew member, that it might understand that all was well. It may have wondered what the point of Brenner’s floating about in the darkened lounge might have been but, tactfully, it did not approach the vicinity of the translation device and inquire. Besides, it was really none of its business. It was only a second-class crew member and Brenner was a passenger. Too, discovering Brenner in this unusual situation may have confirmed, or seemed to confirm, some preconception or other in its mind. It then loped to the exit with tiny clicks, where it turned, once again, to regard Brenner. It was difficult for Brenner to read expressions on that sort of face. The magnetic attachments at the rear claws were most often used when managing controls or monitoring panels, where one might wish to retain one’s exact position and orientation without reliance on secretions, which were occasionally unreliable, or, more mechanically, by webbing. Also, of course, these devices, when in contact with metal, provided immediate leverage for movement. Brenner waved again. He would turn off the lights. The crew member lifted a claw, opened its mouth, clapped its jaws twice, and then left. Brenner felt foolish, having been discovered in such an embarrassing state, so helpless, so disoriented. But his race, he knew, to many in the galaxy, counted as little more than amusing caricatures of rational life, nonentities, mediocrities, interesting perhaps as pets or clowns. Brenner, an arm anchored in the webbing, looked down at the plating where Rodriguez had directed him to imagine the directress, and in a certain sort of fashion. It was well thought Brenner, angrily, that she was not there, and in such a fashion, else she might have been, for no fault whatsoever of her own, whipped, and merely because he had been discovered in an embarrassing situation by another life form, merely because he felt foolish, merely because he was angry with himself. He supposed that such women were occasionally subjected to such attentions, and for no better reasons, that it was in effect a part of the hazards of their condition, or of their lot, that they were subject to such things, that they might be abused, or kicked, as might be any other form of animal, say, a dog.

Brenner looked about the lounge. Things were now in place. The lights were on. The webbing floated about, attached to its stanchions. He could see the door. He could see the controls for the lights, both at the port and near the door. By listening carefully he could detect the soft hum of the filtering system, regulating the gases in the room. He was still agitated by his conversation with Rodriguez, but now his blood had ceased to churn, no longer was he drenched with sweat, no longer was he afraid, or angry. He now, once again, had his values in order. How absurd for him to have let Rodriguez disturb him. Brenner’s tentative little odyssey of thought, stimulated by the hurricane of Rodriguez’ monstrousness, had subsided. To be sure, there was a lingering uneasiness in him. Rodriguez could have that effect on people. He did glance down once at a certain place on the plating but quickly glanced away. He must control his thoughts. He must not let them rise in him like a sun in the morning, or spring up like flowers, like grass or mountains. He must not attend to them. Who knew where such thoughts, such things, emerging as though from lairs concealed beneath distant horizons, asserting themselves imperiously, naturally, as though springing from forgotten seeds, as though growing from deep soils, might lead? Rodriguez is a monster, thought Brenner. Then he made his way to the exit, turned off the lights, left the lounge, and, amongst the pipes and girderwork, made his way to his cabin. Shortly thereafter, he had hooked himself in his rest webbing, and retired.

He did not go to sleep immediately.

He thought of a number of things, and, in particular, his assignment, and the world, Abydos.

As he grew drowsy, he found it more and more difficult to keep his mind from drifting back to his conversation with Rodriguez.

He is an unregenerate monster, thought Brenner.

And, too, as he grew more and more drowsy, it was difficult not to remember what the directress had looked like, as he had imagined her, with such specificity, on the plating, in that exact place. Even her expression recurred to him, and how she had lifted her hands, in their linked bracelets. Then, too, she had looked well, lying on her side, looking up at him. And he thought, too, of other women he had seen, perhaps even casually on a conveyance or on a street, or known, from one place or another, and wondered what they, too, might have looked like in various situations, and attitudes, not in their mannish garbs designed to protect their personness, as though it would much need protection on the home world, of course, but in snatches of cotton or shreds of silk. And when they ascended the block, of course, they would be permitted not even so much. How well they served! And their glances, how soft, how shy, how timid. And that one, did she not dance? Brenner turned in the webbing, trying to force these thoughts from his mind. It seemed their whispers were about him, almost inaudible, tiny, plaintive whispers requesting attention. He scarcely dared to open his eyes lest he should seem to see them, shadowy in the darkness. Were they there? It almost seemed he might feel their touch. He turned in the webbing. He was in misery. He chastised himself mercilessly. How could he, a modernist and a lifest, have such thoughts? And had he not actually known some of these women, as fellow students, as colleagues, and such? How then could he conceive of them thusly, as though they might be naught but Naxian property girls, owned as much as a dog or a pig on Chios? But Rodriguez, he supposed, angrily, would have taken it all in his stride, and, indeed, got what he wanted from them, and more. Then doubtless he would have sold them, before returning to the home world. It would not do, of course, to bring in such merchandise, not to the home world. Then, failing to rid himself of these thoughts by various acts of will, requiring one degree or another of heroism, he hit upon another tack, and simply ordered the women from his presence. Clearly some were reluctant to leave, but none, it seemed, dared consider disobeying. Brenner found that of interest. Brenner now lay quietly in the webbing. He was on a company ship. He was alone in his cabin. Shortly thereafter he went to sleep. To be sure, the women returned in his sleep, to kneel, to serve, to be near him. The directress was amongst them, but her place was farther back. Brenner saw that one of the women, a brunette, in a bit of silk that did not more than scorn the pretense that she was a person and not a female, rose to her feet and approached him. She leaned over the webbing. In the darkness her body seemed pale. About her throat was a tiny, closely linked chain, with an attached plate, bearing her name, a single, simple name, and her number. Her lips were about to touch his. Then, suddenly, frightened, angrily, in a cold sweat, he awakened. Shortly thereafter he went back to sleep. He was awakened once more that night, but by the roar of a great savage beast. The roar echoed about the ship. He had heard it before, on other watches. It emanated from a cage, or containment, not far away.

Then Brenner went back to sleep.