The Totems of Abydos

CHAPTER 35





“This,” said Rodriguez, eagerly, “is the theory!”

“Why did you take their part?” asked Brenner.

“It was your part, as much as theirs,” said Rodriguez.

“Are you not horrified at what has been done to you?” asked Brenner. It was revolting to Brenner to look upon the small, eyeless creature, the tiny face lost in the larger head, disproportionate to the body. In such a casing he found it hard to think of Rodriguez, the wreck of whose body, even when Brenner first knew him, had been still large, formidable, strongly built. Brenner recalled that the git keeper had informed him that Rodriguez would be given a less dangerous body. The Pons had feared him, with that large, frightening body. The present body was harmless enough, indeed, small even, and weak even, for a Pon, and without eyes. Pons needed no longer fear the thing that had once been his friend.

“Yes,” said Rodriguez.

“What of the Pon whose body that formerly was?” asked Brenner. He remembered that Pon, from the temple.

“They did not need him any longer,” said Rodriguez. “He was disposed of, the brain. I saw it removed and destroyed.”

“You saw this?” asked Brenner.

“From my jar,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner’s body shuddered, the fur rippling over it.

“It had been placed on a shelf in the laboratory, overlooking the operating table.”

“The placement of the jar there was doubtless not an accident,” said Brenner.

“No,” said Rodriguez. “I do not think so.”

“Did you know what they intended to do?” asked Brenner.

“None had seen fit to inform me,” said Rodriguez, “but it was not difficult to divine their intention.”

Brenner was silent.

“One sees. One knows,” said Rodriguez. “But one can do nothing. One cannot scream. One cannot speak. One is moved about, here and there. One is done with, as others please.”

“I understand,” said Brenner.

“As you know,” said Rodriguez, “decapitory incarceration is used in maximum-security prisons on several worlds.”

“Yes,” said Brenner.

“It is interesting, in its way,” said Rodriguez. “One continues to feel one’s body, at least for a time, though it no longer exists, whether it is warm or cold, how the limbs are positioned, and such. It requires an effort to accept this, that the body no longer exists.”

“I understand,” said Brenner, shuddering. Sensation was located predominantly in the brain, and then extradited, so to speak, to various parts of the body. Indeed, even a disembodied brain, properly stimulated, could have experiences, visual, tactual, and otherwise. Indeed, a common form of paranoia, developed in his species over the past thousands of years, was the suspicion, or conviction, that one might be such a brain, in some ensconcement, being stimulated by aliens, who would then study it, or, perhaps, participate vicariously in its experiences.

Brenner lay on the summit of the cliff. It was a favorite place of his. He had carried Rodriguez upward, Rodriguez clinging to his fur. From where they were, Brenner, even reclining, could see over the forest, to the village. Behind him, at the foot of the cliffs, was the valley, and, on the other side of it, the cliffs with the openings, which he and Rodriguez, one fateful afternoon, had explored.

“Why did they do this to you?” asked Brenner.

“I could thus be of use to them,” said Rodriguez. “It was I who knew you, who was your friend. Thus it would be I, the least likely to be torn to pieces, who would approach the new father. You do not think they would wish to risk one of themselves, do you? Some, in the past, I gather, had perished in such a fashion. There was only this body about, almost less than occupied. It would do.”

“How is the body?”

“It is painful and feeble. I do not think it will last long.”

“They should all be killed,” said Brenner.

“They are your future,” said Rodriguez.

“Forgive me,” said Brenner. “But it disgusts me to look upon you.”

“It is a gruesome prison,” admitted Rodriguez. “In it I am little to be feared. Too, perhaps it amuses them that I should be kept in this fashion.”

“In the village,” said the beast, “had you said to me, ‘Kill’, in that instant, they would have learned you were more to be feared than they had thought.”

“They read me well,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner did not respond to this. The Pons, he knew, to his fury, had read another well, too.

“Do you have the memories of the beast?” asked Rodriguez.

“Yes,” said Brenner.

“Then it is not dead,” said Rodriguez.

“It is gone,” said Brenner. “Its memories remain. I have appropriated them. In a way it survives, in me. In a way it still lives. In a way we are one. Yet my consciousness is my own.”

“But your instincts, your needs?”

“Those of a beast, which I am,” said Brenner.

“You are my friend, Allan, as well,” said Rodriguez.

“It is very strange,” said Brenner.

“Not really,” said Rodriguez. “Some sort of enmeshing of brains has taken place, of a quite sophisticated sort. Your brain, it seems clear, or portions of it, doubtless the upper brain in particular, with its consciousness and memories, has been enmeshed with that of the beast, presumably primarily with its lower brain, together with portions of its upper brain, memory tracks, and such.”

“The consciousness is that of a beast,” said Brenner, “but somehow it is also mine, mine as I remember it, I mean, but mine now in a new manner, as that of a beast.”

“Were it not for this mercilessness, this terribleness,” said Rodriguez, “you could not be so effective as a guardian.”

“The Pons have planned well,” said Brenner.

“They have had millenniums to perfect these techniques,” said Rodriguez.

“For a long time I could not recall Allan,” said the beast. “Sometimes, even now, I forget him.”

“You make me afraid,” said Rodriguez.

“I could never harm you,” said Brenner. “You are the only person who has ever cared for me.”

Rodriguez did not respond.

“What is your life?” asked Brenner.

“I am the pariah,” said Rodriguez, simply. “Such are not unoften found in totemistic villages. They serve a useful social function. They provide the community with something to look down upon, something to despise and ridicule. Too, they may be utilized to perform tasks which others might find unwelcome, distasteful or repulsive, even taboo. For example, they may make contact with, and care for, and wash, and feed, those who are temporarily taboo, for example, from having attended to the burial of the dead.”

“Pons die?” asked Brenner.

“They are quite mortal,” said Rodriguez.

“Where do they keep you?”

“I stay in the temple.”

“In the darkness?”

“I have my own darkness. They feed me. I have my thoughts.”

“Never leave me,” said Brenner. “I do not want to be alone.”

“I will one day leave you,” said Rodriguez.

“Stay,” said Brenner.

“Do you think I find this form of life acceptable?” asked Rodriguez. “Do you think I care for the darkness, the weakness, the pain? Do you think I am not aware of this ugliness, this tiny face at the bottom of a head, of the revolting thinness, the shrillness, of my speech, of my disproportions, my ungainliness? Do you think that I am not aware of this pathetic, ludicrous, diminutive monstrosity I have been made? Do you truly think I will continue to indefinitely submit to this humiliation? Do you think I care for these things? Do you think I will grant the final victory to Pons?”

“Do not leave me,” said Brenner.

“In any event,” said Rodriguez, “the days of this frail house, this humiliating prison in which I have been placed, are numbered.”

“Do not speak so,” said Brenner, alarmed.

“But there is something I want to learn first,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner was silent, troubled.

“Are you now wholly the beast?” asked Rodriguez.

“I do not know,” said Brenner.

“Surely you are still curious,” said Rodriguez.

“Concerning what?” asked Brenner.

“That which we came here to learn,” said Rodriguez.

“Would that we had never come here!” cried Brenner.

“I would have come again,” said Rodriguez.

“How is that?” asked Brenner, horrified.

“The answer is here!” said Rodriguez. “It is within our grasp!”

“I do not understand,” said Brenner.

“The theory! The theory!” said Rodriguez.

“I do not understand,” said Brenner.

“Take me to the graveyard,” said Rodriguez.

“I do not understand,” said Brenner.

“We will learn the truth!” said Rodriguez.

“You are blind,” said Brenner.

“You shall be my eyes,” said Rodriguez.

“They have come for you, to take you back,” said Brenner. He could see some Pons, three of them, in the vicinity of the platform.”

“No!” protested Rodriguez.

“Yes,” said Brenner.

“It is late?” said Rodriguez.

“Yes,” said Brenner.

“Are you afraid to look into these matters?” asked Rodriguez.

“Perhaps,” said Brenner.

“Are you are afraid to learn the truth of the fathers?” asked Rodriguez.

“Perhaps it is a truth best not known,” said Brenner.

“You must help me,” said Rodriguez.

“It is late,” said Brenner.

“Allan,” said Rodriguez.

“We will descend now,” said Brenner.

“Of course,” said Rodriguez.

Rodriguez then seized the fur of the beast, at its shoulder, and, clinging to it, was borne to the platform, and then to the level. The three Pons who had come to the vicinity of the platform, seeing the descent of the beast, withdrew well into the trees.

“Hold to the string,” said Brenner. “I fear stealthy ones may be about.” It was spring, you see, and that is a time when intrusions are most frequent, when animals tend to range, young ones seeking to mark out territories for themselves, older ones, robust animals, seeking to extend theirs. Another dangerous time is the depth of winter, when food is scarce, when one must sometimes range out of one’s own country, to find it. To be sure, it was difficult enough, at any time, to police the territory effectively, as it was quite large, and there were many beasts, like sinister itinerants, which came and went within it. Too, some predators, almost negligible to the beast, constituted serious threats to animals as small as Pons.

Brenner watched the tiny, eyeless one grasp the string. It then went toward the village, followed by the Pons.

“What could the small, eyeless one want in a graveyard?” the beast asked itself. That seemed very strange. It then decided that it was sleepy, and returned to its lair, for a nap. “How had it all begun, what did it all mean?” Brenner later asked himself. But then the beast curled up, and fell asleep.