THE MAN IN THE maze
• NightwingS
Downward to the
eartH
A Robert Silverbera
Omnibus
HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS, New York
Cambridge, Hagerstown, Philadelphia, San Francisco
1817 London, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Sydney
ROBERT 5ILVCRBCRG

This work contains The Man in the Maze, copyright © 1969 by Rob-
ert Silverberg; Nightwings, copyright © 1968, 1969 by Robert Silver-
berg; Downward to the Earth, copyright © .1969, 1971 by Robert
Silverberg.
a robert silverberg omnibus. Copyright © 1981 by Robert Silver-
berg. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No
part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em-
bodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper
& Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited,
Toronto.

Contents
Introduction	vii
The Man in the Maze	1
Nightwings	171
Downward to the Earth	333

Introduction
These three novels date from the most fertile period of my ca-
reer, the late 1960s, when wonders brimmed to overflow in my
mind and novels came pouring in splendid excess from my fingers.
Not only these three but also The Masks of Time, To Live Again,
Thorns, Tower of Glass, and Son of Man issued forth all in one
mighty rush. After that it all became much more difficult, and for
a while it became impossible, for me to write fiction. The story-
telling impulse returned eventually, but I suspect that never again
will I startle the world with so many books so swiftly. Which is all
right with me; all I ask of myself is that I write well, not that I
write with freakish abundance, and my main goal is to give pleas-
ure to my readers through the satisfying practice of my art and
craft, not to win a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Still, it does amaze me how readily those novels of the late 1960s
came.
Why I should have been so productive then I have no real idea.
Of course, I was younger then: everybody was. The young have
more energy than the—well, not quite as young—and they have
more to prove, more to make known to the world. Paradoxically,
too, they seem to feel time's winged chariot hurrying on in a way
that older people have learned to ignore, I was in my early thirties
when I wrote these novels, and the thirties, for a writer, seem to
be a time of peak creative energy, I know not why. Painters and
composers and poets often do their best work in late middle age, if
they are lucky enough to have a late middle age; but writers surge
early. Dickens, by the age of 37, had David Copperfield, The
Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and Barnaby Rudge behind him,
among much else. Faulkner, at 35, had already done The Sound
and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Sanctuary.
Hemingway's key work was accomplished in his twenties and early
thirties, and he was only 42 when he wrote For Whom the Bell
Tolls, after which he accomplished relatively little.
In science fiction there is a remarkable correlation between

viii Introduction
youth and creativity. Some honorable exceptions exist, writers like
Ursula Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, and James Tiptree, who were only
beginning their careers at an age when most in their field were es-
sentially finished with theirs, and yet went on to great things be-
yond 40. But the novels for which Isaac Asimov is famous were
written between the ages of 22 and 33. Theodore Sturgeon's clas-
sic More Than Human appeared when he was 35, amid a great
burst of other wondrous stories. Arthur Clarke had achieved
Childhood's End, Against the Fall of Night, and Sands of Mars by
the same age. The two great novels of Alfred Bester were written
before he reached 43. Robert Sheckley's phenomenal flow of short
stories emerged in his late twenties. Philip K. Dick, Poul Ander-
son, Philip Jose Farmer, Walter M. Miller, Jr., and many others
had accomplished their basic work by the time they reached 40.
(Most of these writers, of course, have gone on to do excellent
work in their later years, and we also have the sterling example
before us of Robert A. Heinlein, who after hitting the customary
burst of creative vitality between the ages of 32 and 35 had a sec-
ond such spurt a decade and a half later. But in general it seems
that a writer and especially a science-fiction writer has his time of
greatest intensity when he is young.)
The earliest of the three novels reprinted in this omnibus is The
Man in the Maze, which I wrote in the autumn of 1967. The
snarling, alienated protagonist, caught in a tragic and hopeless
predicament, was then a fairly uncommon sort of figure for sci-
ence fiction, though a few perceptive readers did notice his true lit-
erary ancestry in the Philoctetes of Sophocles. (I learned much of
what I know about constructing plots from a careful study of
Greek tragedy in my undergraduate days, and from time to time I
pay tribute to my masters by borrowing one of their narrative situ-
ations.) I think it is one of my strongest books. It attracted little
attention when it first appeared, no awards nominations or instant
elevation to the pantheon of s-f classics, but it has remained in
print constantly for a decade and a half, has been translated into
eight languages, and periodically almost gets turned into a film, so
the audience has evidently come to agree with my appraisal of it.
There never were audience difficulties with Nightwings, which I
began a few months later. Probably it is the most popular book I
wrote before Lord Valentine's Castle, and from the beginning of
its career it has been well received. The first of the three sections
that constitute the novel was written in March of 1968, at one of

Introduction ix
the darkest times in my life, just after the fire that wrecked the
magnificent house I had when I lived in New York, Living in im-
provised rented quarters, working on an unfamiliar typewriter in a
strange and uncomfortable place, numb with the exhaustion of
coping for weeks with a major catastrophe, I somehow found the
energy to invent and set on paper the romantic and colorful open-
ing section in just a few days—a bizarre and by now implausible
summoning of mysterious strength. That opening section, as an in-
dependent item, went on to win a Hugo award and to miss a
Nebula by just a few votes. When I wrote it, I had no idea I was
beginning a novel; sleepwalker that I was in those days, I was
happy enough to have 20,000 coherent words written. But a week
or so later I realized that the rest of the story needed telling, and I
produced the second part in April of 1968, the third in June. The
two sequels also were award nominees, although—since they had
less independent life of their own—they failed to win any trophies.
Weaving the three into a single novel took little effort, and the
book appeared in 1969. It has had many editions since then.
Downward to the Earth is a product of 1969, my next to last
year of really unfettered productivity. The fatigue of the fire and
its aftermath was passing from me now; I had moved back into my
rebuilt house, unaware that I would soon sell it and move to Cali-
fornia; and the books that had flooded from me during the past
few years were at last gaining the sort of attention that encourages
a writer to go on. In February of 1969 I visited the great game
parks of East Africa, and there, seeing the enormous surviving
herds of zebras and wildebeests and gazelles, while at the same
time experiencing the realities of post-Colonial African politics, I
had the notion of a science-fiction novel, set in a time of diminish-
ing imperialist exploitation, in which the real heroes were the ele-
phants. The transcendental element in my work, which is some-
what visible in Man in the Maze and rather more conspicuous in
Nightwings, now came to play a major role also. Oddly, despite all
these ambitious concepts, the actual novel that emerged displeased
me greatly at first—thus illustrating the adage that a writer is the
last person to trust in the evaluation of that writer's work. I'm not
sure what it was then that I didn't like about Downward to the
Earth, but I seem to be the only reader who found fault with it,
for it was warmly received by the magazine editor who serialized
it and the book editor who published the complete version, and by
the readers, who gave it the usual award nominations, and when I

x Introduction
went back and read the thing myself a couple of years later I was
delighted with it too. As I am, I shamefully admit, with the other
two novels in this volume. As I hope you will be, now that all
three are brought together for the first time in permanent form.
Robert Silverberg
Oakland, California
July, 1980

The Han in the maze

ONE
Muller knew the maze quite well by this time. He understood its
snares and its delusions, its pitfalls, its deadly traps. He had lived
within it for nine years. That was long enough to come to terms
with the maze, if not with the situation that had driven him to take
refuge within it.
He still moved warily. Three or four times already he had
learned that his knowledge of the maze, although adequate and
workable, was not wholly complete. At least once he had come
right to the edge of destruction, pulling back only by some im-
probable bit of luck just before the unexpected fountaining of an
energy flare sent a stream of raw power boiling across his path.
Muller had charted that flare, and fifty others; but as he moved
through the city-sized labyrinth he knew there was no guarantee
that he would not meet an uncharted one.
Overhead the sky was darkening; the deep, rich green of late af-
ternoon was giving way to the black of night. Muller paused a mo-
ment in his hunting to look up at the pattern of the stars. Even
that was becoming familiar now. He had chosen his own constel-
lations on this desolate world, searching the heavens for arrange-
ments of brightness that suited his peculiarly harsh and bitter
taste. Now they appeared: the Dagger, the Back, the Shaft, the
Ape, the Toad. In the forehead of the Ape flickered the small
grubby star that Muller believed was the sun of Earth. He was not
sure, because he had destroyed his chart tank after landing here
somehow, though, he felt that that minor fireball must be Sol. The
same dim star formed the left eye of the Toad. There were times
when Muller told himself that Sol would not be visible in the sky
of this world ninety light-years from Earth, but at other times he
was quite convinced. Beyond the Toad lay the constellation that
Muller had named Libra, the Scales. Of course, this set of scales
was badly out of balance.
Three small moons glittered here. The air was thin but breatha-
ble; Muller had long ago ceased to notice that it had too much ni-
trogen, not enough oxygen. It was a little short on carbon dioxide,

4 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
too, and one effect of that was that he hardly ever seemed to
yawn. That did not trouble him. Gripping the butt of his gun
tightly, he walked slowly through the alien city in search of his
dinner. This too was part of a fixed routine. He had six months'
supply of food stored in a radiation locker half a kilometer away,
but yet each night he went hunting so that he could replace at
once whatever he drew from his cache. It was a way of devouring
the time. And he needed that cache, undepleted, against the day
when the maze might cripple or paralyze him. His keen eyes
scanned the angled streets ahead. About him rose the walls,
screens, traps and confusions of the maze within which he lived.
He breathed deeply. He put each foot firmly down before lifting
the other. He looked in all directions. The triple moonlight an-
alyzed and dissected his shadow, splitting it into reduplicated im-
ages that danced and sprawled before him.
The mass detector mounted over his left ear emitted a high-
pitched sound. That told Muller that it had picked up the thermals
of an animal in the 50-100 kilogram range. He had the detector
programmed to scan in three horizons, of which this was the mid-
dle one, the food-beast range. The detector would also report to
him on the proximity of 10-20 kilogram creatures—the teeth-beast
range—and on the emanations of beasts over 500 kilograms—the
big-beast range. The small ones had a way of going quickly for the
throat, and the great ones were careless tramplers; Muller hunted
those in between and avoided the others.
Now he crouched, readying his weapon. The animals that wan-
dered the maze here on Lemnos could be slain without stratagem;
they kept watch on one another, but even after all the years of
Muller's presence among them they had not learned that he was
predatory. Not in several million years had an intelligent life-form
done any hunting on this planet, evidently, and Muller had been
potting them nightly without teaching them a thing about the na-
ture of mankind. His only concern in hunting was to strike from a
secure, well-surveyed point so that in his concentration on his prey
he would not fall victim to some more dangerous creature. With
the kickstaff mounted on the heel of his left boot he probed the
wall behind him, making certain that it would not open and engulf
him. It was solid. Good. Muller edged himself backward until his
back touched the cool, polished stone. His left knee rested on the
faintly yielding pavement. He sighted along the barrel of his gun.
He was safe. He could wait. Perhaps three minutes went by. The

The Mail in the Maze
5
mass detector continued to whine, indicating that the beast was
remaining within a hundred-meter radius; the pitch rose slightly
from moment to moment as the thermals grew stronger. Muller
was in no hurry. He was at one side of a vast plaza bordered by
glassy curving partitions, and anything that emerged from those
gleaming crescents would be an easy shot. Muller was hunting to-
night in Zone E of the maze, the fifth sector out from the heart,
and one of the most dangerous. He rarely went past the relatively
innocuous Zone D, but some daredevil mood had prodded him
into E this evening. Since finding his way into the maze he had
never risked G or H again at all, and had been as far out as F only
twice. He came to E perhaps five times a year.
To his right the converging lines of a shadow appeared, jutting
from one of^the curving glassy walls. The song of the mass detec-
tor reached into the upper end of the pitch spectrum for an animal
of this size. The smallest moon, Atropos, swinging giddily through
the sky, changed the shadow pattern; the lines no longer con-
verged, but now one bar of blackness cut across the other two.
The shadow of a snout, Muller knew. An instant later he saw his
victim. The animal was the size of a large dog, gray of muzzle and
tawny of body, hump-shouldered, ugly, spectacularly carnivorous.
For his first few years here Muller had avoided hunting the car-
nivores, thinking that their meat would not be tasty. He had gone
instead after the local equivalent of cows and sheep—mild-man-
nered ungulates which drifted blithely through the maze cropping
the grasses in the garden places. Only when that bland meat palled
did he go after one of the fanged, clawed creatures that harvested
the herbivores, and to his surprise their flesh was excellent. He
watched the animal emerge into the plaza. Its long snout twitched.
Muller could hear the sniffing sounds from where he crouched.
But the scent of man meant nothing to this beast.
Confidently, swaggeringly, the carnivore strode across the sleek
pavement of the plaza, its unretracted claws clicking and scraping.
Muller fined his beam down to needle aperture and took thought-
ful aim, sighting now on the hump, now on the hindquarters. The
gun was proximity-responsive and would score a hit automatically,
but Muller always keyed in the manual sighting. He and the gun
had different goals—the gun was concerned with killing, Muller
with eating; and it was easier to do his own aiming than to try to
convince the weapon that a bolt through the tender, juicy hump
would deprive him of the tastiest cut. The gun, seeking the sim-

6 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
plest target, would lance through that hump to the spine and bring
the beast down: Muller favored more finesse.
He chose a target six inches forward from the hump: the place
where the spine entered the skull. One shot did it. The animal top-
pled heavily. Muller went toward it as rapidly as he dared, check-
ing every footfall. Quickly he carved away the inessentials—limbs,
head, belly—and sprayed a seal around the raw slab of flesh he cut
from the hump. He sliced a hefty steak from the hindquarters, too,
and strapped both parcels to his shoulders. Then he swung
around, searching for the zigzagging road that was the only safe
entry to the core of the maze. In less than an hour he could be at
his lair in the heart of Zone A.
He was halfway across the plaza when he heard an unfamiliar
sound.
Pausing, he looked back. Three small loping creatures were
heading toward the carcass he had abandoned. But the scrabbling
of the scavengers was not what he had heard. Was the maze pre-
paring some new deviltry? It had been a low rumbling sound over-
laid by a hoarse throb in the middle frequencies, too prolonged to
be the roaring of one of the large animals. It was a sound Muller
had not heard before.
No: a sound he had not heard here before. It registered some-
where in his memory banks. He searched. The sound was familiar.
That double boom, slowly dopplering into the distance—what was
it?
He placed its position. The sound had come from over his right
shoulder, so it seemed. Muller looked there and saw only the tri-
ple cascade of the maze's secondary wall, rising in tier upon glit-
tering amber tier. Above that wall? He saw the star-brightened
sky: the Ape, the Toad, the Scales.
Muller remembered the sound now.
A ship; a starship, cutting out of warp onto ion drive to make a
planetary landing. The boom of the expellers, the throb of the
deceleration tubes, passing over the city. It was a sound he had
not heard in nine years, since his self-exile on Lemnos had begun.
So he was having visitors. Casual intruders, or had he been
traced? What did they want? Anger blazed through him. He had
had enough of them and their world. Why did they have to trouble
him here? Muller stood braced, legs apart, a segment of his mind
searching as always for perils even while he glared toward the
probable landing point of the ship. He wanted nothing to do with

The Mail in the Maze
7
Earth or Earthmen. He glowered at the faint point of light in the
eye of the Toad, in the forehead of the Ape.
They would not reach him, he decided.
They would die in the maze, and their bones would join the
million-year accumulation that lay strewn in the outer corridors.
And if they succeeded in entering, as he had done-
Well, then they would have to contend with him. They would
not find that pleasant. Muller smiled grimly, adjusted the meat on
his back, and returned his full concentration to the job of pene-
trating the maze. Soon he was within Zone A, and safe. He
reached his lair. He stowed his meat. He prepared his dinner. Pain
hammered at his skull. After nine years he was no longer alone on
this world. They had soiled his solitude. Once again, Muller felt
betrayed. He wanted nothing more from Earth than privacy, now;
and even that they would not give him. But they would suffer if
they managed to reach him within the maze. If.
2
The ship had erupted from warp a little late, almost in the outer
fringes of Lemnos' atmosphere. Charles Boardman disliked that.
He demanded the highest possible standards of performance from
himself, and expected everyone about him to keep to the same
standards. Especially pilots.
Concealing his irritation, Boardman thumbed the screen to life
and the cabin wall blossomed with a vivid image of the planet
below. Scarcely any clouds swathed its surface; he had a clear
view through the atmosphere. In the midst of a broad plain was a
series of corrugations that were sharply outlined even at a height
of a hundred kilometers. Boardman turned to the young man be-
side him and said, "There you are, Ned. The labyrinth of Lemnos.
And Dick Muller right in the middle of it!"
Ned Rawlins pursed his lips. "So big? It must be hundreds of
kilometers across!"
"What you're seeing is the outer embankment. The maze itself
is surrounded by a concentric ring of earthen walls five meters
high and nearly a thousand kilometers in outer circumference.
But-"
"Yes, I know," Rawlins burst in. Almost immediately he turned
bright red, with that appealing innocence that Boardman found so

8 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
charming and soon would be trying to put to use. "I'm sorry,
Charles, I didn't mean to interrupt."
"Quite all right. What did you want to ask?"
"That dark spot within the outer walls—is that the city itself?"
Boardman nodded. "That's the inner maze. Twenty, thirty kilo-
meters in diameter—and God knows how many millions of years
old. That's where we'll find Muller."
"If we can get inside."
"When we get inside."
"Yes. Yes. Of course. When we get inside," Rawlins corrected,
reddening again. He flashed a quick, earnest smile. "There's no
chance we won't find the entrance, is there?"
"Muller did," said Boardman quietly. "He's in there."
"But he's the first who got inside. Everyone else who tried has
failed. So why will we—"
"There weren't many who tried," Boardman said. "Those who
did weren't equipped for the problem. We'll manage, Ned. We'll
manage. We have to. Relax, now, and enjoy the landing."
The ship swung toward the planet—going down much too rap-
idly, Boardman thought, oppressed by the strains of deceleration.
He hated travel, and he hated the moment of landing worst of all.
But this was a trip he could not have avoided. He eased back in
the webfoam cradle and blanked out the screen. Ned Rawlins was
still upright, eyes glowing with excitement. How wonderful to be
young, Boardman thought, not sure whether he meant to be
sarcastic or not. Certainly the boy was strong and healthy—and
cleverer than he sometimes seemed. A likely lad, as they would
have said a few centuries ago. Boardman could not remember
having been that sort of young man himself. He had the feeling of
having always been on the brink of middle age—shrewd, calcu-
lating, well organized. He was eighty, now, with almost half his
lifetime behind him, and yet in honest self-appraisal he could not
bring himself to believe that his personality had changed in any es-
sential way since he had turned twenty. He had learned tech-
niques, the craft of managing men; he was wiser now; but he was
not qualitatively different. Young Ned Rawlins, though, was going
to be another person entirely sixty-odd years from now, and very
little of the callow boy in the next cradle would survive. Board-
man suspected, not happily, that this very mission would be the
crucible in which Ned's innocence was blasted from him.
Boardman closed his eyes as the ship entered its final landing

The Mail in the Maze
9
maneuvers. He felt gravity clawing at his aging flesh. Down.
Down. Down. How many planetfalls had he made, loathing every
one? The diplomatic life was a restless one. Christmas on Mars,
Easter on one of the Centaurine worlds, the midyear feast cele-
brated on a stinking planet of Rigel—and now this trip, the most
complex of all. Man was not made to flash from star to star like
this, Boardman thought. I have lost my sense of a universe. They
say this is the richest era of human existence; but I think a man
can be richer in knowing every atom of a single golden island in a
blue sea than by spending his days striding among all the worlds.
He knew that his face was distorted by the pull of Lemnos as
the ship plunged planetward. There were heavy fleshy jowls about
his throat, and pockets of extra meat here and there about his
body, giving him a soft, pampered look. With little effort Board-
man could have had himself streamlined to the fashionably sleek
appearance of a modern man; this was an era when men a century
and a quarter old could look like striplings, if they cared to. Early
in his career Boardman had chosen to simulate authentic aging.
Call it an investment; what he forfeited in chic he gained in status.
His business was selling advice to governments, and governments
preferred not to buy their counsel from men who looked like boys.
Boardman had looked fifty-five years old for the last forty years,
and he expected to retain that look of strong, vigorous early mid-
dle age at least another half a century. Later, he would allow time
to work on him again when he entered the final phase of his ca-
reer. He would take on the whitened hair and shrunken cheek of a
man of eighty, and pose as Nestor rather than as Ulysses. At the
moment it was professionally useful to look only slightly out of
trim, as he did.
He was a short man, though he was so stocky that he easily
dominated any group at a conference table. His powerful shoul-
ders, deep chest, and long arms would have been better suited to a
giant. When he stood up Boardman revealed himself as of less
than middle height, but sitting down he was awesome. He found
that feature useful too, and had never considered altering it. An
extremely tall man is better suited to command than to advise, and
Boardman had never had the wish to command; he preferred a
more subtle exercise of power. But a short man who looks big at a
table can control empires. The business of empires is transacted
sitting down.
He had the look of authority. His chin was strong, his nose

10 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
thick and blunt and forceful, his lips both firm and sensuous, his
eyebrows immense and shaggy, black strips of fur sprouting from
a massive forehead that might have awed a Neanderthal. He wore
his hair long and coarse. Three rings gleamed on his fingers, one a
gyroscope of platinum and rubies with dull-hued inlays of U-238.
His taste in clothing was severe and conservative, running to
heavy fabrics and almost medieval cuts. In another epoch he
might have been well cast as a worldly cardinal or as an ambitious
prime minister; he would have been important in any court at any
time. He was important now. The price of Boardman's impor-
tance, though, was the turmoil of travel. Soon he would land on
another strange planet, where the air would smell wrong, the grav-
ity would be just a shade too strong, and the sun's hue would not
be right. Boardman scowled. How much longer would the landing
take?
He looked at Ned Rawlins. Twenty-two, twenty-three years old,
something like that: the picture of naive young manhood, al-
though Boardman knew that Ned was old enough to have learned
more than he seemed to show. Tall, conventionally handsome
without the aid of cosmetic surgery; fair hair, blue eyes, wide, mo-
bile Hps, flawless teeth. He was the son of a communications
theorist, now dead, who had been one of Richard Muller's closest
friends. Boardman was counting on that connection to carry them
a good distance in the delicate transactions ahead.
Rawlins said, "Are you uncomfortable, Charles?"
"I'll live. We'll be down soon."
"The landing seems so slow, doesn't it?"
"Another minute now," Boardman said.
The boy's face looked scarcely stretched by the forces acting
upon them. His left cheek was drawn down slightly, that was all.
It was weird to see the semblance of a sneer on that shining
visage.
"Here we come now," Boardman muttered, and closed his eyes
again.
The ship closed the last gap between itself and the ground. The
expellers cut out; the deceleration tubes snarled their last. There
was the final awkward moment of uncertainty, then steadiness, the
landing jacks gripping firmly, the roar of landing silenced. We are
here, Boardman thought. Now for the maze. Now for Mr. Richard
Muller. Now to see if he's become any less horrible in the past

The Mail in the Maze
11
nine years. Maybe he's just like everyone else, by now. If he is,
Boardman told himself, God help us all.
3
Ned Rawlins had not traveled much. He had visited only five
worlds, and three of them were in the mother system. When he
was ten, his father had taken him on a summer tour of Mars. Two
years later he had seen Venus and Mercury. As his graduation
present at sixteen he had gone extrasolar as far as Alpha Centauri
IV, and three years after that he had made the melancholy trip to
the Rigel system to bring home his father's body after the acci-
dent.
It wasn't much of a travel record at a time when the warp drive
made getting from one cluster to another not much more difficult
than going from Europe to Australia, Rawlins knew. But he had
time to do his jaunting later on, when he began getting his diplo-
matic assignments. To hear Charles Boardman tell it, the joys of
travel palled pretty fast, anyway, and running around the universe
became just another chore. Rawlins made allowances for the jaded
attitude of a man nearly four times his own age, but he suspected
that Boardman was telling the truth.
Let the jadedness come. Right now Ned Rawlins was walking
an alien world for the sixth time in his life, and he loved it. The
ship was docked on the big plain that surrounded Muller's maze;
the outer embankments of the maze itself lay a hundred kilome-
ters to the southeast. It was the middle of the night on this side of
Lemnos. The planet had a thirty-hour day and a twenty-month
year; it was early autumn in this hemisphere, and the air was
chilly. Rawlins stepped away from the ship. The crewmen were
unloading the extruders that would build their camp. Charles
Boardman stood to one side, wrapped in a thick fur garment and
buried in an introspective mood so deep that Rawlins did not dare
go near him. Rawlins' attitude toward Boardman was one of min-
gled awe and terror. He knew that the man was a cynical old bas-
tard, but despite that it was impossible to feel anything but admi-
ration for him. Boardman, Rawlins knew, was an authentic great
man. He hadn't met many. His own father had been one, perhaps.
Dick Muller had been another; but of course Rawlins hadn't been
much more than twelve years old when Muller got into the hide-

12 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
ous mess that had shattered his life. Well, to have known three
such men in one short lifetime was a privilege indeed, Rawlins
told himself. He wished that his own career would turn out half as
impressively as Boardman's had. Of course he didn't have Board-
man's foxiness, and hoped he never would. But he had other
characteristics—a nobility of soul, in a way—which Boardman
lacked. I can be of service in my own style, Rawlins thought, and
then wondered if that was a naive hope.
He filled his lungs with alien air. He stared at a sky swarming
with strange stars, and looked futilely for some familiar pattern. A
frosty wind ripped across the plain. This planet seemed forlorn,
desolate, empty. He had read about Lemnos in school: one of the
abandoned ancient planets of an unknown alien race, lifeless for a
thousand centuries. Nothing remained of its people except fossil-
ized bones and shreds of artifacts—and the maze. Their deadly
labyrinth ringed a city of the dead that seemed almost untouched
by time.
Archaeologists had scanned the city from the air, probing it
with sensors and curdling in frustration, unable to enter it safely.
The first dozen expeditions to Lemnos had failed to find a way
into the maze; every man who entered had perished, a victim of
the hidden traps so cleverly planted in the outer zones. The last
attempt to get inside had been made some fifty years ago. Then
Richard Muller had come here, looldng for a place to hide from
mankind, and somehow he had found the route.
Rawlins wondered if they would succeed in making contact
with Muller. He wondered, too, how many of the men he had
journeyed with would die before they got into the maze. He did
not consider the possibility of his own death. At his age, death was
still something that happened to other people. But some of the
men now working to set up their camp would be dead in a few
days.
While he thought about that an animal appeared, padding out
from behind a sandy hummock a short distance from him. Raw-
lins regarded the alien beast curiously. It looked a little like a big
cat, but its claws did not retract and its mouth was full of greenish
fangs. Luminous stripes gave its lean sides a gaudy hue. Rawlins
could not see what use such a glowing hide would be to a preda-
tor, unless it used the radiance as a kind of bait.
The animal came within a dozen meters of Rawlins, peered at
him without any sign of real interest, then turned gracefully and

The Mail in the Maze
13
trotted toward the ship. The combination of strange beauty,
power, and menace that the animal presented was an attractive
one.
It was approaching Boardman now. And Boardman was draw-
ing a weapon.
"No!" Rawlins found himself yelling. "Don't kill it, Charles! It
only wants to look at us—!"
Boardman fired.
The animal leaped, convulsed in mid-air, and fell back with its
limbs outspread. Rawlins rushed up, numb with shock. There
hadn't been any need for the killing, he thought. The beast was
just scouting us out. What a filthy thing to do!
He blurted angrily, "Couldn't you have waited a minute,
Charles? Maybe it would have gone away by itself! Why—"
Boardman smiled. He beckoned to a crewman, who squirted a
spray net over the fallen animal. The beast stirred groggily as the
crewman hauled it toward the ship. Softly Boardman said, "All I
did was stun it, Ned. We're going to write off part of the budget
for this trip against the account of the federal zoo. Did you think I
was all that triggerhappy?"
Rawlins suddenly felt very small and foolish. "Well—not really.
That is-"
"Forget it. No, don't forget it. Don't forget anything. Take a
lesson from it: collect all the data before shouting nonsense."
"But if I had waited, and you really had killed it—"
"Then you'd have learned something ugly about me at the ex-
pense of one animal life. You'd have the useful fact that I'm pro-
voked to murderousness by anything strange with sharp teeth. In-
stead all you did was make a loud noise. If I had meant to kill,
your shout wouldn't have changed my intention. It might have
ruined my aim, that's all, and left me at the mercy of an angry
wounded beast. So bide your time, Ned. Evaluate. It's better
sometimes to let a thing happen than to play your own hand too
quickly." Boardman winked. "Am I offending you, Ned? Making
you feel like an idiot with my little lecture?"
"Of course not, Charles. I wouldn't pretend that I don't have
plenty to learn."
"And you're willing to learn it from me, even if I'm an infuriat-
ing old scoundrel?"
"Charles, I-"
"I'm sorry, Ned. I shouldn't be teasing you. You were right to

14 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
try to stop me from killing that animal. It wasn't your fault that
you misunderstood what I was doing. In your place I'd have acted
just the way you did"
"You mean I shouldn't have bided my time and collected all
the data when you pulled the stungun?" Rawlins asked, baffled.
"Probably not."
"You're contradicting yourself, Charles,"
"It's my privilege to be inconsistent," Boardman said. "My
stock in trade, even," He laughed heartily. "Get a good night's
sleep tonight. Tomorrow we'll fly over the maze and map it a lit-
tle, and then we'll start sending men in. I figure we'll be talking to
Muller within a week."
"Do you think he'll be willing to cooperate?"
A cloud passed over Boardman's heavy features. "He won't be
at first. Hell be so full of bitterness that he'll be spitting poison.
After all, we're the ones who cast him out. Why should he want to
help Earth now? Bat hell come around, Ned, because funda-
mentally he's a man of honor, and that's something that never
changes no matter how sick and lonely and anguished a man gets.
Not even hatred can corrode real honor. You know that, Ned, be-
cause you're that sort of person yourself. Even I am, in my own
way. A man of honor. Well work on Muller. Well get him to
come out of that damned maze and help us."
"I hope you're right, Charles." Rawlins hesitated. "And what
will it be like for us, confronting him? I mean, considering his
sickness—the way he affects others—"
"It'll be bad. Very bad."
"You saw him, didn't you, after it happened?"
"Yes, Many times."
Rawlins said, "I can't really imagine what it's like to be next to
a man and feel his whole soul spilling out over you. That's what
happens when you're with Muller, isn't it?"
"It's like stepping into a bath of acid," said Boardman heavily.
"You can get used to it, but you never like it. You feel fire all
over your skin. The ugliness, the terrors, the greeds, the sicknesses
—they spout from him. like a fountain of muck."
"And Mutter's a man of honor. . decent man.
"He was, yes."' Boardman looked toward the distant maze.
"Thank God for that. But it's a sobering thought, isn't it, Ned? If
a first-rate man like Dick Muller has all that garbage inside his
brain, what do you think ordinary people are like in there? The

The Mail in the Maze
15
squashed-down people with the squashed-down lives? Give them
the same kind of curse Muller has and they'd be like beacons of
flame, burning up every mind within light-years."
"But Muller's had nine years to stew in his misery," Rawlins
said. "What if it's impossible to get near him now? What if the
stuff he radiates is so strong that we won't be able to stand it?"
"We'll stand it," Boardman said.

TWO
Within the maze, Muller studied his situation and contemplated
his options. In the milky green recesses of the viewing tank he
could see the ship and the plastic domes that had sprouted beside
it, and the tiny figures of men moving about. He wished now that
he had been able to find the fine control on the viewing tank; the
images he received were badly out of focus. But he considered
himself lucky to have the use of the tank at all. Many of the an-
cient instruments in this city had become useless long ago through
the decay of some vital part. A surprising number had endured the
eons unharmed, a tribute to the technical skill of their makers; but
of these, Muller had been able to discover the function of only a
few, and he operated those imperfectly.
He watched the blurred figures of his fellow humans working
busily and wondered what new torment they were preparing for
him.
He had tried to leave no clues to his whereabouts when he fled
from Earth. He had come here in a rented ship, filing a deceptive
flight plan by way of Sigma Draconis. During his warp trip, of
course, he had had to pass six monitor stations; but he had given
each one a simulated great-circle galactic route record, carefully
designed to be as misleading as possible.
A routine comparison check of all the monitor stations would
reveal that Muller's successive announcements of location added
up to nonsense, but he had gambled that he would manage to
complete his flight and vanish before they ran one of the regular
checks. Evidently he had won that gamble, for no interceptor
ships had come after him.
Emerging from warp in the vicinity of Lemnos, he had carried
out one final evasive maneuver by leaving his ship in a parking
orbit and descending by drop-capsule. A disruptor bomb, prepro-
grammed, had blasted the ship to molecules and sent the frag-
ments traveling on a billion conflicting orbits through the universe.
It would take a fancy computer indeed to calculate a probable
nexus of source for those! The bomb was designed to provide fifty

The Mail in the Maze
17
false vectors per square meter of explosion surface, a virtual guar-
antee that no tracer could possibly be effective within a finite span
of time. Muller needed only a very short finite span-say, sixty
years. He had been close to sixty when he left Earth. Normally, he
could expect at least another century of vigorous life; but, cut off
from medical service, doctoring himself with a cheap diagnostat,
he'd be doing well to last into his eleventh or twelfth decade. Sixty
years of solitude and a peaceful, private death, that was all he
asked. But now his privacy was interrupted after only nine years.
Had they really traced him somehow?
Muller decided that they had not. For one thing, he had taken
every conceivable antitracking precaution. For another, they had
no motive for following him. He was no fugitive who had to be
brought back to justice. He was simply a man with a loathsome
affliction, an abomination in the sight of his fellow mortals, and
doubtless Earth felt itself well rid of him. He was a shame and a
reproach to them, a welling fount of guilt and grief, a prod to the
planetary conscience. The kindest thing he could do for his own
kind was to remove himself from their midst, and he had done
that as thoroughly as he could. They would hardly make an effort
to come looking for someone so odious to them.
Who were these intruders, then?
Archaeologists, he suspected. The ruined city of Lemnos still
held a magnetic, fatal fascination for them—for everyone. Muller
had hoped that the risks of the maze would continue to keep men
away. It had been discovered over a century earlier, but before his
arrival there had been a period of many years in which Lemnos
was shunned. For good reason: Muller had many times seen the
corpses of those who had tried and failed to enter the maze. He
himself had come here partly out of a suicidal wish to join the ros-
ter of victims, partly out of overriding curiosity to get within and
solve the secret of the labyrinth, and partly out of the knowledge
that if he did penetrate he was not likely to suffer many invasions
of his privacy. Now he was within; but intruders had come.
They will not enter, Muller told himself.
Snugly established at the core of the maze, he had command of
enough sensing devices to follow, however vaguely, the progress of
any living creatures outside. Thus he could trace the wanderings
from zone to zone of the animals that were his prey, and also
those of the great beasts who offered danger. To a limited degree
he could control the snares of the maze, which normally were

18 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
nothing more than passive traps but which could be employed ag-
gressively, under the right conditions, against some enemy. More
than once Muller had dumped an elephantine carnivore into a
subterranean pit as it charged inward through Zone D. He asked
himself if he would use those defenses against human beings if
they penetrated that far, and had no answer. He did not really
hate his own species; he just preferred to be left alone, in what
passed for peace.
He eyed the screens. He occupied a squat hexagonal cell—ap-
parently one of the housing units in the inner city—which was
equipped with a wall of viewing tanks. It had taken him more than
a year to find out which parts of the maze corresponded to the im-
ages on the screens; but by patiently posting markers he had
matched the dim images to the glossy reality. The six lowest
screens along the wall showed him pictures of areas in Zones A
through F; the cameras, or whatever they were, swiveled through
180° arcs, enabling the hidden mysterious eyes to patrol the entire
region around each of the zone entrances. Since only one entrance
provided safe access to the zone within, all others being lethal, the
screens effectively allowed Muller to watch the inward progress of
any prowler. It did not matter what was taking place at any of the
false entrances. Those who persisted there would die.
Screens seven through ten, in the upper bank, relayed images
that apparently came from Zones G and H, the outermost, largest
and deadliest zones of the maze. Muller had not wanted to go to
the trouble of returning to those zones to check his theory in de-
tail; he was satisfied that the screens were pickups from points in
the outer zones, and it was not worth risking those zones again to
find out more accurately where the pickups were mounted. As for
the eleventh and twelfth screens, they obviously showed views of
the plain outside the maze altogether—the plain now occupied by a
newly-arrived starship from Earth.
Few of the other devices left by the ancient builders of the maze
were as informative. Mounted on a dais in the center of the city's
central plaza, shielded by a crystal vault, was a twelve-sided stone
the color of ruby, in whose depths a mechanism like an intricate
shutter ticked and pulsed. Muller suspected it was some sort of
clock, keyed to a nuclear oscillation and sounding out the units of
time its makers employed. Periodically the stone underwent tem-
porary changes: its face turned cloudy, deepened in hue to blue or
even black, swung on its mounting. Muller's careful record-keep-

The Mail in the Maze
19
ing had not yet told him the meaning of those changes. He could
not even analyze the periodicity. The metamorphoses were not
random, but the pattern they followed was beyond his compre-
hension.
At the eight corners of the plaza were metallic spikes, smoothly
tapering to heights of some twenty feet. Throughout the cycle of
the year these spikes revolved, so they were calendars, it seemed,
moving on hidden bearings. Muller knew that they made one com-
plete revolution in each thirty-month turning of Lemnos about its
somber orange primary, but he suspected some deeper purpose for
these gleaming pylons. Searching for it occupied much of his time.
Spaced neatly in the streets of Zone A were cages with bars
hewn from an alabaster-like rock. Muller could see no way of
opening these cages; yet twice during his years here he had awak-
ened to find the bars withdrawn into the stone pavement, and
the cages gaping wide. The first time they had remained open for
three days; then the bars had returned to their positions while he
slept, sliding into place and showing no seam where they could
have parted. When the cages opened again, a few years later,
Muller watched them constantly to find the secret of their mecha-
nism. But on the fourth night he dozed just long enough to miss
the closing again.
Equally mysterious was the aqueduct. Around the length of
Zone B ran a closed trough, perhaps of onyx, with angular spigots
placed at fifty-meter intervals. When any sort of vessel, even a
cupped hand, was placed beneath a spigot it yielded pure water.
But when he attempted to poke a finger into one of the spigots he
found no opening, nor could he see any even while the water was
coming forth; it was as though the fluid issued through a permea-
ble plug of stone, and Muller found it hard to accept that. He wel-
comed the water, though.
It surprised him that so much of the city should have survived.
Archaeologists had concluded, from a study of the artifacts and
skeletons found on Lemnos outside the maze, that there had been
no intelligent life here for upward of a million years—perhaps five
or six million. Muller was only an amateur archaeologist, but he
had had enough field experience to know the effects of the passing
of time. The fossils in the plain were clearly ancient, and the
stratification of the city's outer walls showed that the labyrinth
was contemporary with those fossils.
Yet most of the city, supposedly built before the evolution of

20 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
mankind on Earth, appeared untouched by the ages. The dry
weather could account in part for that; there were no storms here,
and rain had not fallen since Muller's arrival. But wind and wind-
blown sand could carve walls and pavements over a million years,
and there was no sign of such carving here. Nor had sand accumu-
lated in the open streets of the city. Muller knew why. Hidden
pumps collected all debris, keeping everything spotless. He had
gathered handfuls of soil from the garden plots, scattering little
trails here and there. Within minutes the driblets of soil had begun
to slither across the polished pavement, vanishing into slots that
opened briefly and closed again at the intersection of buildings
and ground.
Evidently beneath the city lay a network of inconceivable ma-
chinery—imperishable caretaker devices that guarded the city
against the tooth of time. Muller had not been able to reach that
network, though. He lacked the equipment for breaching the pave-
ment; it seemed invulnerable at all points. With improvised tools
he had begun to dig in the garden areas, hoping to reach the sub-
city that way, but though he had driven one pit more than a dozen
feet and another even deeper he had come upon no signs of any-
thing below but more soil. The hidden guardians had to be there,
however: the instruments that operated the viewing tanks, swept
the streets, repaired the masonry, and controlled the murderous
traps that studded the outer zones of the labyrinth.
It was hard to imagine a race that could build a city of this sort
—a city designed to last millions of years. It was harder still to
imagine how they could have vanished. Assuming that the fossils
found in the burial yards outside the walls were those of the
builders—not necessarily a safe assumption—this city had been put
together by burly humanoids a meter and a half tall, immensely
thick through the chest and shoulders, with long cunning fingers,
eight to the hand, and short double-jointed legs.
They were gone from the known worlds of the universe, and
nothing like them had been found in any other system; perhaps
they had withdrawn to some far galaxy yet unvisited by man. Or,
possibly, they had been a nonspacegoing race that evolved and
perished right here on Lemnos, leaving this city as their only mon-
ument.
The rest of the planet was without trace of habitation although
burial grounds had been discovered in a diminishing series radiat-
ing outward a thousand kilometers from the maze. Maybe the

The Mail in the Maze
21
years had eroded all their cities except this one. Maybe this, which
could have sheltered perhaps a million beings, had been their only
city. There was no clue to their disappearance. The devilish in-
genuity of the maze argued that in their last days they had been
harassed by enemies and had retreated within this tricky fortress;
but Muller knew that this hypothesis too was a speculation. For
all he was aware, the maze represented nothing more than an out-
burst of cultural paranoia and had no relation to the actual exist-
ence of an external threat.
Had they been invaded by beings for whom the maze posed no
problems, and had they been slaughtered in their own sleek
streets, and had the mechanical wardens swept away the bones?
No way x>i knowing. They were gone. Muller, entering their city,
had found it silent, desolate, as if it had never sheltered life; an
automatic city, sterile, flawless. Only beasts occupied it. They had
had a million years to find their way through the maze and take
possession. Muller had counted some two dozen species of mam-
mals in all sizes from rat-equivalent to elephant-equivalent. There
were grazers who munched on the city's gardens, and hunters who
fed on the herbivores, and the ecological balance seemed perfect.
The city in the maze was like unto Isaiah's Babylon: wild beasts
of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of dole-
ful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance
there.
The city was his now. He had the rest of his lifetime to probe its
mysteries.
There had been others who had come here, and not all of them
had been human. Entering the maze, Muller had been treated to
the sight of those who had failed to go the route. He had sighted a
score of human skeletons in Zones H, G, and F. Three men had
made it to E, and one to D. Muller had expected to see their bones;
but what took him off guard was the collection of alien bones. In
H and G he had seen the remains of great dragon-like creatures,
still clad in the shreds of spacesuits. Some day curiosity might tri-
umph over fear and he might go back out there for a second look
at them. Closer to the core lay an assortment of life-forms, mostly
humanoid but veering from the standard structure. How long ago
they had come here, Muller could not guess; even in this dry cli-
mate, would exposed skeletons last more than a few centuries? The
galactic litter was a sobering reminder of something Muller al-
ready adequately knew: that despite the experience of man's first

22 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
two centuries of extrasolar travel, in wMch no living intelligent
alien race was encountered, the universe was full of other forms of
life, and sooner or later man would meet them. The boneyard on
Lemnos contained relics of at least a dozen different races. It flat-
tered Muller's ego to know that he alone, apparently, had reached
the heart of the maze; but it did not cheer him to think of the di-
versity of peoples in the universe. He had already had his fill of
galactics.
The inconsistency of finding the litter of bones within the maze
did not strike him for several years. The mechanisms of the city,
he knew, cleaned relentlessly, tidying up everything from particles
of dust to the bones of the animals on whom he fed. Yet the skele-
tons of would-be invaders of the maze were allowed to remain
where they lay. Why the violation of neatness? Why cart away the
corpse of a dead elephant-like beast that had blundered into a
power snare, and leave the remains of a dead dragon killed by the
same snare? Because the dragon wore protective clothing, and so
was sapient? Sapient corpses were deliberately allowed to remain,
Muller realized.
As warnings. ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER
HERE.
Those skeletons were part of the psychological warfare waged
against all intruders by this mindless, deathless, diabolical city.
They were reminders of the perils that lurked everywhere. How
the guardian drew the subtle distinction between bodies that
should be left in situ and those that should be swept away, Muller
did not know; but he was convinced that the distinction was real.
He watched his screens. He eyed the tiny figures moving about
the ship on the plain.
Let them come in, he thought. The city hasn't had a victim in
years. It'll take care of them. I'm safe where I am.
And, he knew, that even if by some miracle they managed to
reach him, they would not remain long. His own special malady
would drive them away. They might be clever enough to defeat
the maze, but they could not endure the affliction that made Rich-
ard Muller intolerable to his own species.
"Go away," Muller said aloud.
He heard the whirr of rotors, and stepped from his dwelling to
see a dark shadow traverse the plaza. They were scouting the
maze from the air. Quickly he went indoors, then smiled at his

The Mail in the Maze
23
own impulse to hide. They could detect him, of course, wherever
he was. Their screens would tell them that a human being inhab-
ited the labyrinth. And then, naturally, they would in their as-
tonishment try to make contact with him although they would not
be aware of his identity. After that—
Muller stiffened as a sudden overwhelming desire blazed
through him, To have them come to him. To talk to men again.
To break his isolation.
He wanted them here.
Only for an instant. After the momentary breakthrough of lone-
liness came the return of rationality—the chilling awareness of
what it would be like to face his kind again. No, he thought. Keep
out! Or die in the maze. Keep out. Keep out. Keep out.
2
"Right down there," Boardman said. "That's where he must be,
eh, Ned? You can see the glow on the face of the tank. We're
picking up the right mass, the right density, the right everything.
One live man, and it's got to be Muller."
"At the heart of the maze," said Rawlins. "So he really did it!"
"Somehow." Boardman peered into the viewing tank. From a
height of a couple of kilometers the structure of the inner city was
clear, He could make out eight distinct zones, each with its char-
acteristic style of architecture; its plazas and promenades; its an-
gling walls; its tangle of streets swirling in dizzyingly alien pat-
terns. The zones were concentric, fanning out from a broad plaza
at the heart of it all, and the scoutplane's mass detector had lo-
cated Muller in a row of low buildings just to the east of the plaza.
What Boardman failed to make out was any obvious passage link-
ing zone to zone. There was no shortage of blind alleys, but even
from the air the true route was not apparent; what was it like try-
ing to work inward on the ground?
It was all but impossible, Boardman knew. The master data
banks in the ship held the accounts of those early explorers who
had tried it and failed. Boardman had brought with him every
scrap of information on the penetration of the maze, and none of
it was very encouraging except the one puzzling but incontroverti-
ble datum that Richard Muller had managed to get inside.
Rawlins said, "This is going to sound naive, I know, Charles.

24 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
But why don't we just come down from here and land the scout-
plane in the middle of that central plaza?"
"Let me show you," said Boardman.
He spoke a command. A robot drone probe detached itself
from the belly of the plane and streaked toward the city. Board-
man and Rawlins followed the flight of the blunt gray metal pro-
jectile until it was only a few score meters above the tops of the
buildings. Through its faceted eye they had a sharp view of the
city, revealing the intricate texture of much of the stonework. Sud-
denly the drone probe vanished. There was a burst of incan-
descence, a puff of greenish smoke—and then nothing at all.
Boardman nodded. "Nothing's changed. There's still a protec-
tive field over the whole thing. It volatilizes anything that tries to
get through."
"So even a bird that comes too close—"
"There are no birds on Lemnos."
"Raindrops, then. Whatever falls on the city—"
"Lemnos gets no rain," said Boardman sourly. "At least not on
this continent. The only thing that field keeps out is strangers.
We've known it since the first expedition. Some brave men found
out about that field the hard way."
"Didn't they try a drone probe first?"
Smiling, Boardman said, "When you find a dead city in the
middle of a desert on a dead world you don't expect to be blown
up if you land inside it. It's a forgivable sort of mistake—except
that Lemnos doesn't forgive mistakes." He gestured, and the plane
dropped lower, following the orbit of the outer walls for a mo-
ment. Then it rose and hovered over the heart of the city while
photographs were being taken. The wrong-colored sunlight glis-
tened off a hall of mirrors. Boardman felt curdled weariness in his
chest. They overflew the city again and again, marking off a pre-
programmed observation pattern, and he discovered he was wish-
ing irritably that a shaft of sudden light would rise from those mir-
rors and incinerate them on the next pass to save him the trouble
of carrying out this assignment. He had lost his taste for detail-
work, and too many fine details stood between him and his pur-
pose here. They said that impatience was a mark of youth, that
old men could craftily spin their webs and plot their schemes in
serenity, but somehow Boardman found himself longing rashly for
a quick consummation to this job. Send some sort of drone scut-
tling through the maze on metal tracks to seize Muller and drag

The Mail in the Maze
25
him out. Tell the man what was wanted of him and make him
agree to do it. Then take off for Earth, quickly, quickly. The
mood passed. Boardman felt foxy again.
Captain Hosteen, who would be conducting the actual entry at-
tempt, came aft to pay his respects. Hosteen was a short, thick-
framed man with a flat nose and coppery skin; he wore his uni-
form as though he felt it was all going to slip off his left shoulder
at any moment. But he was a good man, Boardman knew, and
ready to sacrifice a score of lives, including his own, to get into
that maze.
Hosteen flicked a glance from the screen to Boardman's face
and said, "beaming anything?"
"Nothing new. We have a job."
"Want to go down again?"
"Might as well," Boardman said. He looked at Rawlins. "Un-
less you have anything else you'd like to check, Ned?"
"Me? Oh, no—no. That is—well, I wonder if we need to go into
the maze at all. I mean, if we could lure Muller out somehow, talk
to him outside the city—"
"No."
"Wouldn't it work?"
"No," said Boardman emphatically. "Item one, Muller
wouldn't come out if we asked him. He's a misanthrope. Re-
member? He buried himself here to get away from humanity. Why
should he socialize with us? Item two, we couldn't invite him out-
side without letting him know too much about what we want from
him. In this deal, Ned, we need to hoard our resources of strategy,
not toss them away in our first move."
"I don't understand what you mean."
Patiently Boardman said, "Suppose we used your approach.
What would you say to Muller to make him come out?"
"Why—that we're here from Earth to ask him if he'll help us in
a time of system-wide crisis. That we've encountered a race of
alien beings with whom we're unable to communicate, and that it's
absolutely necessary that we break through to them in a hurry,
and that he alone can do the trick. We—" Rawlins stopped, as
though the fatuity of his own words had broken through to him.
Color mounted in his cheeks. He said in a hoarse voice, "Muller
isn't going to give a damn for those arguments, is he?"
"No, Ned. Earth sent him before a bunch of aliens once before,
and they ruined him. He isn't about to try it again."

26 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"Then how are we going to make him help us?"
"By playing on his sense of honor. But at the moment that's not
the problem we're talking about. We're discussing how to get him
out of his sanctuary in there. Now, you were suggesting that we set
up a speaker and tell him exactly what we want from him, and
then wait for him to waltz out and pledge to do his best for good
old Earth. Right?"
"I guess so."
"But it won't work. Therefore we've got to get inside the maze
ourselves, win Muller's trust, and persuade him to cooperate. And
to do that we have to keep quiet about the real situation until
we've eased him out of his suspicions."
A look of newborn wariness appeared on Rawlins' face. "What
are we going to tell him, then, Charles?"
"Not we. You."
"What am I going to tell him, then?"
Boardman sighed. "Lies, Ned. A pack of lies."
3
They had come equipped for solving the problem of the maze.
The ship's brain, of course, was a first-class computer, and it
carried the details of all previous Earth-based attempts to enter
the city. Except one, and unfortunately that had been the only
successful one. But records of past failures have their uses. The
ship's data banks had plenty of mobile extensions: airborne and
groundborne drone probes, spy-eyes, sensor batteries, and more.
Before any human life was risked on the maze Boardman and
Hosteen would try the whole mechanical array. Mechanicals were
expendable, anyway; the ship carried a set of templates, and it
would be no trouble to replicate all devices destroyed. But a point
would come at which the drone probes had to give way to men:
the aim was to gather as much information as possible for those
men to use.
Never before had anyone tried to crack the maze this way. The
early explorers had simply gone walking in, unsuspecting, and had
perished. Their successors had known enough of the story to
avoid the more obvious traps, and to some extent had been aided
by sophisticated sensory devices, but this was the first attempt to
run a detailed survey before entering. No one was overly confident

The Mail in the Maze
27
that the technique would let them in unscathed, but it was the best
way to approach the problem.
The overflights on the first day had given everybody a good vis-
ual image of the maze. Strictly speaking, it hadn't been necessary
for them to leave the ground; they could have watched big-screen
relays from the comfort of their camp and gained a decent idea of
the conformation below, letting airborne probes do all the work.
But Boardman had insisted. The mind registers things one way
when it picks them off a relay screen, and another when the sen-
sory impressions are flooding in straight from the source. Now
they all had seen the city from the air, and had seen what the
guardians.of the maze could do to a drone probe that ventured
into the protective field overlying the city.
Rawlins had suggested the possibility that there might be a null
spot in that protective field. Toward late afternoon they checked it
out by loading a probe with metal pellets and stationing it fifty
meters above the highest point of the maze. Scanner eyes recorded
the action as the drone slowly turned, spewing the pellets one at a
time into preselected one-square-meter boxes above the city. Each
in turn was incinerated as it fell. They were able to calculate that
the thickness of the safety field varied with distance from the cen-
ter of the maze; it was only about two meters deep above the inner
zones, much deeper at the outer rim, forming an invisible cup over
the city. But there were no null spots; the field was continuous.
Hosteen tested the notion that the field was capable of overstrain
by having the probe reloaded with pellets which were catapulted
simultaneously into each of the test rectangles. The field dealt with
them all, creating for a moment a single pucker of flame above the
city.
At the expense of a few mole probes they found out that reach-
ing the city through a tunnel was equally impossible. The moles
burrowed into the coarse sandy soil outside the outer walls,
chewed themselves passageways fifty meters down, and nosed up-
ward again when they were beneath the maze. They were de-
stroyed by the safety field while still twenty meters below ground
level. A try at burrowing in right at the base of the embankments
also failed; the field went straight down, apparently, all around the
city.
A power technician offered to rig an interference pylon to drain
the energy of the field. It didn't work. The pylon, a hundred me-
ters tall, sucked in power from all over the planet; blue lightning

28 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
leaped and hissed along its accumulator bank, but it had no effect
on the safety field. They reversed the pylon and sent a million kil-
owatts shooting into the city, hoping to short the field. The field
drank everything and seemed ready for more. No one had any ra-
tional theory to explain the field's power source. "It must tap the
planet's own energy of rotation," the technician who had rigged
the pylon said, and then, realizing he hadn't contributed anything
useful, he looked away and began to snap orders into the hand-
mike he carried.
Three days of similar researches demonstrated that the city was
invulnerable to intrusion from above or below.
"There's only one way in," said Hosteen, "and that's on foot,
through the main gate."
"If the people in the city really wanted to be safe," Rawlins
asked, "why did they leave even a gate open?"
"Maybe they wanted to go in and out themselves, Ned," said
Boardman quietly. "Or maybe they wanted to give invaders a
sporting chance. Hosteen, shall we send some probes inside?"
The morning was gray. Clouds the color of wood smoke stained
the sky; it looked almost as if rain were on the way. A harsh wind
knifed the soil from the plain and sent it slicing into their faces.
Behind the veil of clouds lay the sun, a flat orange disk that
seemed to have been pasted into the sky. It seemed only slightly
larger than Sol as seen from Earth, though it was less than half as
distant. Lemnos' sun was a gloomy M dwarf, cool and weary, an
old star circled by a dozen old planets. Lemnos, the innermost,
was the only one that had ever sustained life; the others were
frigid and dead, beyond the range of the sun's feeble rays, frozen
from core to atmosphere. It was a sleepy system with so little
angular momentum that even the innermost planet dawdled along
in a thirty-month orbit; the three zippy moons of Lemnos, darting
on crisscrossing tracks a few thousand kilometers overhead, were
flagrantly out of keeping with the prevailing mood of these worlds.
Ned Rawlins felt a chill at his heart as he stood beside the data
terminal a thousand meters from the outer embankment of the
maze, watching his shipmates marshalling their probes and instru-
ments. Not even dead pockmarked Mars had depressed him like
this, for Mars was a world that had never lived at all, while here
life had been and had moved onward. This world was a house of
the dead. In Thebes, once, he had entered the tomb of Pharaoh's
vizier, five thousand years gone, and while the others in his group

The Mail in the Maze	29
had eyed the gay murals with their glowing scenes of white-garbed
figures punting on the Nile, he had looked toward the cool stone
floor where a dead beetle lay, clawed feet upraised on a tiny
mound of dust. For him Egypt would always be that stiffened bee-
tle in the dust; for him Lemnos was likely to be autumn winds and
scoured plains and a silent city. He wondered how anyone as
gifted, as full of life and energy and human warmth as Dick
Muller, could ever have been willing to maroon himself inside that
dismal maze.
Then he remembered what had happened to Muller on Beta
Hydri IV, and conceded that even a man like Muller might very
well have gOod reasons for coming to rest on a world like this, in a
city like this. Lemnos offered the perfect escape: an Earthlike
world, uninhabited, where he was almost guaranteed freedom
from human company. And we're here to flush him out and drag
him away. Rawlins scowled. Dirty dirty dirty, he thought. The old
thing about the ends and the means. Across the way Rawlins could
see the blocky figure of Charles Boardman standing in front of
the big data terminal, waving his arms this way and that to di-
rect the men fanning out near the walls of the city. He began to
understand that he had let Boardman dragoon him into a nasty
adventure. The glib old devil hadn't gone into details, back on
Earth, about the exact methods by which they were going to win
Muller's cooperation. Boardman had made it sound like some
kind of shining crusade. Instead it was going to be a dirty trick.
Boardman never went into the details of anything before he had
to, as Rawlins was beginning to see. Rule one: hoard your re-
sources of strategy. Never tip your hand. And so here I am, part
of the conspiracy.
Hosteen and Boardman had deployed a dozen drones at the
various entrances to the inner part of the maze. It was already
clear that the only safe way into the city was through the north-
eastern gate; but they had drones to spare, and they wanted all the
data they could gather. The terminal Rawlins was watching
flashed a partial diagram of the maze on the screen—the section
immediately in front of him—and gave him a good long time to
study its loops and coils, its zigzags and twists. It was his special
responsibility to follow the progress of the drone through this sec-
tor. Each of the other drones was being monitored both by com-
puter and by human observer, while Boardman and Hosteen were

30 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
at the master terminal watching the progress of the entire opera-
tion all at once.
"Send them in," Boardman said.
Hosteen gave the command, and the drones rolled forward
through the city's gates. Looking now through the eyes of the
squat mobile probe, Rawlins got his first view of what lay in Zone
H of the maze. He saw a scalloped wall of what looked like
puckered blue porcelain undulating away to the left, and a barrier
of metallic threads dangling from a thick stone slab to the other
side. The drone skirted the threads, which tinkled and quivered in
delicate response to the disturbance of the thin air; it moved to the
base of the porcelain wall, and followed it at an inward-sloping
angle for perhaps twenty meters. There the wall curved abruptly
back on itself, forming a sort of chamber open at the top. The last
time anyone had entered the maze this way—on the fourth expedi-
tion—two men had passed that open chamber; one had remained
outside and was destroyed, the other had gone inside and was
spared. The drone entered the chamber. A moment later a beam
of pure red light lanced from the center of a mosaic decoration on
the wall and swept over the area immediately outside the chamber.
Boardman's voice came to Rawlins through the speaker taped
to his ear. "We lost four of the probes the moment they went
through their gates. That's exactly as expected. How's yours
doing?"
"Following the plan," said Rawlins. "So far, it's okay."
"You ought to lose it within six minutes of entry. What's your
elapsed time now?"
"Two minutes fifteen."
The drone was out of the chamber now and shuttling quickly
through the place where the light-beam had flashed. Rawlins
keyed in olfactory and got the smell of scorched air, lots of ozone.
The path divided ahead. To one side was a single-span bridge of
stone, arching over what looked like a pit of flame; to the other
was a jumbled pile of cyclopean blocks resting precariously edge
to edge. The bridge seemed far more inviting, but the drone imme-
diately turned away from it and began to pick its way over the
jumbled blocks. Rawlins asked it why, and it relayed the informa-
tion that the "bridge" wasn't there at all; it was a projection
beamed from scanners mounted beneath the facing piers. Request-
ing a simulation of an approach anyway, Rawlins got a picture of
the probe walking out onto the pier and stepping unsuspectingly

The Mail in the Maze
31
through the solid-looking bridge to lose its balance; and as the
simulated probe struggled to regain its equilibrium, the pier tipped
forward and shucked it into the fiery pit. Cute, Rawlins thought,
and shuddered.
Meanwhile the real probe had clambered over the blocks and
was coming down the other side, unharmed. Three minutes and
eight seconds had gone by. A stretch of straight road here turned
out to be as safe as it looked. It was flanked on both sides by win-
dowless towers a hundred meters high, made of some iridescent
mineral, sleek and oily-surfaced, that flashed shimmering moire
patterns as the drone hurried along. At the beginning of the fourth
minute the probe skirted bright grillwork like interlocking teeth,
and sidestepped an umbrella-shaped piledriver that descended
with crushing force. Eighty seconds later it stepped around a tilt-
block that opened into a yawning abyss, deftly eluded a quintet of
tetrahedai blades that sheared upward out of the pavement, and
emerged onto a sliding walkway that carried it quickly forward for
exactly forty seconds more.
All this had been traversed long ago by a Terran explorer
named Cartissant, since deceased. He had dictated a detailed rec-
ord of his experiences within the maze. He had lasted five minutes
and thirty seconds, and his mistake had come in not getting off the
walkway by the forty-first second. Those who had been monitor-
ing him outside, back then, could not say what had happened to
Mm after that.
As his drone left the walkway, Rawlins asked for another simu-
lation and saw a quick dramatization of the computer's best guess:
the walkway opened to engulf its passenger at that point. The
probe, meanwhile, was going swiftly toward what looked like the
exit from this outermost zone of the maze. Beyond lay a well-lit,
cheerful-looking plaza ringed with drifting blobs of a pearly glow-
ing substance.
Rawlins said, "I'm into the seventh minute, and we're still
going, Charles, There seems to be a door into Zone G just ahead.
Maybe you ought to cut in and monitor my screen."
"If you last two more minutes, I will," Boardman said.
The probe paused just outside the inner gate. Warily it switched
on its gravitron and accumulated a ball of energy with a mass
equivalent to its own. It thrust the energy ball through the door-
way. Nothing happened. The probe, satisfied, trundled toward the
door itself. As it passed through, the sides of the door abruptly

32 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
crashed together like the jaws of a mighty press, destroying the
probe. Rawlins' screen went dark. Quickly he cut in one of the
overhead probes; it beamed him a shot of his probe lying on the
far side of the door, flattened into a two-dimensional mock-up of
itself. A human being caught in that same trap would have been
crushed to powder, Rawlins realized.
"My probe's been knocked out," he reported to Boardman.
"Six minutes and forty seconds."
"As expected," came the reply. "We've got only two probes
left. Switch over and watch."
The master diagram appeared on Rawlins' screen: a simplified
and stylized light-pen picture of the entire maze as viewed from
above. A small X had been placed wherever a probe had been de-
stroyed. Rawlins found, after some searching, the path his own
drone had taken, with the X marked between the zone boundaries
at the place of the clashing door. It seemed to him that the drone
had penetrated farther than most of the others, but he had to smile
at the childish pride the discovery brought him. Anyhow, two of
the probes were still moving inward. One was actually inside the
second zone of the maze, and the other was cruising through a pas-
sageway that gave access to that inner ring.
The diagram vanished and Rawlins saw the maze as it looked
through the pickup of one of the drones. Almost daintily, the
man-high pillar of metal made its way through the baroque in-
tricacies of the maze, past a golden pillar that beamed a twanging
melody in a strange key, past a pool of light, past a web of glitter-
ing metal spokes, past spiky heaps of bleached bones. Rawlins had
only glancing views of the bones as the drone moved on, but he
was sure that few were human relics. This place was a galactic
graveyard for the bold.
Excitement built in him as the probe went on and on. He was
so thoroughly wedded to it now that it was as if he were inside the
maze, avoiding one deathtrap after another, and he felt a sense of
triumph as minutes mounted. Fourteen had elapsed now. This sec-
ond level of the maze was not so cluttered as the first; there were
spacious avenues here, handsome colonnades, long radiating pas-
sages leading from the main path. He relaxed; he felt pride in the
drone's agility and in the keenness of its sensory devices. The
shock was immense and stinging when a paving-block upended it-
self unexpectedly and dumped the probe down a long chute to a
place where the gears of a giant mill turned eagerly.

The Mail in the Maze
33
They had not expected that probe to get so far, anyway. The
probe the others were watching was the one that had come in via
the main gate—the safe gate. The slim fund of information accu-
mulated at the price of many lives had guided that probe past all
its perils, and now it was well within Zone G, and almost to the
edge of F. Thus far, everything had gone as expected; the drone's
experiences had matched those of them who had tackled this route
on earlier expeditions. It followed their way exactly, turning here,
dodging there, and it was eighteen minutes into the maze without
incident.
"All right," Boardman said. "This is where Mortenson died,
isn't it?"
"Yes," Hosteen answered. "The last thing he said was that he
was standing by that little pyramid, and then he was cut off."
"This is where we start gaining new information, then. All
we've learned so far is that our records are accurate. This is the
way in. But from here on—"
The probe, lacking a guidance pattern, now moved much more
slowly, hesitating at every step to extend its network of data-
gathering devices in all directions. It looked for hidden doors, for
concealed openings in the pavement, for projectors, lasers, mass-
detectors, power sources. It fed back to the central data banks all
that it learned, thus adding to the store of information with each
centimeter conquered.
It conquered, altogether, twenty-three meters. As the probe
passed the small pyramid it scanned the broken body of the
explorer Mortenson, lost at this point 72 years earlier. It relayed
the news that Mortenson had been seized by a pressure-sensitive
mangle activated by an unwary footstep too close to the pyramid.
Beyond, it avoided two minor traps before failing to safeguard it-
self from a distortion screen that baffled its sensors and left it vul-
nerable to the descent of a pulverizing piston.
"The next one through will have to cut off all its inputs until it's
past that point," Hosteen muttered. "Running through blindfolded
—well, we'll manage."
"Maybe a man would do better than a machine there," said
Boardman. "We don't know if that screen would muddle a man
the way it did a batch of sensors."
"We're not yet ready to run a man in there," Hosteen pointed
out.
Boardman agreed—none too graciously, Rawlins thought, listen-

34 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
ing to the interchange. The screen brightened again; a new drone
probe was coming through. Hosteen had ordered a second wave of
the machines to pick through the labyrinth, following what was
now known to be the one safe access route, and several of them
were at the eighteen-minute point where the deadly pyramid was
located. Hosteen sent one ahead, and posted the others to keep
watch. The lead probe came within range of the distortion screen
and cut out its sensors; it heaved tipsily for a moment, lacking any
way to get its bearings, but in a moment it was stable. It was
deprived now of contact with its surroundings, and so it paid no
heed to the siren song of the distortion screen, which had misled
its predecessor into coming within range of the pulverizing piston.
The phalanx of drones watching the scene was all outside the
reach of the distorter's mischief, and fed a clear, true picture to
the computer, which matched it with the fatal path of the last
probe and plotted a route that skirted the dangerous piston. Mo-
ments later the blind probe began to move, guided now by inner
impulses. Lacking all environmental feedback it was entirely a
captive of the computer, which nudged it along in a series of tiny
prods until it was safely around the hazard. On the far side, the
sensors were switched on again. To check the procedure, Hosteen
sent a second drone through, likewise blinded and moving entirely
on internal guidance. It made it. Then he tried a third probe with
its sensors on and under the influence of the distortion screen. The
computer attempted to direct it along the safe path, but the probe,
bedeviled by the faulty information coming through the distorter,
tugged itself furiously to the side and was smashed.
"All right," Hosteen said. "If we can get a machine past it, we
can get a man past it. He closes his eyes, and the computer calcu-
lates his motions step by step. We'll manage."
The lead probe began to move again. It got seventeen meters
past the place of the distorter before it was nailed by a silvery
grillwork that abruptly thrust up a pair of electrodes and cut loose
with a bath of flame. Rawlins watched bleakly as the next probe
avoided that obstacle and shortly fell victim to another. Plenty of
probes waited patiently for their turn to press forward.
And soon men will be going in there too, Rawlins thought.
We'll be going in there.
He shut off his data terminal and walked across to Boardman.
"How does it look so far?" he asked.

The Mail in the Maze
35
"Rough, but not impossible," Boardman said. "It can't be this
tough all the way in."
"And if it is?"
"We won't run out of probes. We'll chart the whole maze until
we know where all the danger points are, and then we'll start try-
ing it ourselves."
Rawlins said, "Are you going to go in there, Charles?"
"Of course. So are you."
"With what odds on coming out?"
"Good ones," said Boardman. "Otherwise I doubt that I'd
tackle it. Oh, it's a dangerous trip, Ned, but don't overestimate it.
We've just begun to test that maze. We'll know it well enough in a
few days more."
Rawlins considered that a moment. "Muller didn't have any
probes," he said finally. "How did he survive that stuff?"
"I'm not sure," Boardman murmured. "I suppose he's just a
naturally lucky man."

THREE
Within the maze Muller watched the proceedings on his dim
screens. They were sending some sort of robots in, he saw. The
robots were getting chewed up quite badly, but each successive
wave of them seemed to reach deeper into the labyrinth. Trial and
error had led the intruders to the correct route through Zone H
and well onward into G. Muller was prepared to defend himself if
the robots reached the inner zones. Meanwhile he remained calm
at the center of it all, going about his daily pursuits.
In the mornings he spent a good deal of the time thinking over
his past. There had been other worlds in other years, springtimes,
warmer seasons than this; soft eyes looking into his eyes, hands
against his hands, smiles, laughter, shining floors, and elegant
figures moving through arched doorways. He had married twice.
Both times the arrangements had been terminated peacefully after
a decent span of years. He had traveled widely. He had dealt with
ministers and kings. In his nostrils was the scent of a hundred
planets strung across the sky. We make only a small blaze, and
then we go out; but in his springtime and his summer he had
burned brightly enough, and he did not feel he had earned this
sullen, joyless autumn.
The city took care of him, after its fashion. He had a place to
dwell—thousands of places; he moved from time to time for the
sake of changing the view. All the houses were empty boxes. He
had made a bed for himself of animal hides stuffed with scraped
fur; he had fashioned a chair from sinews and skin; he needed lit-
tle else. The city gave him water. Wild animals roamed here in
such quantity that he would never lack for food so long as he was
strong enough to hunt. From Earth he had brought with him cer-
tain basic items. He had three cubes of books and one of music;
they made a stack less than a meter high and could nourish his
soul for all the years that remained to him. He had some woman
cubes. He had a small recorder into which he sometimes dictated
memoirs. He had a sketchpad. He had weapons and a mass detec-

The Mail in the Maze
37
tor. He had a diagnostat with a regenerating medical supply. It
was enough.
He ate regularly. He slept well. He had no quarrels with his
conscience. He had come almost to be content with his fate. One
nurses bitterness only so long before one grows a cyst around the
place from which the poison spews.
He blamed no one now for what had happened to him. His own
hungers had brought him to this. He had tried to devour the uni-
verse; he had aspired to the condition of a god; and some implaca-
ble guiding force had hurled him down from his high place, hurled
him down and smashed him, left him to crawl off to this dead
world to knit his broken soul as best he could.
The way Stations on his journey to this place were well known
to him. At eighteen, lying naked under the stars with warmth
against him, he had boasted of his lofty ambitions. At twenty-five
he had begun to realize them. Before he was forty he had visited a
hundred worlds, and was famous in thirty systems. A decade later
he had had his delusions of statesmanship. And at the age of fifty-
three he had let Charles Boardman talk him into undertaking the
mission to Beta Hydri IV.
That year he was on holiday in the Tau Ceti system, a dozen
light-years from home. Marduk, the fourth world, had been de-
signed as a pleasure planet for the mining men who were engaged
in stripping her sister worlds of a fortune in reactive metals.
Muller had no liking for the way those planets were being plun-
dered, but that did not prevent him from seeking relaxation on
Marduk. It was nearly a seasonless world, which rode upright in
its orbital plane; four continents of unending springtime bathed by
a tranquil shallow sea. The sea was green, the land vegetation had
a faint bluish tinge, and the air had a little of the sparkle of young
champagne. They had somehow made the planet into a counterfeit
of Earth—Earth as it might have been in a more innocent time—all
parks and meadows and cheery inns; it was a restful world whose
challenges were purely synthetic. The giant fish in the seas always
wearied and let themselves be played. The snowcapped mountains
looked treacherous, even for climbers in gravitron boots, but no
one had been lost on them yet. The beasts with which the forests
were stocked were tall at the withers and snorted as they charged,
but they were not as fierce as they looked. In principle, Muller
disapproved of such places. But he had had enough adventure for
a while, and he had come to Marduk for a few weeks of phony

38 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
peace, accompanied by a girl he had met the year before and
twenty light-years away.
Her name was Marta. She was tall, slim, with large dark eyes
fashionably rimmed with red, and lustrous blue hair that brushed
her smooth shoulders. She looked about twenty, but of course she
might just as well have been ninety and on her third shape-up; you
never could tell about anyone, and especially not about a woman.
But somehow Muller suspected that she was genuinely young. It
wasn't her litheness, her coltish agility—those are commodities that
can be purchased—but some subtle quality of enthusiasm, of true
girlishness that, he liked to think, was no surgical product.
Whether power-swimming or tree-floating or blowdart hunting or
making love, Marta seemed so totally engaged in her pleasures that
they surely were relatively new to her.
Muller did not care to investigate such things too deeply. She
was wealthy, Earthborn, had no visible family ties, and went
where she pleased. On a sudden impulse he had phoned her and
asked her to meet him on Marduk; and she had come willingly, no
questions asked. She was not awed to be sharing a hotel suite with
Richard Muller. Clearly she knew who he was, but the aura of
fame that surrounded him was unimportant to her. What mattered
was what he said to her, how he held her, what they did together;
and not the accomplishments he had accumulated at other times.
They stayed at a hotel that was a spire of brilliance a thousand
meters high, thrusting needle-straight out of a valley overlooking a
glassy oval lake. Their rooms were two hundred floors up, and
they dined in a rooftop eyrie reached by gravitron disk, and during
the day all the pleasures of Marduk lay spread out before them.
He was with her for a week, uninterrupted. The weather was per-
fect. Her small cool breasts fit nicely into his cupped palms; her
long slender legs encircled him pleasantly, and at the highest mo-
ments she drove her heels into his calves with sudden delicious
fervor. On the eighth day Charles Boardman arrived on Marduk,
hired a suite half a continent away, and invited Muller to pay a
call on him.
"I'm on vacation," Muller told him.
"Give me half a day of it."
"I'm not alone, Charles."
"I know that. Bring her along. We'll take a ride. It's an impor-
tant matter."
"I came here to escape important matters."

The Mail in the Maze
39
"There's never any escape, Dick. You know that. You are what
you are, and we need you. Will you come?"
"Damn you," Muller said mildly.
In the morning he and Marta flew by quickboat to Boardman's
hotel. Muller remembered the journey as vividly as though it had
taken place last month and not almost fifteen years before. They
soared above the continental divide, skimming the snowy summits
of the mountains by so slim a margin that they could see the
magnificent long-horned figure of a goatish rock-skipper capering
across the gleaming rivers of ice: two metric tons of muscle and
bone, an improbable colossus of the peaks, the costliest prey Mar-
duk had to offer. Some men did not earn in a lifetime what it cost
to buy a license to hunt rock-skipper. To Muller it seemed that
even that price was too low.
They circled the mighty beast three times and streaked off into
the lake country, the lowlands beyond the mountain range where a
chain of diamond-bright pools girdled the fat waist of the conti-
nent, and by midday they were landed at the edge of a velvety
forest of evergreens. Boardman had rented the hotel's master
suite, all screens and trickery. He grasped Muller's wrist in salute,
and embraced Marta with unabashed lechery. She seemed distant
and restrained in Boardman's arms; quite obviously she regarded
the visit as so much time lost.	>
"Are you hungry?" Boardman asked. "Lunch first, talk later!"
He served drinks in his suite: an amber wine out of goblets
made from blue rock crystal mined on Ganymede. Then they
boarded a dining capsule and left the hotel to tour the forests and
lakes while they ate. Lunch glided from its container and rolled
toward them as they lounged in pneumochairs before a wrap-
around window. Crisp salad, grilled native fish, imported vegeta-
bles; a grated Centaurine cheese to sprinkle; flasks of cold rice
beer; a rich, thick, spicy green liqueur afterward. Completely pas-
sive, sealed in their moving capsule, they accepted food and drink
and scenery, breathed the sparkling air pumped in from outside,
watched gaudy birds flutter past them and lose themselves in the
soft, drooping needles of the thickly-packed conifers of the woods.
Boardman had carefully staged all this to create a mood, but his
efforts were wasted, Muller knew. He could not be lulled this eas-
ily. He might take whatever job Boardman offered, but not be-
cause he had been fooled into false unwariness.
Marta was bored. She showed it by the detached response she

40 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
gave to Boardman's inquiring lustful glances. The shimmering
daywrap she wore was designed to reveal; as its long-chained mol-
ecules slid kaleidoscopically through their path of patterns they
yielded quick, frank glimpses of thighs and breasts, of belly and
loins, of hips and buttocks. Boardman appreciated the display and
seemed ready to capitalize on Marta's apparent availability, but
she ignored, his unvoiced overtures- entirely. Muller was amused by
that. Boardman was not.
After lunch the capsule halted by the side of a jewel-like lake,
deep and clear. The wall opened, and Boardman said, "Perhaps
the young lady would like to swim while we get the dull business
talk out of the way?"
"A fine idea," Marta said in a flat voice.
Arising, she touched the disrobing snap at her shoulder and let
her garment slither to her ankles. Boardman made a great show of
catching it up and putting it on a storage rack. She smiled me-
chanically at him, turned, walked down to the edge of the lake, a
nude tawny figure whose tapering back and gently rounded rump
were dappled by the sunlight slipping through the trees. For a mo-
ment she paused, shin-deep in the water; then she sprang forward
and sliced the breast of the lake with strong steady strokes.
Boardman said, "She's quite lovely, Dick. Who is she?"
"A girl. Rather young, I think."
"Younger than your usual sort, I'd say. Also somewhat spoiled.
Known her long?"
"Since last year, Charles. Interested?"
"Naturally."
"I'll tell her that," Muller said. "Some other time."
Boardman gave him a Buddha-smile and gestured toward the
liquor console. Muller shook his head. Marta was backstroking in
the lake, the rosy tips of her breasts just visible above the serene
surface. The two men eyed one another. They appeared to be of
the same age, mid-fifties; Boardman fleshy and graying and strong-
looking, Muller lean and graying and strong-looking. Seated, they
seemed of the same height, too. The appearances were deceptive:
Boardman was a generation older, Muller half a foot taller. They
had known each other for thirty years.
In a way, they were in the same line of work—both part of the
corps of nonadministrative personnel that served to hold the struc-
ture of human society together across the sprawl of the galaxy.
Neither held any official rank. They shared a readiness to serve, a

The Mail in the Maze	41
desire to make their gifts useful to mankind; and Muller respected
Boardman for the way he had used those gifts during a long and
impressive career, though he could not say that he liked the older
man. He knew that Boardman was shrewd, unscrupulous, and
dedicated to human welfare—and the combination of dedication
and unscrupulousness is always a dangerous one.
Boardman drew a vision cube from a pocket of his tunic and
put it on the table before Muller. It rested there like a counter in
some intricate game, six or seven centimeters along each face, soft
yellow against the polished black marble face of the table. "Plug it
in," Boardman invited, "the viewer's beside you."
Muller slipped the cube into the receptor slot. From the center
of the table there arose a larger cube, nearly a meter across. Im-
ages flowered on its faces. Muller saw a cloud-wrapped planet,
soft gray in tone, it could have been Venus. The view deepened
and streaks of dark red appeared in the gray. Not Venus, then.
The recording eye pierced the cloud layer and revealed an unfa-
miliar, not very Earthlike planet. The soil looked moist and
spongy, and rubbery trees that looked like giant toadstools thrust
upward from it. It was hard to judge relative sizes, but they looked
big. Their pale trunks were coarse with shredded fibers, and
curved like bows between ground and crown. Saucerlike growths
shielded the trees at their bases, ringing them for a^out a fifth of
their height. Above were neither branches nor leaves, only wide
flat caps whose undersurfaces were mottled by corrugated
processes. As Muller watched, three alien figures came strolling
through the somber grove. They were elongated, almost spidery,
with clusters of eight or ten jointed limbs depending from their
narrow shoulders. Their heads were tapered and rimmed with
eyes. Their nostrils were vertical slits flush against the skin. Their
mouths opened at the sides. They walked upright on elegant legs
that terminated in small globe-like pedestals instead of feet.
Though they were nude except for probably ornamental strips of
fabric tied between their first and second wrists, Muller was una-
ble to detect signs either of reproductive apparatus or of mamma-
lian functions. Their skins were unpigmented, sharing the prevail-
ing grayness of this gray world, and were coarse in texture, with a
scaly overlay of small diamond-shaped ridges.
With wonderful grace the three figures approached three of the
giant toadstools and scaled them until each stood atop the upper-
most saucerlike projection of a tree. Out of the cluster of limbs

42 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
came one arm that seemed specially adapted; unlike the others,
which were equipped with five tendril-shaped fingers arranged in a
circlet, this limb ended in a needle-sharp organ. It plunged easily
and deeply into the soft rubbery trunk of the tree on which its
owner stood. A long moment passed, as if the aliens were draining
sap from the trees. Then they climbed down and resumed their
stroll, outwardly unchanged.
One of them paused, bent, peered closely at the ground. It
scooped up the eye that had been witnessing its activities. The
image grew chaotic; Muller guessed that the eye was being passed
from hand to hand. Suddenly there was darkness. The eye had
been destroyed. The cube was played out.
After a moment of troubled silence Muller said, "They look
very convincing."
"They ought to be. They're real."
"Was this taken by some sort of extragalactic probe?"
"No," Boardman said. "In our own galaxy."
"Beta Hydri IV, then?"
"Yes."
Muller repressed a shiver. "May I play it again, Charles?"
"Of course."
He activated the cube a second time. Again the eye made the
descent through the cloud layer; again it observed the rubbery
trees; again the trio of aliens appeared, took nourishment from the
trees, noticed the eye, destroyed it. Muller studied the images with
cold fascination. He had never looked upon living sapient beings
of another creation before. No one had, so far as he knew, until
now.
The images faded from the cube.
Boardman said, "That was taken less than a month ago. We
parked a drone ship fifty thousand kilometers up and dropped
roughly a thousand eyes on Beta Hydri IV. At least half of them
went straight to the bottom of the ocean. Most landed in uninhab-
ited or uninteresting places. This is the only one that actually
showed us a clear view of the aliens."
"Why has it been decided to break our quarantine of this
planet?"
Boardman slowly let out his breath. "We think it's time we got
in touch with them, Dick. We've been sniffing around them for ten
years and we haven't said hello yet. That isn't neighborly. And
since the Hydrans and ourselves are the only intelligent races in

The Mail in the Maze
43
this whole damned galaxy—unless something's hiding somewhere
unlikely—we've come to the belief that we ought to commence
friendly relations."
"I don't find your coyness very appealing," Muller said bluntly.
"A full-scale council decision was taken after close to a year of
debate, and it was voted to leave the Hydrans alone for at least a
century—unless they showed some sign of going into space. Who
reversed that decision, and why, and when?"
Boardman smiled his crafty smile. But Muller knew that the
only way to avoid being drawn into his web was to take a frontal
approach. Slowly Boardman said, "I didn't mean to seem decep-
tive, Dick. The decision was reversed by a council session eight
months ago,.while you were out Rigel way."
"And the reason?"
"One of the extragalactic probes came back with convincing ev-
idence that there's at least one highly intelligent and quite superior
species in one of our neighboring clusters."
"Where?"
"It doesn't matter, Dick. Pardon me, but I won't tell you at this
time."
"All right."
"Let's just say that from what we know of them now, they're
much more than we can handle. They've got a galactic drive, and
we can reasonably expect them to come visiting us one of these
centuries—and when they do, we'll have a problem. So it's been
voted to open contact with Beta Hydri IV ahead of schedule, by
way of insurance against that day."
"You mean," Muller said, "that we want to make sure we're on
good terms with the other race of our own galaxy before the ex-
tragalactics show up?"
"Exactly."
"I'll take that drink now," said Muller.
Boardman gestured. Muller tapped out a potent combination on
the console, downed it quickly, ordered another. Suddenly he had
a great deal to digest. He looked away from Boardman, picking up
the vision cube and fingering it as though it were a sacred relic.
For a couple of centuries man had explored the stars without
finding a trace of a rival. There were plenty of planets, and many
of them were potentially habitable, and a surprising number were
Earthlike to four or five places. That much had been expected.
The sky is full of mainsequence suns, with a good many of the

44 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
F-type and G-type stars most likely to support life. The process of
planetogenesis is nothing remarkable, and most of those suns had
complements of five to a dozen worlds, some of which were of the
right size and mass and density slots to permit the retention of at-
mosphere and the convenient evolution of life, and a number of
those worlds were situated within the orbital zone where they were
best able to avoid extremes of temperature. So life abounded and
the galaxy was a zoologist's delight.
But in his helter-skelter expansion out of his own system man
had found only the traces of former intelligent species. Beasts
laired in the ruins of unimaginably ancient civilizations. The most
spectacular ancient site was the maze of Lemnos; but other worlds
too had their stumps of cities, their weathered foundations, their
burial grounds and strewn potsherds. Space became an archae-
ologist's delight, too. The collectors of alien animals and the col-
lectors of alien relics were kept busy. Whole new scientific speci-
alities burst into being. Societies that had vanished before the
Pyramids had been conceived now underwent reconstruction.
A curious blight of extinction had come upon all the galaxy's
other intelligent races, though. Evidently they had flourished so
long ago that not even their decadent children survived; they were
one with Nineveh and Tyre, blotted out, cut off. Careful scrutiny
showed that the youngest of the dozen or so known extrasolar in-
telligent cultures had perished eighty thousand years earlier.
The galaxy is wide; and man kept on looking, drawn to find his
stellar companions by some perverse mixture of curiosity and
dread. Though the warp drive provided speedy transport to all
points within the universe, neither available personnel nor availa-
ble ships could cope with the immensity of the surveying tasks.
Several centuries after his intrusion into the galaxy, man was still
making discoveries, some of them quite close to home. The star
Beta Hydri had seven planets; and on the fourth was another
sapient species.
There were no landings. The possibility of such a discovery had
been examined well in advance, and plans had been drawn to
avoid a blundering trespass of unpredictable consequences. The
survey of Beta Hydri IV had been carried out from beyond its
cloud layer. Cunning devices had measured the activity behind
that tantalizing gray mask. Hydran energy production was known
to a tolerance of a few million kilowatt hours; Hydran urban dis-
tricts had been mapped, and their population density estimated;

The Mail in the Maze
45
the level of Hydran industrial development had been calculated by
a study of thermal radiations. There was an aggressive, growing,
potent civilization down there, probably comparable in technical
level to late twentieth-century Earth. There was only one
significant difference: the Hydrans had not begun to enter space.
That was the fault of the cloud layer. A race that never has seen
the stars is not likely to show much desire to reach them.
Muller had been privy to the frantic conferences that followed
the discovery of the Hydrans. He knew the reasons why they had
been placed under quarantine, and he realized that only much
more urgent reasons had resulted in the lifting of that quarantine.
Unsure of its ability to handle a relationship with nonhuman
beings, Earth had wisely chosen to keep away from the Hydrans
for a while longer; but now all that was changed.
"What happens now?" Muller asked. "An expedition?"
"Yes."
"How soon?"
"Within the next year, I'd say."
Muller tensed. "Under whose leadership?"
"Perhaps yours, Dick."
"Why 'perhaps'?"
"You might not want it."
"When I was eighteen," Muller said, "I was^with a girl out
in the woods on Earth, in the California forest preserve, and
we made love, and it wasn't exactly my first time but the first time
it worked out in any kind of proper way, and afterward we were
lying on our backs looking up at the stars and I told her I was
going to go out and walk around among them. And she said, Oh,
Dick, how wonderful, but of course it wasn't anything special I
was saying. Any kid that age says it when he looks up at the stars.
And I told her that I was going to discover things out in space,
that men were going to remember me the way they remember
Columbus and Magellan and the early astronauts and all. I said I
was going to be right in the front of whatever was happening, that
I was going to move through the stars like a god. I was very elo-
quent. I went on like that for about ten minutes, until we were
both carried away by the wonder of it all, and I turned to her and
she pulled me down on top of her and I turned my backside to the
stars and worked hard to nail her to the Earth, and that was the
night I grew my ambitions." He laughed. "There are things we can
say at eighteen that we can't say again."

46 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"There are things we can do at eighteen that we can't do again
either," said Boardman. "Well, Dick? You're past fifty now, right?
You've walked in the stars. Do you feel like a god?"
"Sometimes."
"Do you want to go to Beta Hydri IV?"
"You know I do."
"Alone?"
Muller felt the ground give way before him, and abruptly it
seemed to him that he was taking his first spacewalk again, falling
freely toward all the universe. "Alone?"
"We've programmed the whole thing and concluded that to
send a bunch of men down there at this point would be a mistake.
The Hydrans haven't responded very well to our eye probes. You
saw that: they picked the eye up and smashed it. We can't begin
to fathom their psychologies, because we've never been up against
alien minds before. But we feel that the safest thing—both in terms
of potential manpower loss and in terms of impact on their society
—is to send a single ambassador down there to them—one man,
coming in peace, a shrewd, strong man who has been tested under
a variety of stress situations and who will develop ways of initiat-
ing contact. That man may find himself chopped to shreds thirty
seconds after making contact. On the other hand3 if he survives
he'll have accomplished something utterly unique in human his-
tory. It's your option."
It was irresistible. Mankind's ambassador to the Hydrans! To
go alone, to walk alien soil and extend humanity's first greeting to
cosmic neighbors-
It was his ticket to immortality. It would write his name forever
on the stars.
"How do you figure the chances of survival?" Muller asked.
"The computation is one chance in sixty-five of coming out
whole, Dick. Considering that it's not an Earth-type planet to any
great degree, you'll need a life-support system. And you may get a
chilly reception. One in sixty-five."
"Not too bad."
"I'd never accept such odds myself," Boardman said, grinning.
No, but I might." He drained his glass. To carry it off meant
imperishable fame. To fail, to be slain by the Hydrans, even that
was not so dreadful. He had lived well. There were worse fates
than to die bearing mankind's banner to a strange world. That
throbbing pride of his, that hunger for glory, that childlike craving

The Mail in the Maze
47
for renown that he had never outgrown, drove him to it. The odds
were not too bad.
Marta reappeared. She was wet from her swim, her nude body
glossy, her hair plastered to the slender column of her neck. Her
breasts were heaving rapidly, little cones of flesh tipped by puck-
ered pink nipples. She might have been a leggy fourteen-year-old,
Muller thought, looking at her narrow hips, her lean thighs.
Boardman tossed her a drier. She thumbed it and stepped into its
yellow field, making one complete turn. She took her garment
from the rack and covered herself unhurriedly. "That was great,"
she said. Her eyes met Muller's for the first time since her return.
"Dick, what's the matter with you? You look wide open—stunned.
Are you all right?"
"Fine."
"What happened?"
"Mr. Boardman's made a proposition."
"You can tell her about it, Dick. We don't plan to keep it a se-
cret. There'll be a galaxy-wide announcement right away."
"There's going to be a landing on Beta Hydri IV," Muller said
in a thick voice. "One man. Me. How will it work, Charles? A
ship in a parking orbit, and then I go down in a powered drop-
capsule equipped for return?"
"Yes."
Marta said, "It's insane, Dick. Don't do it. You'll regret it for-
ever."
"It's a quick death if things don't work out, Marta. I've taken
worse risks before."
"No. Look, sometimes I think I've got a little precog. I see
things ahead, Dick." She laughed nervously, her pose of cool so-
phistication abruptly shattering. "If you go there, I don't think
you'll die. But I don't exactly think you'll live, either. Say you
won't go. Say it, Dick!"
"You never officially accepted the proposition," Boardman
pointed out.
"I know," Muller said. He got to his feet, nearly reaching the
low roof of the dining capsule, and walked toward Marta, and put
his arms around her, remembering that other girl so long ago
under the California sky, remembering that wild surge of power
that had come upon him as he swung over from the blaze of the
stars to the warm, yielding flesh and the parting thighs beneath
him. He held Marta firmly. She looked at him in horror. He kissed

48 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
the tip of her nose and the lobe of her left ear. She shrank away
from him, stumbled, nearly plunged into Boardman's lap. Board-
man caught her and held her. Muller said, "You know what the
answer has to be."
That afternoon one of the robot probes reached Zone F. They
still had a distance to go; but it would not be long, Muller knew,
before they were at the heart of the maze.

FOUR
"There he is," Rawlins said. "At last!"
Via the drone probe's eyes he stared at the man in the maze.
Muller leaned casually against a wall, arms folded; a big weather-
beaten man with a harsh chin and a massive wedge-shaped nose.
He did not seem at all alarmed by the presence of the drone.
Rawlins cut in the audio pickup and heard Muller say, "Hello,
robot. Why are you bothering me?"
The probe, of course, did not reply. Neither did Rawlins, who
could have piped a message through the drone. He stood by the
data terminal, crouching a little for a better view. His weary eyes
throbbed. It had taken them nine local-time days to get one of
their probes all the way through the maze to the center. The effort
had cost them close to a hundred probes; each inward extension of
the safe route by twenty meters or so had required the expenditure
of one of the robots. Still, that wasn't so bad, considering that the
number of wrong choices in the maze was close to infinite.
Through luck, the inspired use of the ship's brain, and a sturdy
battery of sensory devices, they had managed to avoid all the ob-
vious traps and most of the cleverer ones. And now they were in
the center.
Rawlins felt exhausted. He had been up all night monitoring
this critical phase, the penetration of Zone A. Hosteen had gone
to sleep. So, finally, had Boardman. A few of the crewmen were
still on duty here and aboard the ship, but Rawlins was the only
member of the civilian complement still awake.
He wondered if the discovery of Muller had been supposed to
take place during his stint. Probably not. Boardman wouldn't want
to risk blowing things by letting a novice handle the big moment.
Well, too bad. They had left him on duty, and he had moved his
probe a few meters inward, and now he was looking right at
Muller.
He searched for signs of the man's inner torment.
They weren't obvious. Muller had lived here alone for so many
years-wouldn't that have done something to his soul? And that

50 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
other thing, the prank the Hydrans had played on him—surely that
too would have registered on his face. So far as Rawlins could tell,
it hadn't.
Oh, he looked sad around the eyes, and his lips were com-
pressed in a taut, tense line. But Rawlins had been expecting
something more dramatic, something romantic, some mirror of
agony on that face. Instead he saw only the craggy, indifferent, al-
most insensitive-looking features of a tough, durable man in late
middle age. Muller had gone gray, and his clothing was a little
ragged; he looked worn and frayed himself. But that was only to
be expected of a man who had been living this kind of exile for
nine years. Rawlins wanted something more, something pictur-
esque, a gaunt, bitter face, eyes dark with misery.
"What do you want?" Muller asked the probe. "Who sent you?
Why don't you go away?"
Rawlins did not dare to answer. He had no idea of the gambit
Boardman had in mind at this point. Brusquely he keyed the
probe to freeze and sped away toward the dome where Boardman
slept.
Boardman was sleeping under a canopy of life-sustaining de-
vices. He was, after all, at least eighty years old—though he cer-
tainly didn't look it—and one way to keep from looking it was to
plug one self into one's sustainers every night. Rawlins was a trifle
embarrassed to intrude on the old man when he was enmeshed in
his paraphernalia this way. Strapped to Boardman's forehead were
a couple of meningeal electrodes that guaranteed a proper and
healthy progression through the levels of sleep, thus washing the
mind of the day's fatigue poisons. An ultrasonic drawcock filtered
dregs and debris from Boardman's arteries. Hormone flow was
regulated by the ornate webwork hovering above his chest. The
whole business was linked to and directed by the ship's brain.
Within the elaborate life system Boardman looked unreal and
waxy. His breathing was slow and regular; his soft lips were slack;
his cheeks seemed puffy and loose-fleshed. Boardman's eyeballs
were moving rapidly beneath the lids; a sign of dreaming, of upper
sleep. Could he be awakened safely now?
Rawlins feared to risk it. Not directly, anyway. He ducked out
of the room and activated the terminal just outside. "Take a
dream to Charles Boardman," Rawlins said. "Tell him we found
Muller. Tell him he's got to wake up right away. Say, Charles,
Charles, wake up, we need you. Got it?"

The Mail in the Maze	51
"Acknowledged," said the ship's brain.
The impulse leaped from dome to ship, was translated into
response-directed form, and returned to the dome. Rawlins' mes-
sage seeped into Boardman's mind through the electrodes on his
forehead. Feeling pleased with himself, Rawlins entered the old
man's sleeproom once again and waited.
Boardman stirred. His hands formed claws and scraped gently
at the machinery in whose embrace he lay.
"Muller—" he muttered.
His eyes opened. For a moment he did not see. But the waking
process had begun, and the life system jolted his metabolism
sufficiently to get him functioning again. "Ned?" he said hoarsely.
"What are you doing here? I dreamed that—"
"It wasn't a dream, Charles. I programmed it for you. We got
through to Zone A. We found Muller."
Boardman undid the life system and sat up instantly, alert,
aware. "What time is it?"
"Dawn's just breaking."
"And how long ago did you find him?"
"Perhaps fifteen minutes. I froze the probe, and came right to
you. But I didn't want to rush you awake, so—"
"All right. All right." Boardman had swung out of bed, now.
He staggered a little as he got to his feet. He wasn't yet at his day-
time vigor, Rawlins realized; his real age was showing. He found
an excuse to look away, studying the life system to avoid having to
see the meaty folds of Boardman's body.
When I'm his age, Rawlins thought, I'll make sure I get regular
shape-ups. It isn't a matter of vanity, really. It's just courtesy to
other people. We don't have to look old if we don't want to look
old. Why offend?
"Let's go," Boardman said. "Unfreeze that probe. I want to see
him right away."
Using the terminal in the hall, Rawlins brought the probe back
to life. The screen showed them Zone A of the maze, cozier-look-
ing than the outer reaches. Muller was not in view. "Turn the
audio on one way," Boardman said.
"It is."
"Where'd he go?"
"Must have walked out of sight range," Rawlins said. He
moved the probe in a standing circle, taking in a broad sweep of
low cubical houses, high-rising archways, and tiered walls. A

52 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
small cat-like animal scampered by, but there was no sign of
Muller.
"He was right over there," Rawlins insisted unhappily. "He—"
"All right. He didn't have to stay in one place while you were
waking me up. Walk the probe around."
Rawlins activated the drone and started it in a slow cruising ex-
ploration of the street. Instinctively he was cautious, expecting to
find more traps at any moment, though he told himself a couple of
times that the builders of the maze would surely not have loaded
their own inner quarters with perils. Muller abruptly stepped out
of a windowless building and planted himself in front of the
probe.
"Again," he said. "Back to life, are you? Why don't you speak
up? What's your ship? Who sent you?"
"Should we answer?" Rawlins asked.
"No."
Boardman's face was pressed almost against the screen. He
pushed Rawlins' hands from the controls and went to work on the
fine tuning until Muller was sharply in focus. Boardman kept the
probe moving, sliding around in front of Muller, as though trying
to hold the man's attention and prevent him from wandering off
again.
In a low voice Boardman said, "That's frightening. The look on
his face—"
"I thought he looked pretty calm."
"What do you know? I remember that man. Ned, that's a face
out of hell. His cheekbones are twice as sharp as they used to be.
His eyes are awful. You see the way his mouth turns down—on the
left side? He might even have had a light stroke. But he's lasted
well enough, I suppose."
Baffled, Rawlins searched for the signs of Muller's passion. He
had missed them before, and he missed them now. But of course
he had no real recollection of the way Muller was supposed to
look. And Boardman, naturally, would be far more expert than he
at reading character.
"It won't be simple; getting him out of there," Boardman said.
"He'll want to stay. But we need him, Ned. We need him."
Muller, keeping pace with the drone, said in a deep gruff voice,
"You've got thirty seconds to state your purpose here. Then you'd
better turn around and get going back the way you came."

The Mail in the Maze
53
"Won't you talk to him?" Rawlins asked. "He'll wreck the
probe!"
"Let him," said Boardman. "The first person who talks to him
is going to be flesh and blood, and he's going to be standing face
to face with him. That's the only way it can be. This has to be a
courtship, Ned. We can't do it through the speakers of a probe."
"Ten seconds," said Muller.
He reached into his pocket and came out with a glossy black
metal globe the size of an apple, with a small square window on
one side. Rawlins had never seen anything like it before. Perhaps
it was some alien weapon Muller had found in this city, he de-
cided, for swiftly Muller raised the globe and aimed the window at
the face of the drone probe.
The screen went dark.
"Looks like we've lost another probe," Rawlins said.
Boardman nodded. "Yes. The last probe we're going to lose.
Now we start losing men."
2
The time had come to risk human lives in the maze. It was
inevitable, and Boardman regretted it, the way he ragretted paying
taxes or growing old or voiding waste matter or feeling the pull of
strong gravity. Taxes, aging, excretion, and gravity were all per-
manent aspects of the human condition, though, however much
all four had been alleviated by modern scientific progress. So was
the risk of death. They had made good use of the drone probes
here, and had probably saved a dozen lives that way; but now
lives were almost surely going to be lost anyhow. Boardman
grieved over that, but not for long and not very deeply. He had
been asking men to risk their lives for decades, and many of them
had died. He was ready to risk his own, at the right time and in
the right cause.
The maze now was thoroughly mapped. The ship's brain held a
detailed picture of the inward route, with all the known pitfalls
charted, and Boardman was confident that he could send drones in
with a ninety-five per cent probability of getting them to Zone A
unharmed. Whether a man could cover that same route with equal
safety was what remained to be seen. Even with the computer
whispering hints to him every step of the way, a man filtering in-

54 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
formation through a fallible, fatigue-prone human brain might not
quite see things the same way as a lathe-turned probe, and per-
haps would make compensations of his own in the course that
would prove fatal So the data they had gathered had to be tested
carefully before he or Ned Rawlins ventured inside.
There were volunteers to take care of that.
They knew they were likely to die. No one had tried to pretend
otherwise to them, and they would have it no other way. It had
been put to them that it was important for humanity to bring
Richard Muller voluntarily out of that maze, and that it could best
be accomplished by having specific human beings—Charles Board-
man and Ned Rawlins—speak to Muller in person, and that since
Boardman and Rawlins were nonreplaceable units it was neces-
sary for others to explore the route ahead of them. Very well. The
explorers were ready, knowing that they were expendable. They
also knew that it might even be helpful for the first few of them to
die. Each death brought new information; successful traversals of
the inward route brought none, at this point.
They drew lots for the job.
The man chosen to go first was a lieutenant named Burke, who
looked fairly young and probably was, since military men rarely
went in for shape-ups until they were in the top echelons. He was
a short, sturdy, dark-haired man who acted as if he could be re-
placed from a template aboard the ship, which was not the case.
"When I find Muller," Burke said-he did not say //-"I tell him
I'm an archaeologist. Right? And that if he doesn't mind, I'd like
some of my friends to come inside also?"
"Yes," said Boardman. "And remember, the less you say to
him in the way of professional-sounding noises, the less suspicious
he's going to be."
Burke was not going to live long enough to say anything to
Richard Muller, and all of them knew it. But he waved goodbye
jauntily, somewhat stagily, and strode into the maze. Through a
backpack he was connected with the ship's brain. The computer
would relay Ms marching orders to Mm, and would show the
watchers in the camp exactly what was happening to him.
He moved smartly and smoothly past the terrors of Zone H. He
lacked the array of detection devices that had helped the probes
find the pivot-mounted slabs and the deathpits beneath, the Mdden
energy flares, the clashing teeth set in doorways, and all the other
nightmares; but he had something much more useful riding with

The Mail in the Maze
55
him: the accumulated knowledge of those nightmares, gathered
through the expenditure of a lot of probes that had failed to notice
them. Boardman, watching Ms screen, saw the by now familiar
pillars and spokes and escarpments, the airy bridges, the heaps of
bones, the occasional debris of a drone probe. Silently he urged
Burke on, knowing that in not too many days he would have to
travel this route himself. Boardman wondered how much Burke's
life meant to Burke.
Burke took nearly forty minutes to pass from Zone H to Zone
G. He showed no sign of elation as he negotiated the passageway;
G, they all knew, was nearly as tough as H. But so far the guid-
ance system was working well. Burke was executing a sort of grim
ballet, dancing around the obstacles, counting his steps, now leap-
ing, now turning sideways, now straining to step over some treach-
erous strip of pavement. He was progressing nicely. But the com-
puter was unable to warn him about the small toothy creature
awaiting atop a gilded ledge forty meters inside Zone G. It was no
part of the maze's design.
It was a random menace, transacting business on its own ac-
count. Burke carried only a record of past experiences in this
realm.
The animal was no bigger than a very large cat, fyut its fangs
were long and its claws were quick. The eye in Burke's backpack
saw it as it leaped—but by then it was too late. Burke, half-
warned, half-turned and reached for his weapon with the beast al-
ready on his shoulders and scrambling for his throat.
The jaws opened astonishingly wide. The computer's eye
relayed an anatomical touch Boardman could well have done
without: within the outer row of needle-sharp teeth was an inner
one, and a third one inside that, perhaps for better chewing of the
prey or perhaps just a couple of sets of replacements in case outer
teeth were broken off. The effect was one of a forest of jagged
fangs. A moment later the jaws closed.
Burke tumbled to the ground, clutching at his attacker. A
trickle of blood spurted. Man and beast rolled over twice, tripped
some secret waiting relay, and were engulfed in a gust of oily
smoke. When the air was clear again neither of them was in view.
Boardman said a little later, "There's something to keep in
mind. The animals wouldn't bother attacking a probe. We'll have
to carry mass detectors and travel in teams."
That was how they worked it the next time. It was a stiff price

56 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
to pay for the knowledge, but now they realized they had to deal
with the wild beasts as well as with the cunning of ancient engi-
neers. Two men named Marshall and Petrocelli, armed, went to-
gether into the maze, looking in all directions. No animal could
come near them without telltaling its thermal output into the infra-
red pickups of the mass detectors they carried. They shot four ani-
mals, one of them immense, and had no trouble otherwise.
Deep within Zone G they came to the place where the distortion
screen made a mockery of all information-gathering devices.
How did the screen work, Boardman wondered? He knew of
Earth-made distorters that operated directly on the senses, taking
perfectly proper sensory messages and scrambling them within the
brain to destroy all one-to-one correlations. But this screen had to
be different. It could not attack the nervous system of a drone
probe, for the drones had no nervous systems in any meaningful
sense of that term, and their eyes gave accurate reports of what
they saw. Somehow what the drones had seen—and what they had
reported to the computer—bore no relation to the real geometry of
the maze at that point. Other drones, posted beyond the range of
the screen, had given entirely different and much more reliable ac-
counts of the terrain. So the thing must work on some direct opti-
cal principle, operating on the environment itself, rearranging it,
blurring perspective, subtly shifting and concealing the outlines of
things, transforming normal configurations into bafflement. Any
sight organ within reach of the screen's effect would obtain a
wholly convincing and perfectly incorrect image of the area,
whether or not it had a mind to be tinkered with. That was quite
interesting, Boardman thought. Perhaps later the mechanisms of
this place could be studied and mastered. Later.
It was impossible for him to know what shape the maze had
taken for Marshall and Petrocelli as they succumbed to the screen.
Unlike the drone probes, which relayed exact accounts of every-
thing that passed through their eyes, the two men were not directly
hooked to the computer and could not transmit their visual images
to the screen. The best they could do was describe what they saw.
It did not match the images sent back by the probe eyes mounted
on their backpacks, nor did it match the genuine configurations
apparent from outside the screen's range.
They did as the computer said. They walked forward even
where their own eyes told them that vast abysses lay in their path.
They crouched to wriggle through a tunnel whose roof was bright

The Mail in the Maze
57
with the suspended blades of guillotines. The tunnel did not exist.
"Any minute I expect one of those blades to fall and chop me in
half," Petrocelli said. There were no blades. At the end of the tun-
nel they obediently moved to the left, toward a massive flail that
lashed the ground in vicious swipes. There was no flail. Reluc-
tantly they did not set foot on a plumply upholstered walkway
that appeared to lead out of the region of the screen. The walkway
was imaginary; they had no way of seeing the pit of acid that actu-
ally was there.
"It would be better if they simply closed their eyes," Boardman
said. "The way the drones went through—minus all visuals."
"They claim it's too scary to do it like that," said Hosteen.
"Which is better—to have no visual information, or to have the
wrong information?" Boardman asked. "They could follow the
computer's orders just as well with their eyes closed. And there'd
be no chance that—"
Petrocelli screamed. On the split screen Boardman saw the real
configuration—a flat, innocuous strip of road—and the screen-dis-
torted one relayed by the backpack eyes—a sudden geyser of flame
erupting at their feet.
"Stand where you are!" Hosteen bellowed. "It isn't real!"
Petrocelli, one foot high in the air, brought it back into place
with a wrenching effort. Marshall's reaction time was slower. He
had been whirling to escape the eruption when Hosteen had called
to him, and he turned to the left before he halted. He was a dozen
centimeters too far out of the safe road. A coil of bright metal
flicked out of a block of stone and wrapped itself about his ankles.
It cut through the bone without difficulty. Marshall toppled and a
flashing golden bar stapled him to a wall.
Without looking back, Petrocelli passed through the column of
flame unharmed, stumbled forward ten paces, and came to a halt,
safe beyond the effective range of the distortion screen. "Dave?"
he said hoarsely. "Dave, are you all right?"
"He stepped off the path," said Boardman. "It was a quick
finish."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Stay put, Petrocelli. Get calm and don't try to go anywhere.
I'm sending Chesterfield and Walker in after you. Wait right
where you are."
Petrocelli was trembling. Boardman asked the ship's brain to
give him a needle, and the backpack swiftly eased him with a

58 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
soothing injection. Still rigid, unwilling to turn toward his impaled
companion, Petrocelli stood quite still, awaiting the others.
It took Chesterfield and Walker close to an hour to reach the
place of the distortion screen, and nearly fifteen minutes to shuffle
through the few square meters the screen controlled. They did it
with their eyes closed, and they didn't like that at all: but the
phantoms of the maze could not frighten blind men, and in time
Chesterfield and Walker were beyond their grasp. Petrocelli was
much calmer by then. Warily, the three continued toward the
heart of the maze.
Something would have to be done, Boardman thought, about
recovering Marshall's body. Some other time, though.
3
The longest days of Ned Rawlins' life had been those spent on
the journey to Rigel, four years before, to fetch his father's body.
These days now were longer. To stand before a screen, to watch
brave men die, to feel every nerve screaming for relief hour after
hour after hour-
But they were winning the battle of the maze. Fourteen men
had entered it so far. Four were dead. Walker and Petrocelli had
made camp in Zone E; five more men had set up a relief base in
F; three others were currently edging past the distortion screen in
G and soon would join them. The worst was over for these. It was
clear from the probe work that the curve of danger dropped off
sharply past Zone F, and that there were practically no hazards at
all in the three inner zones. With E and F virtually conquered, it
should not be difficult to break through to those central zones
where Muller, impassive and uncommunicating, lurked and
waited.
Rawlins thought that he knew the maze completely by now.
Vicariously he had entered it more than a hundred times; first
through the eyes of the probes, then through the relays from the
crewmen. At night in feverish dreams he saw its dark patterns, its
curving walls and sinuous towers. Locked in his own skull he
somehow made the circuit of that labyrinth, kissing death a thou-
sand times. He and Boardman would be the beneficiaries of hard-
won experience when their turns came to go inside.
Their turns were coming near.

The Mail in the Maze
59
On a chill morning under an iron sky he stood with Boardman
just outside the maze, by the upsloping embankment of soil that
rimmed the outer flange of the city. In the short weeks they had
been here, the year had dimmed almost startlingly toward what-
ever winter this planet had. Sunlight lasted only six hours a day
now, out of the twenty; two hours of pale twilight followed, and
dawns were thin and prolonged. The whirling moons danced con-
stantly in the sky, playing twisting games with shadows.
Rawlins, by this time, was almost eager to test the dangers of
the maze. There was a hollowness in his gut, a yearning born of
impatience and embarrassment. He had waited, peering into
screens, while other men, some hardly older than himself, gambled
their lives to get inside. It seemed to him that he had spent all his
life waiting for the cue to take the center of the stage.
On the screen, they watched Muller moving at the heart of the
maze. The hovering probes kept constant check on him, marking
his peregrinations with a shifting line on the master chart. Muller
had not left Zone A since the time he encountered the drone; but
he changed positions daily in the labyrinth, migrating from house
to house as though he feared to sleep in the same one twice.
Boardman had taken care not to let him have any contact with
them since the encounter with the drone. It often ^eemed to Raw-
lins that Boardman was stalking some rare and fragile beast.
Tapping the screen, Boardman said, "This afternoon we go in-
side, Ned. We'll spend the night in the main camp. Tomorrow you
move forward to join Walker and Petrocelli in E. The day after
that you go on alone toward the middle and find Muller."
"Why are you going inside the maze, Charles?"
"To help you."
"You could keep in touch with me from out here," said Raw-
lins. "You don't need to risk yourself."
Boardman tugged thoughtfully at his dewlap. "What I'm doing
is calculated for minimum risk this way."
"How?"
"If you get into problems," Boardman said, "I'll need to go to
you and give you assistance. I'd rather wait in Zone F, if I'm
needed, than have to come rushing in suddenly from the outside
through the most dangerous part of the maze. You see what I'm
telling you? I can get to you quickly from F without much danger.
But not from here."
"What kind of problems?"

60 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"Stubbornness from Muller. He's got no reason to cooperate
with us, and he's not an easy man to deal with. I remember him in
those months after he came back from Beta Hydri IV. We had no
peace with him. He was never actually level-tempered before, but
afterward he was a volcano. Mind you, Ned, I don't judge him for
it. He's got a right to be furious with the universe. But he's trou-
blesome. He's a bird of ill omen. Just to go near him brings bad
luck. You'll have your hands full."
"Why don't you come with me, then?"
"Impossible," Boardman said. "It would ruin everything if he
even knew I was on this planet. I'm the man who sent him to the
Hydrans, don't forget. I'm the one who in effect marooned him on
Lemnos. I think he might kill me if he saw me again."
Rawlins recoiled from that idea. "No. He hasn't become that
barbaric."
"You don't know him. What he was. What he's become."
"If he's as full of demons as you say, how am I ever going to
win his trust?"
"Go to him. Look guileless and trustworthy. You don't have to
practice that, Ned. You've got a naturally innocent face. Tell him
you're here on an archaeological mission. Don't let him know that
we realized he was here all along. Say that the first you knew was
when our probe stumbled into him—that you recognized him, from
the days when he and your father were friends."
"I'm to mention my father, then?"
"By all means. Tell him who you are. It's the only way. Tell
him that your father's dead, and that this is your first expedition to
space. Work on his sympathies, Ned. Dig for the paternal in him."
Rawlins shook his head. "Don't get angry with me, Charles, but
I've got to tell you that I don't like any of this. These lies."
"Lies?" Boardman's eyes blazed. "Lies to say that you're your
father's son? That this is your first expedition?"
"That I'm an archaeologist?"
Boardman shrugged. "Would you rather tell him that you came
here as part of a search mission looking for Richard Muller? Will
that help win his trust? Think about our purpose, Ned."
"Yes. Ends and means. I know."
"Do you, really?"
"We're here to win Muller's cooperation because we think that
he alone can save us from a terrible menace," Rawlins said stol-

The Mail in the Maze
61
idly, unfeelingly, flatly. "Therefore we must take any approach
necessary to gain that cooperation."
"Yes. And I wish you wouldn't smirk when you say it."
"I'm sorry, Charles. But I feel so damned queasy about deceiv-
ing him."
"We need him."
"Yes. But a man who's suffered so much already—"
"We need him."
"All right, Charles."
"I need you, too," Boardman said. "If I could do this myself, I
would. But if he saw me, he'd finish me. In his eyes I'm a monster.
It's the sanfe with anyone else connected with his past career. But
you're different. He might be able to trust you. You're young, you
look so damned virtuous, and you're the son of a good friend of
his. You can get through to him."
"And fill him up with lies so we can trick him."
Boardman closed his eyes. He seemed to be containing himself
with an effort.
"Stop it, Ned."
"Go on. Tell me what I do after I've introduced myself."
"Build a friendship with him. Take your time^ about it. Make
him come to depend on your visits."
"What if I can't stand being with him?"
"Conceal it. That's the hardest part, I know."
"The hardest part is the lying, Charles."
"Whatever you say. Anyhow, show that you can tolerate his
company. Make the effort. Chat with him. Make it clear to him
that you're stealing time from your scientific work—that the vil-
lainous bastards who are running your expedition don't want you
to have anything to do with him, but that you're drawn to him by
love and pity and won't let him interfere. Tell him all about your-
self, your ambitions, your love life, your hobbies, whatever you
want. Run off at the mouth. It'll reinforce the image of the naive
kid."
"Do I mention the galactics?" Rawlins asked.
"Not obtrusively. Work them in somewhere by way of bringing
him up to date on current events. But don't tell him too much.
Certainly don't tell him of the threat they pose. Or a word about
the need we have for him, you understand. If he gets the idea that
he's being used, we're finished."

62 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"How will I get him to leave the maze, if I don't tell him why
we want him?"
"Let that part pass for now," Boardman said. "I'll coach you in
the next phase after you've succeeded in getting him to trust you."
"The translation," Rawlins said, "is that you're going to put
such a whopper in my mouth that you don't even dare tell me now
what it is for fear I'll throw up my hands and quit."
"Ned-"
"I'm sorry. But—look, Charles, why do we have to trick him
out? Why can't we just say that humanity needs him, and force
him to come out?"
"Do you think that's morally superior to tricking him out?"
"It's cleaner, somehow. I hate all this dirty plotting and schem-
ing. I'd much rather help knock him cold and haul him from the
maze than have to go through what you've planned. I'd be willing
to help take him by force—because we really do need him. We've
got enough men to do it."
"We don't," Boardman said. "We can't force him out. That's
the whole point. It's too risky. He might find some way to kill
himself the moment we tried to grab him."
"A stungun," said Rawlins. "I could do it, even. Just get within
range and gun him down, and then we carry him out of the maze,
and when he wakes up we explain—"
Boardman vehemently shook his head. "He's had nine years to
figure out that maze. We don't know what tricks he's learned or
what defensive traps he's planted. While he's in there I don't dare
take any kind of offensive action against him. He's too valuable to
risk. For all we know he's programmed the whole place to blow
up if someone pulls a gun on him. He's got to come out of that
labyrinth of his own free will, Ned, and that means we have to
trick him with false promises. I know it stinks. The whole universe
stinks, sometimes. Haven't you discovered that yet?"
"It doesn't have to stink!" Rawlins said sharply, his voice ris-
ing. "Is that the lesson you've learned in all those years? The uni-
verse doesn't stink. Man stinks! And he does it by voluntary
choice because he'd rather stink than smell sweet! We don't have
to lie. We don't have to cheat. We could opt for honor and de-
cency and-" Rawlins stopped abruptly. In a different tone he
said, "I sound young as hell to you, don't I, Charles?"
"You're entitled to make mistakes," Boardman said. "That's
what being young is for."

The Mail in the Maze
63
"You genuinely believe and know that there's a cosmic malev-
olence in the workings of the universe?"
Boardman touched the tips of his thick, short fingers together.
"I wouldn't put it that way. There's no personal power of dark-
ness running things, any more than there's a personal power of
good. The universe is a big impersonal machine. As it functions it
tends to put stress on some of its minor parts, and those parts
wear out, and the universe doesn't give a damn about that, be-
cause it can generate replacements. There's nothing immoral
about wearing out parts, but you have to admit that from the point
of view of the part under stress it's a stinking deal. It happened
that two small parts of the universe clashed when we dropped
Dick Muller onto the planet of the Hydrans. We had to put him
there because it's our nature to find out things, and they did what
they did to him because the universe puts stress on its parts, and
the result was that Dick Muller came away from Beta Hydri IV in
bad shape. He was drawn into the machinery of the universe and
got ground up. Nov/ we're having a second clash of parts, equally
inevitable, and we have to feed Muller through the machine a sec-
ond time. He's likely to be chewed again—which stinks—and in
order to push him into a position where that can happen, you and
I have to stain our souls a little—which also stinks—and yet we
have absolutely no choice in the matter. If we don'? compromise
ourselves and trick Dick Muller, we may be setting in motion a
new spin of the machine that will destroy all of humanity—and
that would stink even worse. I'm asking you to do an unpleasant
thing for a decent motive. You don't want to do it, and I under-
stand how you feel, but I'm trying to get you to see that your per-
sonal moral code isn't always the highest factor. In wartime, a sol-
dier shoots to kill because the universe imposes that situation on
him. It may be an unjust war, and that might be his brother in the
ship he's aiming at, but the war is real and he has his role."
"Where's the room for free will in this mechanical universe of
yours, Charles?"
"There isn't any. That's why I say the universe stinks."
"We have no freedom at all?"
"The freedom to wriggle a little on the hook."
"Have you felt this way all your life?"
"Most of it," Boardman said.
"When you were my age?"
"Even earlier."

64 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
Rawlins looked away. "I think you're all wrong, but I'm not
going to waste breath trying to tell you so. I don't have the words.
I don't have the arguments. And you wouldn't listen anyway."
"I'm afraid I wouldn't, Ned. But we can discuss this some other
time. Say, twenty years from now. Is it a date?"
Trying to grin, Rawlins said, "Sure. If I haven't killed myself
from guilt over this."
"You won't."
"How am I supposed to live with myself after I've pulled Dick
Muller out of his shell?"
"Wait and see. You'll discover that you did the right thing, in
context. Or the least wrong thing, anyhow. Believe me, Ned. Just
now you may feel that your soul will forever be corroded by this
job, but it won't happen that way."
"We'll see," said Rawlins quietly. Boardman seemed more slip-
pery than ever when he was in this avuncular mood. To die in the
maze, Rawlins thought, was the only way to avoid getting trapped
in these moral ambiguities; and the moment he hatched the
thought, he abolished it in horror. He stared at the screen. "Let's
go inside," he said. "I'm tired of waiting."

FIVE
Muller saw them coming closer, and did not understand why he
was so calm about it. He had destroyed that robot, yes, and after
that they had stopped sending in robots. But his viewing tanks
showed him the men camping in the outer levels. He could not see
their faces clearly. He could not see what they were doing out
there. He counted about a dozen of them, give or take two or
three; some were settled in Zone E, and a somewhat larger group
in F. Muller had seen a few of them die in the outer zones.
He had ways of attacking. He could, if he cared to, flood Zone
E with backup from the aqueduct. He had done that once, by ac-
cident, and it had taken the city almost a full day to clean things
up. He recalled how, during the flood. Zone E had been sealed off,
bulkheaded to keep the water from spilling out. If the intruders
did not drown in the first rash, they would certainly blunder in
alarm into some of the traps. Muller could do other things, too, to
keep them from getting to the inner city,	v
Yet he did nothing. He knew that at the heart of his inaction
was a hunger to break his years of isolation. Much as he hated
them, much as he feared them, much as he dreaded the puncturing
of his privacy, Muller allowed the men to work their way toward
him, A meeting now was inevitable, They knew he was here. (Did
they know who he was?) They would find him, to their sorrow
and to his. He would learn whether in his long exile he had been
purged of his affliction so that he was fit for human company
again. But Muller already was sure of the answer to that.
He had spent part of a year among the Hydrans; and then, see-
ing that he was accomplishing nothing, he entered his powered
drop-capsule, rode it into the heavens, and, repossessed his orbit-
ing ship. If the Hydrans had a mythology, he would become part
of it.
Within his ship Muller went through the operations that would
return him to Earth. As he notified the ship's brain of his pres-
ence, he caught sight of himself in the burnished metal plate of the
input bank and it frightened him, a little. The Hydrans did not use

66 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
mirrors. Muller saw deep new lines etched on his face, which did
not bother him, and he saw a strangeness in his eyes, which did.
The muscles are tense, he told himself. He finished programming
his return and then went to the medic chamber and ordered a
forty-db drop in his neural level along with a hot bath and a thor-
ough massage. When he came out, his eyes still looked strange;
and he had sprouted a facial tic, besides. He got rid of the tic eas-
ily enough, but he could do nothing about his eyes.
The eyes have no expression, Muller told himself. It's the lids
that do the work. My eyelids are strained from living in the
breathing suit so long. I'll be all right. It was a rough few months,
but now I'll be all right.
The ship gulped power from the nearest designated donor star.
The ship's rotors whirled along the axes of warp, and Muller,
along with his plastic and metal container, was hurled out of the
universe on one of the shortcut routes. Even in warp, a certain
amount of absolute time loss is experienced as the ship zips
through the stitch in the continuum. Muller read, slept, listened to
music, and played a woman cube when the need got great. He told
himself that the stiffness was going out of his facial expression, but
he might need a mild shape-up when he got to Earth. This jaunt
had put a few years on him.
He had no work to do. The ship duly popped from warp within
the prescribed limits, 100,000 kilometers out from Earth, and
colored lights flashed on his communications board as the nearest
traffic station signalled for his bearings. Muller instructed the ship
to deal with the traffic station.
"Match velocities with us, Mr. Muller, and we'll send a pilot
aboard to get you to Earth," the traffic controller said.
Muller's ship took care of it. The coppery globe of the traffic
station appeared in sight. It floated just ahead of Muller for a
while, but gradually his ship drew abreast of it.
"We have a relay message for you from Earth," the controller
said. "Charles Boardman calling."
"Go ahead," said Muller.
Boardman's face filled the screen. He looked pink and newly-
buffed, quite healthy, well rested. He smiled and put his hand for-
ward. "Dick," he said. "God, it's great to see you!"
Muller activated tactile and put his hand on Boardman's wrist
through the screen. "Hello, Charles. One in sixty-five, eh? Well,
I'm back."

The Mail in the Maze
67
"Should I tell Marta?"
"Marta," Muller said, thinking for a moment. Yes. The blue-
haired wench with the swivel hips and the sharp heels. "Yes. Tell
Marta. It would be nice if she met me when I landed. Woman
cubes aren't all that thrilling,"
Boardman gave him a you-said-a-mouthful-boy kind of laugh.
Then he changed gears abruptly and said, "How did it go?"
"Poorly."
"You made contact, though?"
"I found the Hydrans, yes. They didn't kill me."
"Were they hostile?"
"They didn't kill me."
"Yes, but—"
"I'm alive, Charles." Muller felt the tic beginning again. "I
didn't learn their language. I can't tell you if they approved of me.
They seemed quite interested. They studied me closely for a long
time. They didn't say a word."
"What are they, telepaths?"
"I can't tell you that, Charles."
Boardman was silent for a while. "What did they do to you,
Dick?"
"Nothing."
"That isn't so."	*
"What you're seeing is travel fatigue," Muller said. "I'm in
good shape, just a little stretched in the nerve. I want to breathe
real air and drink some real beer and taste real meat, and I'd like
to have some company in bed, and I'll be as good as ever. And
then maybe I'll suggest some ways of making contact with the
Hydrans."
"How's the gain on your broadcast system, Dick?"
"Huh?"
"You're coming across too loud," said Boardman.
"Blame it on the relay station. Jesus, Charles. What does the
gain on my system have to do with anything?"
"I'm not sure," Boardman said. "I'm just trying to find out why
you're shouting at me."
"I'm not shouting," Muller shouted.
Soon after that they broke contact. Muller had word from the
traffic station that they were ready to send a pilot aboard. He got
the hatch ready, and let the man in. The pilot was a very blond
young man with hawklike features and pale skin. As soon as he

68 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
unhelmeted he said, "My name is Les Christiansen, Mr. Muller,
and I want to tell you that it's an honor and a privilege for me to
be the pilot for the first man to visit an alien race. I hope I'm not
breaking security when I say that I'd love to know a little about it
while we're descending. I mean, this is sort of a moment in his-
tory, me being the first to see you in person since you're back, and
if it's not an intrusion I'd be grateful if you'd tell me just some of
the—highlights—of your—of—"
"I guess I can tell you a little," Muller said affably. "First, did
you see the cube of the Hydrans? I know it was supposed to be
shown, and—"
"You mind if I sit down a second, Mr. Muller?"
"Go ahead. You saw them, then, the tall skinny things with all
the arms—"
"I feel very woozy," said Christiansen. "I don't know what's
happening." His face was crimson, suddenly, and beads of sweat
glistened on his forehead. "I think I must be getting sick. I—you
know, this shouldn't be happening—" The pilot crumpled into a
webfoam cradle and huddled there, shivering, covering his head
with his hands. Muller, his voice still rusty from the long silences
of his mission, hesitated helplessly. Finally he reached down to
take the man's elbow and guide him toward the medic chamber.
Christiansen whirled away as if touched by fiery metal. The mo-
tion pulled him off balance and sent him into a heap on the cabin
floor. He rose to his knees and wriggled until he was as far away
from Muller as it was possible to get. In a strangled voice he
said, "Where is it?"
"That door here."
Christiansen rushed for it, sealed himself in, and rattled the
door to make sure of it. Muller, astonished, heard retching sounds,
and then something that could have been a series of dry sobs. He
was about to signal the traffic station that the pilot was sick, when
the door opened a little and Christiansen said in a muffled voice,
"Would you hand me my helmet, Mr. Muller?"
Muller gave it to him.
"I'm going to have to go back to my station, Mr. Muller."
"I'm sorry you reacted this way. Christ, I hope I'm not carrying
some kind of contagion."
"I'm not sick. I just feel-lousy." Christiansen fastened the hel-
met in place. "I don't understand. But I want to curl up and cry.
Please let me go, Mr. Muller. It-I-that is-it's terrible. That's

The Mail in the Maze
69
what I feel!" He rushed into the hatch. In bewilderment Muller
watched him cross the void to the nearby traffic station.
He got on the radio. "You better not send another pilot over
just yet," Muller told the controller. "Christiansen folded up with
instant plague as soon as he took his helmet off. I may be carrying
something. Let's check it out."
The controller, looking troubled, agreed. He asked Muller to go
to his medic chamber, set up the diagnostat, and transmit its re-
port. A little while later the solemn chocolate-hued face of the sta-
tion's medical officer appeared on Muller's screen and said, "This
is very odd, Mr. Muller."
"What is?"
"I've run'your diagnostat transmission through our machine.
No unusual symptoms. I've also put Christiansen through the
works without learning anything. He feels fine now, he says. He
told me that an acute depression hit him the moment he saw you,
and it deepened in a hurry to a sort of metabolic paralysis. That is,
he felt so gloomy that he could hardly function."
"Is he prone to these attacks?"
"Never," the medic replied. "I'd like to check this out myself.
May I come over?"
The medic didn't curl up with the miseries as Christiansen had
done. But he didn't stay long, either, and when he Iteft his face was
glossy with tears. He looked as baffled as Muller. When the new
pilot appeared twenty minutes later, he kept his suit on as he
programmed the ship for planetary descent. Sitting rigidly upright
at his controls, his back turned to Muller, he said nothing,
scarcely acknowledged Muller's presence. As required by law, he
brought the ship down until its drive system was in the grip of a
groundside landing regulator, and took his leave. Muller saw the
man's face, tense, sweat-shiny, tight-lipped. The pilot nodded
curtly, and went through the hatch. I must have a very bad smell,
Muller thought, if he could smell it through his suit like that.
The landing was routine.
At the starport he cleared Immigration quickly. It took only
half an hour for Earth to decide that he was acceptable; and
Muller, who had passed through these computer banks hundreds
of times before, figured that that was close to the record. He had
feared that the giant starport diagnostat would detect whatever
malady he carried that his own equipment and the traffic station
medic had failed to find; but he passed through the bowels of the

70 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
machine, letting it bounce sonics off his kidneys, and extract some
molecules of his various bodily fluids, and at length he emerged
without the ringing of bells and the flashing of warning lights.
Approved. He spoke to the Customs machine. Where from, trav-
eler? Where bound? Approved. His papers were in order. A slit in
the wall widened into a doorway and he stepped through, to
confront another human being for the first time since his landing.
Boardman had come to meet him. Marta was with him. A thick
brown robe shot through with dull metal enfolded Boardman; he
seemed weighted down with rings, and his brooding eyebrows
were thick as dark tropical moss. Marta's hair was short and sea-
green; she had silvered her eyes and gilded the slender column of
her throat, so that she looked like some jeweled statuette of her-
self. Remembering her wet and naked from the crystalline lake,
Muller disapproved of these changes. He doubted that they had
been made for his benefit. Boardman, he knew, liked his women
ornate; it was probable that they had been bedding in his absence.
Muller would have been surprised and even a little shaken if they
had not.
Boardman's hand encircled Muller's wrist in a firm greeting that
incredibly turned flabby within seconds. The hand slipped away
even before Muller could return the embrace. "It's good to see
you, Dick," Boardman said without conviction, stepping back a
couple of paces. His cheeks seemed to sag as though under heavy
gravitational stress. Marta slipped between them and pressed her-
self against him. Muller seized her, touching her shoulder-blades
and running his hands swiftly down to her lean buttocks. He did
not kiss her. Her eyes were dazzling as he looked within them and
felt himself lost in rebounding mirror images. Her nostrils flared.
Through her thin flesh he felt muscles bridling. She was trying to
get free of him. "Dick," she whispered. "I've prayed for you ev-
ery night. You don't know how I've missed you." She struggled
harder. He moved his hands to her haunches and pushed inward
so fiercely that he could imagine her pelvic cage yielding and
flexing. Her legs were trembling, and he feared that if he let go of
her, she would fall. She turned her head to one side. He put his
cheek against her delicate ear. "Dick," she murmured, "I feel so
strange—so glad to see you that I'm all tangled up inside—let go,
Dick, I feel queasy somehow—"
Yes. Yes. Of course. He released her.
Boardman, sweating, nervous, mopped at his face, jabbed him-

The Mail in the Maze
71
self with some soothing drug, fidgeted, paced. Muller had never
seen him look this way before. "Suppose I let the two of you have
some time together, eh?" Boardman suggested, his voice coming
out half an octave too high. "The weather's been getting to me,
Dick. I'll talk with you tomorrow. Your accommodations are all
arranged." Boardman fled. Now Muller felt panic rising.
"Where do we go?" he asked.
"There's a transport pod outside. We have a room at the Star-
port Inn. Do you have luggage?"
"It's still aboard the ship," Muller answered. "It can wait."
Marta was chewing at the corner of her lower lip. He took her
by the hand and they rode the slidewalk out of the terminal room
to the transportation pods. Go on, he thought. Tell me that you
don't feel well. Tell me that mysteriously you've come down with
something in the last ten minutes.
"Why did you cut your hair?" he asked.
"It's a woman's right. Don't you like it this way?"
"Not as much." They entered the pod. "Longer, bluer, it was
like the sea on a stormy day." The pod shot off on a bath of
quicksilver. She kept far to her side, hunched against the hatch.
"And the makeup, too. I'm sorry, Marta. I wish I could like it."
"I was prettying for your homecoming."
"Why are you doing that with your lip?"	^
"What am I doing?"
"Nothing," he said. "Here we are. The room is booked al-
ready?"
"In your name, yes."
They went in. He put his hand on the registration plate. It
flashed green and they headed for the liftshaft. The inn began in
the fifth sublevel of the starport and went down for fifty levels;
their room was near the bottom. Choice location, he thought. The
bridal suite, maybe. They stepped into a room with kaleidoscopic
hangings and a wide bed with all accessories. The roomglow was
tactfully dim. Muller thought of months of woman cubes and a
savage throbbing rose in his groin. He knew he had no need to ex-
plain any of that to Marta. She moved past him, into the personal
room, and was in there a long while. Muller undressed.
She came out nude. All the tricky makeup was gone, and her
hair was blue again.
"Like the sea," she said. "I'm sorry I couldn't grow it back in
there. The room wasn't programmed for it."

72 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"It's much better now," he told her.
They were ten meters apart. She stood at an angle to him, and
he studied the contours of her frail but tough form, the small up-
jutting breasts, the boyish buttocks, the elegant thighs.
"The Hydrans," he said, "have either five sexes or none, I'm
not sure which. That's a measure of how well I got to know them
while I was there. However they do it, I think people have more
fun. Why are you standing over there, Marta?"
Silently she came toward him. He put one arm around her
shoulders and cupped his other hand over one of her breasts. At
other times when he did that he felt the nipple pebble-hard with
desire against his hand. Not now. She quivered a little, like a shy
mare wanting to bolt. He put his lips to her lips, and they were
dry, taut, hostile. When he ran his hand along the fine line of her
jaw she seemed to shudder. He drew her down and they sat side
by side on the bed. Her hand reached for him, almost unwillingly.
He saw the pain in her eyes.
She rolled away from him, her head snapping back hard onto
the pillow, and he watched her face writhe with some barely
suppressed agony. Then she took his hands in hers and tugged him
toward her. Her knees came up and her thighs opened.
"Take me, Dick," she said stagily. "Right now!"
"What's the hurry?"
She tried to force him onto her, into her. He wasn't having it
that way. He pulled free of her and sat up. She was crimson to the
shoulders, and tears glistened on her face. He knew as much of
the truth now as he needed to know, but he had to ask.
"Tell me what's wrong, Marta."
"I don't know."
"You're acting like you're sick."
"I think I am."
"When did you start feeling ill?"
"I—oh, Dick, why all these questions? Please, love, come
close."
"You don't want me to. Not really. You're being kind."
"I'm—trying to make you happy, Dick. It—it hurts so much—so
—much."
"What does?"
She wouldn't answer. She gestured wantonly and tugged at him
again. He sprang from the bed.
"Dick, Dick, I warned you not to go! I said I had some precog.

The Mail in the Maze	73
And that other things could happen to you there besides getting
killed."
"Tell me what hurts you."
"I can't. I—don't know."
"That's a lie."
"When did it start?"
"This morning. When I got up."
"That's another lie. I have to have the truth!"
"Make love to me, Dick. I can't wait much longer. I—"
"You what?"
"Can't-stand-"
"Can't stand what?"
"Nothing. Nothing." She was off the bed too, rubbing against
him, a cat in heat, shivering, muscles leaping in her face, eyes
wild.
He caught her wrists and ground the bones together.
"Tell me what it is you can't stand much longer, Marta."
She gasped. He squeezed harder. She swung back, head lolling,
breasts thrust toward the ceiling. Her body was oiled now with
sweat. Her nakedness maddened and inflamed him.
"Tell me," he said. "You can't stand-"
"—being near you," she said.

SIX
Within the maze the air was somehow warmer and sweeter. The
walls must cut off the winds, Rawlins thought. He walked care-
fully, listening to the voice at his ear.
Turn left . . . three paces . . , put your right foot beside the
black stripe on the pavement . . . pivot . . . turn left . . . four
paces . . . ninety-degree turn to the right . . . immediately make
a ninety-degree turn to the right again.
It was like a children's street game—step on a crack, break your
mother's back. The stakes were higher here, though. He moved
cautiously, feeling death nipping at his heels. What sort of people
would build a place like this? Ahead an energy flare spurted
across the path. The computer called off the timing for him. One,
two, three, four, five, GO! Rawlins went.
Safe.
On the far side he halted flatfooted, and looked back. Board-
man was keeping pace with him, unslowed by age. Boardman
waved and winked. He went through the patterns, too. One, two,
three, four, five, GO! Boardman crossed the place of the energy
flare.
"Should we stop here for a while?" Rawlins asked.
"Don't be patronizing to the old man, Ned. Keep moving. I'm
not tired yet."
"We have a tough one up ahead."
"Let's take it, then."
Rawlins could not help looking at the bones. Dry skeletons ages
old, and some bodies that were not old at all. Beings of many
races had perished here.
What if I die in the next ten minutes?
Bright lights were flashing now, on and off many times a sec-
ond. Boardman, five meters behind him, became an eerie figure
moving in disconnected strides. Rawlins passed his own hand be-
fore his face to see the jerky movements. It was as though every
other fraction of a second had simply been punched out of his
awareness.

The Mail in the Maze	75
The computer told him: Walk ten paces and halt. One. Two.
Three. Walk ten paces and halt One. Two. T/iree. Walk ten paces
and halt. One. Two. Three. Proceed quickly to end of ramp.
Rawlins could not remember what would happen to him if he
failed to keep to the proper timing. Here in Zone H the night-
mares were so thick that he could not keep them straight in his
mind. Was this the place where a ton of stone fell on the unwary?
Where the walls came together? Where a cobweb-dainty bridge
delivered victims to a lake of fire?
His estimated lifespan at this point was two hundred five years.
He wanted to have most of those years. I am too uncomplicated to
die yet, Ned Rawlins thought.
He danced to the computer's tune, past the lake of fire, past the
clashing walls.
2
Something with long teeth perched on the lintel of the door
ahead. Carefully Charles Boardman unslung the gun from his
backpack and cut in the proximity-responsive target finder. He
keyed it for thirty kilograms of mass and downward, at fifty me-
ters. "I've got it," he told Rawlins, and fired.
The energy bolt splashed against the wall. Streaks of shimmer-
ing green sprouted along the rich purple. The beast leaped, limbs
outstretched in a final agony, and fell. From somewhere came three
small scavengers that began to rip it to pieces.
Boardman chuckled. It didn't take much skill to hunt with
proximity-responsives, he had to admit. But it was a long time
since he had hunted at all. When he was thirty, he had spent a
long week in the Sahara Preserve as the youngest of a party of
eight businessmen and government consultants on a hunt. He had
done it for the political usefulness of making the trip. He had
hated it all: the steaming air in his nostrils, the blaze of the sun,
the tawny beasts dead against the sand, the boasting, the wanton
slaughter. At thirty one is not very tolerant of the mindless sports
of the middle-aged. Yet he had stayed, because he thought it
would be useful to him to become friendly with these men. It had
been useful. He had never gone hunting again. But this was
different, even with proximity-responsives. This was no sport.

76 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
3
Images played on a golden screen bracketed to a wall near the
inner end of Zone H. Rawlins saw his father's face take form, coa-
lesce with an underlying pattern of bars and crosses, burst into
flame. The screen was externally primed; what it showed was in
the eye of the beholder. The drones, passing this point, had seen
only the blank screen, Rawlins watched the image of a girl appear.
Maribeth Chambers, sixteen years old, sophomore in Our Lady
of Mercies High School, Rockford, Illinois. Maribeth Chambers
smiled shyly and began to remove her clothes. Her hair was silken
and soft, a cloud of gold; her eyes were blue, her lips were full
and moist. She unhinged her breast-binders and revealed two firm
upthrust white globes tipped with dots of flame. They were high
and close together, as though no gravity worked on them, and the
valley between them was six inches deep and a sixteenth of an
inch in breadth. Maribeth Chambers blushed and bared the lower
half of her body. She wore small garnets set in the dimples just
above her plump pink buttocks. A crucifix of ivory dangled from a
golden chain around her hips. Rawlins tried not to look at the
screen. The computer directed his feet; he shuffled along obe-
diently.
"I am the Resurrection and the Life," said Maribeth Chambers
in a husky, passionate voice.
She beckoned with the tips of three fingers. She gave him a bed-
room wink. She crooned sweet obscenities.
Step around in back here, big boy! Let me show you a good
time. . . .
She giggled. She wriggled. She heaved her shoulders and made
her breasts ring like tolling bells.
Her skin turned deep green. Her eyes slid about in her face.
Her lower lip stretched forth like a shovel. Her thighs began to
melt. Patterns of flame danced on the screen. Rawlins heard deep
throbbing ponderous chords from an invisible organ. He listened
to the whispering of the brain that guided him and went past the
screen unharmed.

The Man in the Maze
77
4
The screen showed abstract patterns: a geometry of power,
rigid marching lines and frozen figures. Charles Boardman paused
to admire it for a moment. Then he moved on.
5	
A forest of whirling knives near the inner border of Zone H.
6	
The heat grew strangely intense. One had to tiptoe over the
pavement. This was troublesome because none who had passed
this way before had experienced it. Did the route vary? Could the
city introduce variations? How hot would it get? Where would the
zone of warmth end? Did cold lie beyond? Would they live to
reach Zone E? Was Richard Muller doing this to prevent them
from entering?
7		*
Maybe he recognizes Boardman and is trying to kill him. There
is that possibility. Muller has every reason to hate Boardman, and
he has had no chance to undergo social adjustment. Maybe I
should move faster and open some space between Boardman and
myself. It seems to be getting hotter. On the other hand, he would
accuse me of being cowardly. And disloyal.
Maribeth Chambers would never have done those things.
Do nuns still shave their heads?
8	
Boardman found the distortion screen deep inside Zone G per-
haps the worst of all. He was not afraid of the dangers; Marshall
was the only man who had failed to get past the screen safely. He
was afraid of entering a place where the evidence of his senses did
not correspond to the real universe. Boardman depended on his

78 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
senses. He was wearing Ms third set of retinas. You can make no
meaningful evaluations of the universe without the confidence that
you are seeing it clearly.
Now he was within the field of the distortion screen.
Parallel lines met here. The triangular figures emblazoned on
the moist, quivering walls were constructed entirely of obtuse an-
gles. A river ran sideways through the valley. The stars were quite
close, and the moons orbited one another.
What we now must do is close our eyes and not be deceived.
Left foot. Right foot. Left foot Right foot Move to the left
slightly—slide your foot. More. More. A trifle more. Back toward
the right That's it Start walking again.
Forbidden fruit tempted him. All his life he had tried hard to
see clearly. The lure of distortions was irresistible. Boardman
halted, planting each foot firmly. If you hope to get out of tMs, he
told himself, you will keep your eyes closed. If you open your eyes
you will be misled and go to your death. You have no right to die
foolishly here after so many men have struggled so hard to teach
you how to survive.
Boardman remained quite still. The silent voice of the com-
puter, sounding a little waspish, tried to prod him on.
"Wait," said Boardman quietly. "I can look around a little if I
don't move. That's the important thing, not to move. You can't
get into trouble if you don't move."
The sMp's brain reminded him of the geyser of flame that had
sent Marshall to his death.
Boardman opened his eyes.
He was careful not to move. All about Mm he saw the negation
of geometry. This was the inside of the Klein bottle, looking out.
Disgust rose like a green column within him.
You are eighty years old and you know how the universe
should look. Close your eyes now, C.B. Close your eyes and move
along. You're taking undue risks.
First he sought Ned Rawlins. The boy was twenty meters ahead
of Mm, shuffling slowly past the screen. Eyes closed? Of course.
All of them. Ned was an obedient boy. Or a frightened one. He
wants to live through tMs, and he'd rather not see how the uni-
verse looks through a distortion screen. I'd like to have had a son
like that. But I'd have changed him by this time.
Boardman began to lift his right leg, checked himself, reim-
planted it on the pavement. Just ahead, pulsations of golden light

The Mail in the Maze
79
leaped in the air, taking now the form of a swan, now the form of
a tree. Ned Rawlins' left shoulder rose too high. His back was
humped. One leg moved forward and the other moved backward.
Through golden mists Boardman saw the corpse of Marshall sta-
pled to the wall. Marshall's eyes were wide open. Were there no
bacteria of decay on Lemnos? Looking into those eyes Boardman
saw his own curving reflection, all nose, no mouth. He closed his
eyes.
The computer, relieved, directed him onward.
9	
A sea of blood. A cup of lymph.
10	
To die, not having loved—
11	
This is the gateway to Zone F. I am now leaving ^death's other
kingdom. Where is my passport? Do I need a visa? I have nothing
to declare. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
3
A chill wind blowing out of tomorrow.
7
The boys camped in F were supposed to come out and meet us
and lead us through. I hope they don't bother. We can make it
without them. We just have to get past the screen, and we're all
right.
5
I've dreamed this route so often. And now I hate it, even

80 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
though it's beautiful. You have to admit that: it's beautiful. And
probably it looks most beautiful just before it kills you.
3
Maribeth's thighs have small puckers in the flesh. She will be fat
before she's thirty.
10
You do all sorts of things in a career. I could have stopped long
ago. I have never read Rousseau. I have not had time for Donne. I
know nothing of Kant. If I live I will read them now. I make this
vow, being of sound mind and body and eighty years of age, I Ned
Rawlins will I Richard Muller will read I will III will read I
Charles Boardman
13	
14	
On the far side of the gateway Rawlins stopped short and asked
the computer if it was safe for him to squat down and rest. The
brain said that it was. Gingerly, Rawlins lowered himself, rocked
on his heels a moment, touched his knee to the cool pebble-tex-
tured pavement. He looked back. Behind him, colossal blocks of
stone, set without mortar and fitted to a perfect truing, were piled
fifty meters high, flanking a tall narrow aperture through which
the solid form of Charles Boardman now was passing. Boardman
looked sweaty and flustered. Rawlins found that fascinating. He
had never seen the old man's smugness pierced before. But they
had never come through this maze before, either.
Rawlins himself was none too steady. Metabolic poisons boiled
in the tubes and channels of his body. He was drenched with per-
spiration so thoroughly that his clothing was working overtime to
get rid of it, distilling the moisture and volatilizing the substratum
of chemical compounds. It was too early to rejoice. Brewster had
died here in Zone F, thinking that his troubles were over once he
got past the dangers of G. Well, they were.
"Resting?" Boardman asked. His voice came out thin and un-
focussed.

The Mail in the Maze
81
"Why not? I've been working hard, Charles." Rawlins grinned
unconvincingly. "So have you. The computer says it's safe to stay
here a while. I'll make room."
Boardman came alongside and squatted. Rawlins had to steady
him as he balanced before kneeling.
Rawlins said, "Muller came this way alone and made it."
"Muller was always an extraordinary man."
"How do you think he did it?"
"Why don't you ask him?"
"I mean to," Rawlins said. "Perhaps by this time tomorrow I'll
be talking to him."
"Perhaps. We should go on now."
"If you say so."
"They'll be coming out to meet us soon. They should have fixes
on us by now. We must be showing up on their mass detectors.
Up, Ned. Up."
They stood. Once again Rawlins led the way.
In Zone F things were less cluttered but also less attractive. The
prevailing mood of the architecture was taut, with a fussy line that
generated a tension of mismatched objects. Though he knew that
traps were fewer here, Rawlins still had the sensation that the
ground was likely to open beneath him at any given faoment. The
air was cooler here. It had the same sharp taste as the air on the
open plain. At each of the street intersections rose immense con-
crete tubs in which jagged, feathery plants were standing.
"Which is the worst part for you so far?" Rawlins asked.
"The distortion screen," said Boardman.
"That wasn't so bad—unless you feel peculiar about walking
through stuff this dangerous with your eyes closed. You know, one
of those little tigers could have jumped us then, and we wouldn't
have known about it until we felt the teeth in us."
"I peeked," said Boardman.
"In the distortion zone?"
"Just for a moment. I couldn't resist it, Ned. I won't try to
describe what I saw, but it was one of the strangest experiences of
my life."
Rawlins smiled. He wanted to congratulate Boardman on hav-
ing done something silly and dangerous and human, but he didn't
dare. He said, "What did you do? Just stand still and peek and
then move on? Did you have any close escapes?"

82 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"Once. I forgot myself and started to take a step, but I didn't
follow through. I kept my feet planted and looked around."
"Maybe I'll try that on the way out," Rawlins said. "Just one
little look can't hurt."
"How do you know the screen's effective in the other direc-
tion?"
Rawlins frowned. "I never considered that. We haven't tried to
go outward through the maze yet. Suppose it's altogether different
coming out? We don't have charts for that direction. What if we
all get clipped coming out?"
"We'll use the probes again," said Boardman. "Don't worry
about that. When we're ready to go out, we'll bring a bunch of
drones to the camp in Zone F here and check the exit route the
same way we checked the entry route."
After a while Rawlins said, "Why should there be any traps on
the outward route, anyway? That means the builders of the maze
were locking themselves in as well as locking enemies out. Why
would they do that?"
"Who knows, Ned? They were aliens."
"Aliens. Yes."
15
Boardman remembered that the conversation was incomplete.
He tried to be affable. They were comrades in the face of danger.
He said, "And which has been the worst place for you so far?"
"That other screen farther back," Rawlins said. "The one that
shows you all the nasty, crawling stuff inside your own mind."
"Which screen is that?"
"Toward the inside of Zone H. It was a golden screen, fastened
to a high wall with metal strips. I looked at it and saw my father,
for a couple of seconds. And then I saw a girl I once knew, a girl
who became a nun. On the screen she was taking her clothes off. I
guess that reveals something about my unconscious, eh? Like a pit
of snakes. But whose isn't?"
"I didn't see any such things."
"You couldn't miss it. It was-oh, about fifty meters after the
place where you shot the first animal. A little to your left, halfway
up the wall, a rectangular screen—a trapezoidal screen, really, with
bright white metal borders, and colors moving on it, shapes—"

The Mail in the Maze
83
"Yes. That one. Geometrical shapes."
"I saw Maribeth getting undressed," Rawlins said, sounding
confused. "And you saw geometrical shapes?"
16
Zone F could be deadly too. A small pearly blister in the
ground opened and a stream of gleaming pellets rolled out. They
flowed toward Rawlins. They move with the malevolent determi-
nation of a stream of hungry soldier ants. They stung the flesh. He
trampled a number of them, but in his annoyance and fervor he
almost came loo close to a suddenly flashing blue light. He kicked
three pellets toward the light and they melted.
17	
Boardman had already had much more than enough.
18	
Their elapsed time out from the entrance to the maze was only
one hour and forty-eight minutes, although it seemdd much longer
than that. The route through Zone F led into a pink-walled room
where jets of steam blew up from concealed vents. At the far end
of the room was an irising slot. If you did not step through it with
perfect timing, you would be crushed. The slot gave access to a
long low-vaulted passageway, oppressively warm and close, whose
walls were blood-red in color and pulsated sickeningly. Beyond
the passageway was an open plaza in which six slabs of white
metal stood on end like waiting swords. A fountain hurled water a
hundred meters into the air. Flanking the plaza were three towers
with many windows, all of different sizes. Prismatic spotlights
played against the windows. No windows were broken. On the
steps of one of the towers lay the articulated skeleton of a creature
close to ten meters long. The bubble of what was undoubtedly a
space helmet covered its skull.
19
Alton, Antonelli, Cameron, Greenfield, and Stein constituted

84 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
the Zone F camp, the relief base for the forward group. Antonelli
and Stein went back to the plaza in the middle of F and found
Rawlins and Boardman there.
"It's just a short way on," Stein said. "Would you like to rest a
few minutes, Mr. Boardman?"
Boardman glowered. They went on.
Antonelli said, "Davis, Ottavio, and Reynolds passed on to E
this morning when Alton, Cameron, and Greenfield reached us.
Petrocelli and Walker are reconnoitering along the inner edge of E
and looking a little way into D. They say it looks a lot better in
there."
"I'll flay them if they go in," Boardman said.
Antonelli smiled worriedly.
The relief base consisted of a pair of extrusion domes side by
side in a little open spot at the edge of a garden. The site had been
thoroughly researched and no surprises were expected. Rawlins
entered one of the domes and took his shoes off. Cameron handed
him a cleanser. Greenfield gave him a food pack. Rawlins felt ill
at ease among these men. They had not had the opportunities in
life that had been given him. They did not have proper educations.
They would not live as long, even if they avoided all of the dan-
gers to which they were exposed. None of them had blond hair or
blue eyes, and probably they could not afford to get shape-ups
that would give them those qualifications. And yet they seemed
happy. Perhaps it was because they never had to stop to confront
the moral implications of luring Richard Muller out of the maze.
Boardman came into the dome. It amazed Rawlins how durable
and tireless the old man was. Boardman said, laughing, "Tell Cap-
tain Hosteen he lost his bet. We made it."
"What bet?" asked Antonelli.
Greenfield said, "We think that Muller must be tracking us
somehow. His movements have been very regular. He's occupying
the back quadrant of Zone A, as far from the entrance as possible
—if the entrance is the one he uses—and he swings around in a lit-
tle arc balancing the advance party."
Boardman said, "Hosteen gave three to one we wouldn't get
here. I heard him." To Cameron, who was a communications
technician, Boardman said, "Do you think it's possible that Muller
is using some kind of scanning system?"
"It's altogether likely."
"Good enough to see faces?"

The Mail in the Maze
85
"Maybe some of the time. We really can't be sure. He's had a
lot of time to learn how to use this maze, sir."
"If he sees my face," said Boardman, "we might as well just go
home without bothering. I never thought he might be scanning us.
Who's got the thermoplastics? I need a new face fast."
20
He did not try to explain. But when he was finished he had a
long sharp nose, lean, downcurving lips, and a witch's chin. It was
not an attractive face. But it was not the face of Charles Board-
man either.
21
After a night of unsound sleep Rawlins prepared himself to go
on to the advance camp in Zone E. Boardman would not be going
with him, but they would be in direct contact at all times now.
Boardman would see what Rawlins saw, and hear what Rawlins
heard. And in a tiny voice Boardman would be able to convey in-
structions to him.
The morning was dry and wintry. They tested the com-
munications circuits. Rawlins stepped out of the dome and walked
ten paces, standing alone looking inward and watching the orange
glow of daylight on the pockmarked porcelain-like walls before
him. The walls were deep black against the lustrous green of the
sky.
Boardman said, "Lift your right hand if you hear me, Ned."
Rawlins lifted his right hand.
"Now speak to me."
"Where did you say Richard Muller was born?"
"On Earth. I hear you very well."
"Where on Earth?"
"The North American Directorate, somewhere."
"I'm from there," Rawlins said.
"Yes, I know. I think Muller is from the western part of the
continent. I can't be sure. I've spent only a very little time on
Earth, Ned, and I can't remember the geography. If it's important,
I can have the ship look it up."
"Maybe later," said Rawlins. "Should I get started now?"

86 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"Listen to me, first. We've been very busy getting ourselves in-
side this place, and I don't want you to forget that everything
we've done up to this point has been a preliminary to our real pur-
pose. We're here for Muller, remember."
"Would I forget?"
"We've been preoccupied with matters of personal survival.
That can tend to blur your perspective: whether you yourself, in-
dividually, live or die. Now we take a larger view. What Richard
Muller has, whether it's a gift or a curse, is of high potential value
and it's your job to gain use of it, Ned. The fate of galaxies lies on
what happens in the next few days between you and Muller. Eons
will be reshaped. Billions yet unborn will have their lives altered
for good or ill by the events at hand."
"You sound absolutely serious, Charles,"
"I absolutely am. Sometimes there comes a moment when all
the booming foolish inflated words mean something, and this is
one of those moments. You're standing at a crossroads in galactic
history. And therefore, Ned, you're going to go in there and lie
and cheat and perjure and connive, and I expect that your con-
science is going to be very sore for a while, and you'll hate your-
self extravagantly for it, and eventually you'll realize that you've
done a deed of heroism. The test of your communications equip-
ment is now ended. Get back inside here and let's ready you to
march."
22
He went alone only a short distance this time. Stein and Alton
accompanied him as far as the gateway to Zone E. There were no
incidents. They pointed in the right direction, and he passed
through a pinwheeling shower of coruscating azure sparks to enter
the austere funereal zone beyond. As he negotiated the uphill
ramp of the entrance, he caught sight of a socket mounted in an
upright stone column. Within the darkness of the socket was
something mobile and gleaming that could have been an eye.
"I think I've found part of Muller's scanning system," Rawlins
reported. "There's a thing watching me in the wall."
"Cover it with your spray," Boardman suggested.
^ "I think he'd interpret that as a hostile act. Why would an ar-
chaeologist mutilate a feature like that?"

The Mail in the Maze	87
"Yes. A point. Proceed."
There was less of an air of menace about Zone E. It was made
up of dark, tightly-compacted low buildings which clung together
like bothered turtles. Rawlins could see different topography
ahead, high walls, and a shining tower. Each of the zones was so
different from all the others that he began to think they had been
built at different times: a core of residential sectors, and then a
gradual accretion of trap-laden outer rings as the enemies grew
more troublesome. It was the sort of thought an archaeologist
might have; he filed it for use.
He walked a little way, and saw the shadowy figure of Walker
coming toward, him. Walker was lean, dour, cool. He claimed to
have been married several times to the same wife. He was about
forty, a career man.
"Glad you made it, Rawlins. Go easy there on your left. That
wall is hinged."
"Everything all right here?"
"More or less. We lost Petrocelli about an hour ago."
Rawlins stiffened. "This zone is supposed to be safe!"
"It isn't. It's riskier than F, and nearly as bad as G. We under-
estimated it when we were using the probes. There's no real rea-
son why the zones have to get safer toward the middle, is there?
This is one of the worst."
"To lull us," Rawlins suggested. "False security."
"You bet. Come on, now. Follow me and don't use your brain
too much. There's no value in originality in here. You go the way
the path goes, or you don't go anywhere."
Rawlins followed. He saw no apparent danger, but he jumped
where Walker jumped, and detoured where Walker detoured. Not
too far on lay the inner camp. He found Davis, Ottavio, and
Reynolds there, and also the upper half of Petrocelli. "We're
awaiting burial orders," said Ottavio. Below the waist there was
nothing left. "Hosteen's going to tell us to bring him out, I bet."
"Cover him, at least," Rawlins told him.
"You going on into D today?" Walker asked.
"I may as well."
"We'll tell you what to avoid. It's new. That's where Petrocelli
got it, right near the entrance to D, maybe five meters this side.
You trip a field of some kind and it cuts you in half. The drones
didn't trip it at all."

88 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"Suppose it cuts everything in half that goes by?" Rawlins
asked. "Except drones."
"It didn't cut Muller," Walker said. "It won't cut you if you
step around it. We'll show you how."
"And beyond?"
"That's all up to you."
23	
Boardman said, "If you're tired, stay here for the night."
"I'd rather go on."
"You'll be going alone, Ned. Why not be rested?"
"Ask the brain for a reading on me. See where my fatigue level
is. I'm ready to go onward."
Boardman checked. They were doing full telemetry on Rawlins;
they knew his pulse rate, respiration count, hormone levels, and
many more intimate things. The computer saw no reason why
Rawlins could not continue without pausing.
"All right," said Boardman, "go on."
"I'm about to enter Zone D, Charles. This is where Petrocelli
got it. I see the tripline—very subtle, very well hidden. Here I go
past it. Yes. Ye-es. This is Zone D. I'm stopping and letting the
brain get my bearings for me. Zone D looks a little cozier than E.
The crossing shouldn't take long."
24	
The auburn flames that guarded Zone C were frauds.
25	
Rawlins said softly, "Tell the galaxies that their fate is in good
hands. I should find Muller in fifteen minutes."

SEVEN
Muller had often been alone for long periods. In drawing up the
contract for his first marriage he had insisted on a withdrawal
clause, the standard one; and Lorayn had not objected, for she
knew that his work might occasionally take him to places where
she would not or could not go. During the eight years of that mar-
riage he had enforced the clause three times for a total of four
years.
When they let the contract run out, Muller's absences were not
really a contributing factor. He had learned in those years that he
could stand solitude, and even that he thrived on it in a strange
way. We develop everything in solitude except character, Stendhal
had written; Muller was not sure of that but, in any case, his char-
acter had been fully formed before he began accepting assign-
ments that took him unaccompanied to empty dangerous worlds.
He had volunteered for those assignments. In a different sense he
had volunteered to immure himself on Lemnos,v and this exile
was more painful to him than those other absences. Yet he got
along. His own adaptability astonished and frightened him. He
had not thought he could shed his social nature so easily. The sex-
ual part was difficult, but not as difficult as he had imagined it
would be; and the rest—the stimulation of debate, the change of
surroundings, the interplay of personalities—had somehow ceased
quickly to matter. He had enough cubes to keep him diverted, and
enough challenges surviving in this maze. And memories.
He could summon remembered scenes from a hundred worlds.
Man sprawled everywhere, planting the seed of Earth on colonies
of a thousand stars. Delta Pavonis VI, for example: twenty light-
years out, and rapidly going strange. They called the planet Loki,
which struck Muller as a whopping misnomer, for Loki was agile,
shrewd, slight of build, and the settlers on Loki, fifty years iso-
lated from Earth, went in for a cult of artificial obesity through
glucostatic regulation. Muller had visited them a decade before his
ill-starred Beta Hydri journey. It was essentially a troubleshooting
mission to a planet that had lost touch with its mother world. He

90 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
remembered a warm planet, habitable only in a narrow temperate
belt. Passing through walls of green jungle bordering a black river;
watching beasts with jeweled eyes jostling on the swampy banks;
coming at last to the settlement, where sweaty Buddhas weighing a
few hundred kilograms apiece sat in stately meditation before
thatched huts. He had never seen so much flesh per cubic meter
before. The Lokites meddled with their peripheral glucoreceptors
to induce accumulation of body fat. It was a useless adaptation,
unrelated to any problem of their environment; they simply liked
to be huge. Muller recalled arms that looked like thighs, thighs
that looked like pillars, bellies that curved and recurved in trium-
phant excess.
They had hospitably offered a woman to the spy from Earth.
For Muller, it was a lesson in cultural relativity; for there were in
the village two or three women who, although bulky enough, were
scrawny by local standards and so approximated the norm of
Muller's own background. The Lokites did not give him any of
these women, these pitiful underdeveloped hundred-kilogram
wrecks, for it would have been a breach of manners to let a guest
have a subpar companion. Instead they treated him to a blonde
colossus with breasts like cannonballs and buttocks that were con-
tinents of quivering meat.
It was, at any rate, unforgettable.
There were so many other worlds. He had been a tireless voy-
ager. To such men as Boardman he left the subtleties of political
manipulation; Muller could be subtle enough, almost states-
manlike when he had to be, but he thought of himself more as an
explorer than as a diplomat. He had shivered in methane lakes,
had fried in post-Saharan deserts, had followed nomadic settlers
across a purple plain in quest of their strayed arthropodic cattle.
He had been shipwrecked by computer failure on airless worlds.
He had seen the coppery cliffs of Damballa, ninety kilometers
high. He had taken a swim in the gravity lake of Mordred. He had
slept beside a multicolored brook under a sky blazing with a trio
of suns, and he had walked the crystal bridges of Procyon XIV.
He had few regrets.
Now, huddled at the heart of his maze, he watched the screens
and waited for the stranger to find him. A weapon, small and cool,
nestled in his hand.

The Man in the Maze	91
4
The afternoon unrolled swiftly. Rawlins began to think that he
would have done better to listen to Boardman and spend a night
in camp before going on to seek Muller. At least three hours of
deep sleep to comb his mind of tension—a quick dip under the
sleep wire, always useful. Well, he hadn't bothered. Now there
was no opportunity. His sensors told him that Muller was just
ahead.
Questions of morality and questions of ordinary courage sud-
denly troubled him.
He had never done anything significant before. He had studied,
he had performed routine tasks in Boardman's office, he had now
and then handled a slightly sensitive matter. But he had always
believed that his real career still was yet to open; that all this was
preliminary. That sense of a future beginning was still with him,
but it was time to admit that he was on the spot. This was no
training simulation. Here he stood, tall and blond and young and
stubborn and ambitious, at the verge of an action which—and
Charles Boardman had not been altogether hypocritical about that
—might well influence the course of coming history)
Ping.
He looked about. The sensors had spoken. Out of the shadows
ahead emerged the figure of a man. Muller.
They faced each other across a gap of twenty meters. Rawlins
had remembered Muller as a giant and was surprised to see now
that they were about the same height, both of them just over two
meters high. Muller was dressed in a dark glossy wrap, and in this
light at this hour his face was a study in conflicting planes and jut-
ting prominences, all peaks and valleys.
In Muller's hand lay the apple-sized device with which he had
destroyed the probe.
Boardman's voice buzzed in Rawlins' ear. "Get closer to him.
Smile. Look shy and uncertain and friendly, and very concerned.
And keep your hands where he can see them at all times."
Rawlins obeyed. He wondered when he would begin to feel the
effects of being this close to Muller. He found it hard to take his
eyes from the shiny globe that rested like a grenade in Muller's
hand. When he was ten meters away he started to pick up the em-

92 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
anation from Muller. Yes. That must certainly be it. He decided
that he would be able to tolerate it if he came no closer.
Muller said," What do you-"
The words came out as a raucous shriek. Muller stopped,
cheeks flaming, and seemed to be adjusting the gears of his larynx.
Rawlins chewed the corner of his lip. He felt an uncontrollable
twitching in one eyelid. Harsh breathing was coming over the
audio line from Boardman.
Muller began again. "What do you want from me?" he said,
this time in his true voice, deep, crackling with suppressed rage.
"Just to talk. Honestly. I don't want to cause any trouble for
you, Mr. Muller."
"You know me!"
"Of course I do. Everyone knows Richard Muller. I mean, you
were the galactic hero when I was going to school. We did reports
on you. Essays about you. We—"
"Get out of here!" The shriek again.
"—and Stephen Rawlins was my father. I knew you, Mr.
Muller."
The dark apple was rising. The small square window was facing
him. Rawlins remembered how the relay from the drone probe
had suddenly ceased.
"Stephen Rawlins?" The apple descended.
"My father." Rawlins' left leg seemed to be turning to water.
Volatilized sweat drifted in a cloud about his shoulders. He was
getting the outpouring from Muller more strongly now, as though
it took a few minutes to tune to his wavelength. Now Rawlins felt
the torrent of anguish, the sadness, the sense of yawning abysses
sundering calm meadows. "I met you long ago," Rawlins said.
"You had just come back from—let's see, it was 82 Eridani, I
think, you were all tanned and windburned—I think I was eight
years old, and you picked me up and threw me, only you weren't
used to Earthnorm gravity and you threw me too hard, and I hit
the ceiling and began to cry, and you gave me something to make
me stop, a little bead that changed colors—"
Muller's hands were limp at his sides. The apple had disap-
peared into his garment.
He said tautly, "What was your name? Fred, Ted, Ed-that's it.
Yes. Ed. Edward Rawlins."
"They started calling me Ned a little later on. So you remember
me, then?"

The Mail in the Maze
93
"A little. I remember your father a lot better." Muller turned
away and coughed. His hand slipped into his pocket. He raised his
head and the descending sun glittered weirdly against his face,
staining it deep orange. He made a quick edgy gesture with one
finger. "Go away, Ned. Tell your friends that I don't want to be
bothered. I'm a very sick man, and I want to be alone."
"Sick?"
"Sick with a mysterious inward rot of the soul. Look, Ned,
you're a fine handsome boy, and I love your father dearly, if any
of this is true, and I don't want you hanging around me. You'll
regret it. I don't mean that as a threat, just as a statement of fact.
Go away. Ear away."
"Stand your ground," Boardman told him. "Get closer. Right
in, where it hurts."
Rawlins took a wary step, thinking of the globe in Muller's
pocket and seeing from those eyes that the man was not neces-
sarily rational. He diminished the distance between them by ten
per cent. The impact of the emanation seemed to double.
He said, "Please don't chase me away, Mr. Muller. I just want
to be friendly. My father would never have forgiven me if he
could have found out that I met you here, like this, and didn't try
to help you at all."	\
"Would have? Could have found out? What happened to your
father?"
"Dead."
"When? Where?"
"Four years ago, Rigel XXII. He was helping to set up a tight-
beam network connecting the Rigel worlds. There was an
amplifier accident. The focus was inverted. He got the whole
beam."
"Jesus. He was still young!"
"He would have been fifty in a month. We were going to come
out and visit him and give him a surprise party. Instead I came out
by myself to bring his body back."
Muller's face softened. Some of the torment ebbed from his
eyes. His lips became more mobile. It was as though someone
else's grief had momentarily taken him from his own.
"Get closer to him," Boardman ordered.
Another step; and then, since Muller did not seem to notice, an-
other. Rawlins sensed heat: not real but psychical, a furnace-blast
of directionless emotion. He shivered in awe. He had never really

94 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
believed in any essential way that the story of what the Hydrans
had done to Richard Muller was true. He was too sharply limited
by his father's heritage of pragmatism. If you can't duplicate it in
the laboratory, it isn't real. If you can't graph it, it isn't real. If
there's no circuitry, it isn't real. How could a human being possi-
bly be redesigned to broadcast his own emotions? No circuitry
could handle such a function. But Rawlins felt the fringes of that
broadcast.
Muller said, "What are you doing on Lemnos, boy?"
"I'm an archaeologist." The lie came awkwardly. "This is my
first field trip. We're trying to carry out a thorough examination of
the maze."
"The maze happens to be someone's home. You're intruding."
Rawlins faltered.
"Tell him you didn't know he was here," Boardman prompted.
"We didn't realize that anyone was here," said Rawlins. "We
had no way of knowing that—"
"You sent your damned robots in, didn't you? Once you found
someone here—someone you knew damned well wouldn't want to
have any company—"
"I don't understand," Rawlins said. "We had the impression
you were wrecked here. We wanted to offer our help."
How easily I do this, he told himself!
Muller scowled. "You don't know why I'm here?"
"I'm afraid not."
"You wouldn't, I guess. You were too young. But the others—
once they saw my face, they should have known. Why didn't they
tell you? Your robot relayed my face, didn't it? You knew who it
was in here. And they didn't tell you a thing?"
"I really don't understand—"
"Come close!" Muller bellowed.
Rawlins felt himself gliding forward, though he was unaware of
taking individual steps. Abruptly he was face to face with Muller,
conscious of the man's massive frame, his furrowed brow, his
fixed, staring, angry eyes. Muller's immense hand pounced on
Rawlins' wrist. Rawlins rocked, stunned by the impact, drenched
with a despair so vast that it seemed to engulf whole universes. He
tried not to stagger.
"Now get away from me!" Muller cried harshly. "Go on! Out
of here! Out!"
Rawlins did not move.

The Mail in the Maze
95
Muller howled a curse and ran ponderously into a low glassy-
walled building whose windows, opaque, were like blind eyes. The
door closed, sealing without a perceptible opening. Rawlins
sucked in breath and fought for his balance. His forehead
throbbed as if something behind it were struggling to burst free.
"Stay where you are," said Boardman. "Let him get over his
tantrum. Everything's going well."
3
Muller crouched behind the door. Sweat rolled down his sides.
A chill swept him. He wrapped his arms about himself so tightly
that his ribs complained.
He had not meant to handle the intruder that way at all.
A few words of conversation; a blunt request for privacy; then,
if the man would not go away, the destructor globe. So Muller had
planned. But he had hesitated. He had spoken too much and
learned too much. Stephen Rawlins' son? A party of archae-
ologists out there? The boy had hardly seemed affected by the
radiation except at very close range. Was it losing its power with
the years?
Muller fought to collect himself and to analyze his hostility.
Why so fearful? Why so eager to cling to solitude? had nothing
to fear from Earthmen; they, not he, were the sufferers in any con-
tact he had with them. It was understandable that they would re-
coil from his presence. But there was no reason for him to with-
draw like this except out of some paralyzing diffidence, the
encrusted inflexibilities of nine years of isolation. Had it come to
that—a love of solitude for its own sake? Was he a hermit? His
original pretense was that he had come here out of consideration
for his fellow men, that he was unwilling to inflict the painful ugli-
ness that was himself upon them. But the boy had wanted to be
friendly and helpful. Why flee? Why react so churlishly?
Slowly Muller rose and undid the door. He stepped outside.
Night had fallen with winter's swiftness; the sky was black, and
the moons seared across it. The boy was still standing in the plaza,
looking a little dazed. The biggest moon, Clotho, bathed him in
golden light so that his curling hair seemed to sparkle with inner
flame. His face was very pale, with sharply accentuated cheek-
bones. His blue eyes gleamed in shock, like those of one who has
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96 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
Muller advanced, uncertain of his tactics. He felt like some
great half-rusted machine called into action after too many years
of neglect. "Ned?" he said. "Look, Ned, I want to tell you that
I'm sorry. You've got to understand, I'm not used to people. Not-
used—to—people"
"It's all right, Mr. Muller. I realize it's been rough for you."
"Dick. Call me Dick." Muller raised both hands and spread
them as if trying to cup moonbeams. He felt terribly cold. On the
wall beyond the plaza small animal shapes leaped and danced.
Muller said, "I've come to love my privacy. You can even cherish
cancer if you get into the right frame of mind. Look, you ought to
realize something. I came here deliberately. It wasn't any ship-
wreck. I picked out the one place in the universe where I was least
likely to be disturbed, and hid myself inside it. But, of course, you
had to come with your tricky robots and find the way in."
"If you don't want me here, I'll go," Rawlins said.
"Maybe that's best for both of us. No. Wait. Stay. Is it very
bad, being this close to me?"
"It isn't exactly comfortable," said Rawlins. "But it isn't as bad
as—as—well, I don't know. From this distance I just feel a little de-
pressed."
"You know why?" Muller asked. "From the way you talk, I
think you do, Ned. You're only pretending not to know what hap-
pened to me on Beta Hydri IV."
Rawlins colored. "Well, I remember a little bit, I guess. They
operated on your mind?"
"Yes, that's right. What you're feeling, Ned, that's me, my god-
dam soul leaking into the air. You're picking up the flow of neural
current, straight from the top of my skull. Isn't it lovely? Try
coming a little closer . . . that's it." Rawlins halted. "There,"
Muller said, "now it's stronger. You're getting a better dose. Now
recall what it was like when you were standing right here. That
wasn't so pleasant, was it? From ten meters away you can take it.
From one meter away it's intolerable. Can you imagine holding a
woman in your arms while you give off a mental stink like that?
You can't make love from ten meters away. At least, I can't.
Let's sit down, Ned. It's safe here. I've got detectors rigged in case
any of the nastier animals come in, and there aren't any traps in
this zone. Sit." He lowered himself to the smooth milky-white
stone floor, the alien marble that made this plaza so sleek. Raw-

The Mail in the Maze
97
lins, after an instant of deliberation, slipped lithely into the lotus
position a dozen meters away.
Muller said, "How old are you, Ned?"
"Twenty-three."
"Married?"
A shy grin. "Afraid not."
"Got a girl?"
"There was one, a liaison contract. We voided it when I took
on this job."
"Ah. Any girls in this expedition?"
"Only woman cubes," said Rawlins.
"They aren't much good, are they, Ned?"
"Not really*. We could have brought a few women along, but—"
"But what?"
"Too dangerous. The maze—"
"How many men have you lost so far?" Muller asked.
"Five, I think. I'd like to know the sort of people who'd build
a thing like this. It must have taken five hundred years of planning
to make it so devilish."
Muller said, "More. This was the grand creative triumph of
their race, I believe. Their masterpiece, their monument. They
must have been proud of this murderous place. It summed up the
whole essence of their philosophy—kill the stranger."v
"Are you just speculating, or have you found some clues to
their cultural outlook?"
"The only clue I have to their cultural outlook is all around us.
But I'm an expert on alien psychology, Ned. I know more about it
than any other human being, because I'm the only one who ever
said hello to an alien race. Kill the stranger: it's the law of the
universe. And if you don't kill him, at least screw him up a little."
"We aren't like that," Rawlins said. "We don't show instinctive
hostility to-"
"Crap."
"But-"
Muller said, "If an alien starship ever landed on one of our
planets we'd quarantine it and imprison the crew and interrogate
them to destruction. Whatever good manners we may have learned
grow out of decadence and complacency. We pretend that we're
too noble to hate strangers, but we have the politeness of weak-
ness. Take the Hydrans. A substantial faction within our govern-
ment was in favor of generating fusion in their cloud layer and

98 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
giving their system an extra before sending an emissary to
scout them."
"No."
"They were overruled, and an emissary was sent, and the Hy-
drans wasted him. Me." An idea struck Muller suddenly. Ap-
palled, he said, "What's happened between us and the Hydrans in
the last nine years? Any contact? War?"
"Nothing," said Rawlins. "We've kept away."
"Are you telling me the truth, or did we wipe the bastards out?
God knows I wouldn't mind that, but yet it wasn't their fault they
did this to me. They were reacting in a standard xenophobic way.
Ned, has there been a war with them?"
"No. I swear it."
Muller relaxed. After a moment he said, "All right. I won't ask
you to fill me in on all the other news developments. I don't really
give a damn. How long are you people staying on Lemnos?"
"We don't know yet. A few weeks, I suppose. We haven't even
really begun to explore the maze. And then there's the area out-
side. We want to run correlations on the work of earlier archae-
ologists, and—"
"And you'll be here for a while. Are the others going to come
into the center of the maze?"
Rawlins moistened his lips. "They sent me ahead to establish a
working relationship with you. We don't have any plan yet. It all
depends on you. We don't want to impose on you. So if you don't
want us to work here—"
"I don't," Muller told him crisply. "Tell that to your friends. In
fifty or sixty years I'll be dead, and they can sniff around here
then. But while I'm here I don't want them bothering me. Let
them work in the outer four or five zones. If any of them sets foot
in A, B, or C, I'll kill him. I can do that, Ned."
"What about me—am I welcome?"
"Occasionally. I can't predict my moods. If you want to talk to
me, come around and see. And if I tell you to get the hell out,
Ned, then get the hell out. Clear?"
Rawlins grinned sunnily. "Clear." He got to his feet. Muller,
unwilling to have the boy standing over him, rose also. Rawlins
took a few steps toward him.
Muller said, "Where are you going?"
"I hate having to talk at this distance, to shout like this. I can
get a little closer to you, can't I?"

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99
Instantly suspicious, Muller replied, "Are you some kind of
masochist?"
"Sorry, no."
"Well, I'm no sadist either. I don't want you near me."
"It's really not that unpleasant—Dick."
"You're lying. You hate it like all the others. I'm like a leper,
boy, and if you're queer for leprosy I feel sorry for you, but don't
come any closer. It embarrasses me to see other people suffer on
my account."
Rawlins stopped. "Whatever you say. Look, Dick, I don't
want to cause troubles for you. I'm just trying to be friendly and
helpful. If dping that in some way makes you uncomfortable—well,
just say so, and I'll do something else. It doesn't do me any good
to make things worse for you."
"That came out pretty muddled, boy. What is it you want from
me, anyhow?"
"Nothing."
"Why not leave me alone?"
"You're a human being, and you've been alone here for a long
time. It's my natural impulse to offer companionship. Does that
sound too dumb?"
Muller shrugged. "I'm not much of a companion. Maybe you
ought to take all your sweet Christian impulses and go away.
There's no way you can help me, Ned. You can only hurt me by
reminding me of all I can no longer have or know." Stiffening,
Muller looked past the tall young man toward the shadowy figures
cavorting along the walls. He was hungry, and this was the hour to
begin hunting for his dinner. He said brusquely, "Son, I think my
patience is running out again. Time for you to leave."
"All right. Can I come back tomorrow, though?"
"Maybe. Maybe."
The boy smiled ingenuously. "Thanks for letting me talk to
you, Dick. I'll be back."
4
By troublesome moonlight Rawlins made his way out of Zone
A. The voice of the ship's brain guided him back over the path he
had taken inward, and now and then, in the safest spots, Board-
man used the override. "You've made a good start," Boardman

100 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
said. "It's a plus that he tolerated you at all. How do you feel?"
"Lousy, Charles."
"Because of the close contact with him?"
"Because I'm doing something filthy."
"Stop that, Ned. If I'm going to have to pump you full of moral
reassurance every time you set out—"
"I'll do my job," said Rawlins, "but I don't have to like it." He
edged over a spring-loaded stone block that was capable of hurl-
ing him from a precipice if he applied his weight the wrong way.
A small toothy animal snickered at him as he crossed. On the far
side, Rawlins prodded the wall in a yielding place and won admis-
sion to Zone B. He glanced at the lintel and saw the recessed slot
of the visual pickup and smiled into it, just in case Muller was
watching him withdraw.
He saw now why Muller had chosen to maroon himself here.
Under similar circumstances he might have done the same thing.
Or worse. Muller carried, thanks to the Hydrans, a deformity of
the soul in an era when deformity was obsolete. It was an esthetic
crime to lack a limb or an eye or a nose; these things were easily
repaired, and one owed it to one's fellow man to get a shape-up
and obliterate troublesome imperfections. To inflict one's flaws on
society was clearly an antisocial act.
But no shape-up surgeon could do a cosmetic job on what
Muller had. The only cure was separation from society. A weaker
man would have chosen death: Muller had picked exile.
Rawlins still throbbed with the impact of that brief moment of
direct contact. For an instant he had received from Muller a
formless incoherent emanation of raw emotion, the inner self spill-
ing out involuntarily and wordlessly. The flow of uncontrollable in-
nerness was painful and depressing to receive.
It was not true telepathy that the Hydrans had given him.
Muller could not "read" minds, nor could he communicate his
thoughts to others. What came forth was this gush of self: a tor-
rent of raw despair, a river of regrets and sorrows, all the sewage
of a soul. He could not hold it back. For that eternal moment
Rawlins had been bathed in it; the rest of the time he had merely
picked up a vague and general sense of distress.
He could generate his own concretenesses out of that raw flow.
Muller's sorrows were not unique to himself; what he offered was
nothing more than an awareness of the punishments the universe
devises for its inhabitants. At that moment Rawlins had felt that

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101
he was tuned to every discord in creation: the missed chances, the
failed loves, the hasty words, the unfair griefs, the hungers, the
greeds, the lusts, the knife of envy, the acid of frustration, the fang
of time, the death of small insects in winter, the tears of things.
He had known aging, loss, impotence, fury, helplessness, loneli-
ness, desolation, self-contempt, and madness. It was a silent shriek
of cosmic anger.
Are we all like that? He wondered. Is the same broadcast
coming from me, and from Boardman, and from my mother, and
from the girl I used to love? Do we walk about like beacons fixed
to a frequency we can't receive? Thank God, then. That's a song
too painful to hear.
Boardman said, "Wake up, Ned. Stop brooding and watch out
for trouble. You're almost in Zone C now."
"Charles, how did you feel the first time you came close to
Muller?"
"We'll discuss that later."
"Did you feel as if you knew what human beings were all about
for the first time?"
"I said we'll discuss—"
"Let me say what I want to say, Charles. I'm not in any danger
here. I just looked into a man's soul, and I'm shaken by it. But—
listen, Charles—he isn't really like that. He's a good man. That
stuff he radiates, it's just noise. It's a kind of sludge that doesn't
tell you a real thing about Dick Muller. It's noise we aren't meant
to hear, and the signal's altogether different—like when you open
an amplifier up to the stars, full blast, and you get that rasping of
the spectrum, you know, and some of the most beautiful stars give
you the most terrible noises, but that's just an amplifier response,
it has nothing to do with the quality of the star itself, it—it—"
"Ned."
"I'm sorry, Charles."
"Get back to camp. We all agree that Dick Muller's a fine
human being. That's why we need him. We need you, too, so shut
your mouth and watch your step. Easy, now. Calm. Calm. Calm.
What's that animal on your left? Hurry along, Ned. But stay calm.
That's the way, son. Calm."

EIGHT
When they met again the next morning it was easier for both of
them. Rawlins, having slept well under the sleep wire, went to the
heart of the maze and found Muller standing beside a tall flat-
sided spike of dark metal at the edge of the great plaza.
"What do you make of this?" Muller asked conversationally as
Rawlins approached. "There are eight of these, one at each
corner. I've been watching them for years. They turn. Look here."
Muller pointed to one face of the pylon. Rawlins came close, and
when he was ten meters away he picked up Muller's emanation.
Nevertheless, he forced himself to go closer. He had not been so
close yesterday except in that one chilling moment when Muller
had seized him and pulled him near.
"You see this?" Muller asked, tapping the spike.
"A mark."
"It took me close to six months to cut it. I used a sliver from
the crystalline outcropping set in that wall yonder. Every day for
an hour or two I'd scrape away, until there was a visible mark in
the metal. I've been watching that mark. In the course of one local
year it turns all the way around. So the spikes are moving. You
can't see it, but they do. They're some kind of calendars."
"Do they—can you—have you ever—"
"You aren't making sense, boy."
"I'm sorry." Rawlins backed away, trying hard to hide the im-
pact of Muller's nearness. He was flushed and shaken. At five me-
ters the effect was not so agonizing, and he stayed there, making
an effort, telling himself that he was developing a tolerance for it
"You were saying?"
"Is this the only one you've been watching?"
"I've scratched a few of the others. I'm convinced that they all
turn. I haven't found the mechanism. Underneath this city, you
know, there's some kind of fantastic brain. It's millions of years
old, but it still works. Perhaps it's some sort of liquid metal with
cognition elements floating in it. It turns these pylons and runs the
water supply and cleans the streets."

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"And operates the traps."
"And operates the traps," Muller said. "But I haven't been able
to find a sign of it. I've done some digging here and there, but I
find only dirt below. Maybe you archaeologist bastards will locate
the city's brain. Eh? Any clues?"
"I don't think so," said Rawlins.
"You don't sound very definite."
"I'm not. I haven't taken part in any of the work within the
city." Rawlins smiled shyly. The quick facial movement annoyed
him and drew reproof from Boardman, who pointed out over the
monitor circuit that the shy smile always announced an upcoming
lie and that it wouldn't be long before Muller caught on. Rawlins
said, "Most of-the time I was outside the city, directing the entry
operations. And then when I got in, I came right in here. So I
don't know what the others may have discovered so far. If any-
thing."
"Are they going to rip up the streets?" Muller asked.
"I don't think so. We don't dig so much any more. We use
scanners and sensors and probe beams." Glibly, impressed with
his own improvisations, he went on headlong. "Archaeology used
to be destructive, of course. To find out what was under a pyramid
we had to take the pyramid apart. But now we can do a lot with
probes. That's the new school, you understand, looking into the
ground without digging, and thus preserving the monuments of the
past for—"
"On one of the planets of Epsilon Indi," said Muller, "a team
of archaeologists completely dismantled an ancient alien burial
pavilion about fifteen years ago, and then found it impossible to
put the thing back together because they couldn't comprehend the
structural integrity of the building. When they tried, it fell apart
and was a total loss. I happened to see the ruins a few months
later. You know the case, of course."
Rawlins didn't. He said, reddening, "Well, there are always
bunglers in any discipline—"
"I hope there are none here. I don't want the maze damaged.
Not that there's much chance of that. The maze defends itself
quite well." Muller strolled casually away from the pylon. Rawlins
eased as the distance between them grew, but Boardman warned
him to follow. The tactics for damping Muller's mistrust included a
deliberate and rigorous self-exposure to the emotion field. Muller

104 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
was not looking back, and said, half to himself, "The cages are
closed again."
"Cages?"
"Look down there—into that street branching out of the plaza."
Rawlins saw an alcove against a building wall. Rising from the
ground were a dozen or more curving bars of white stone that
disappeared into the wall at a height of about four meters, forming
a kind of cage. He could see a second such cage farther down the
street.
Muller said, "There are about twenty of them, arranged sym-
metrically in the streets off the plaza. Three times since I've been
here the cages have opened. Those bars slide into the street, some-
how, and disappear. The third time was two nights ago. I've never
seen the cages either open or close, and I've missed it again."
"What do you think the cages were used for?" Rawlins asked.
"To hold dangerous beasts. Or captured enemies. What else
would you use a cage for?"
"And when they open now—"
"The city's still trying to serve its people. There are enemies in
the outer zones. The cages are ready in case any of the enemies
are captured."
"You mean us?"
"Yes. Enemies." Muller's eyes glittered with sudden paranoid
fury; it was alarming how easily he slipped from rational discourse
to that cold blaze. "Homo sapiens. The most dangerous, the most
ruthless, the most despicable beast in the universe!"
"You say it as if you believe it."
"I do."
"Come on," Rawlins said. "You devoted your life to serving
mankind. You can't possibly believe—"
"I devoted my life," said Muller slowly, "to serving Richard
Muller." He swung around so that he faced Rawlins squarely.
They were only six or seven meters apart. The emanation seemed
almost as strong as though they were nose to nose. Muller said, "I
gave less of a damn for humanity than you might think, boy. I saw
the stars, and I wanted them. I aspired after the condition of a
deity. One world wasn't enough for me. I was hungry to have
them all. So I built a career that would take me to the stars. I
risked my life a thousand times. I endured fantastic extremes of
temperature. I rotted my lungs with crazy gases, and had to be
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105
hear about. Kids like you worshipped me and wrote essays about
my selfless dedication to man, my tireless quest for knowledge.
Let me get you straight on that. I'm about as selfless as Columbus
and Magellan and Marco Polo. They were great explorers, yes,
but they also looked for a fat profit. The profit I wanted was in
here. I wanted to stand a hundred kilometers high. I wanted
golden statues of me on a thousand worlds. You know poetry?
Fame is the spur. That last infirmity of noble mind. Milton. Do
you know your Greeks, too? When a man overreaches himself, the
gods cast him down. It's called hybris. I had a bad case of it.
When I dropped through the clouds to visit the Hydrans, I felt like
a god. Christ, I was a god. And when I left, up through the clouds
again. To the Hydrans I'm a god, all right. I thought it then: I'm
in their myths, they'll always tell my story. The mutilated god.
The martyred god. The being who came down among them and
made them so uncomfortable that they had to fix him. But—"
"The cage-"
"Let me finish!" Muller rapped. "You see, the truth is, I wasn't
a god, only a rotten mortal human being who had delusions of
godhood, and the real gods saw to it that I learned my lesson.
They decided to remind me of the hairy beast inside the plastic
clothing. To call my attention to the animal brain under the lofty
cranium. So they arranged it for the Hydrans to perform a clever
little surgical trick on my brain, one of their specialities, I guess. I
don't know if the Hydrans were being malicious for the hell of it
or whether they were genuinely trying to cure me of a defect, my
inability to let my emotions get out to them. Aliens. You figure
them out. But they did their little job. And then I came back to
Earth. Hero and leper all at once. Stand near me and you get sick.
Why? It reminds you that you're an animal too, because you get a
full dose of me. So we go round and round in our endless feed-
back. You hate me because you learn things about your own soul
by getting near me. And I hate you because you must draw back
from me. What I am, you see, is a plague carrier, and the plague I
carry is the truth. My message is that it's a lucky thing for human-
ity that we're shut up each in his own skull. Because if we had
even a little drop of telepathy, even the blurry nonverbal thing
I've got, we'd be unable to stand each other. Human society would
be impossible. The Hydrans can reach right into each other's
mind, and they seem to like it. But we can't. And that's why I say

106 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
that man must be the most despicable beast in the whole universe.
He can't even take the reek of his own kind, soul to soul!"
Rawlins said, "The cage seems to be opening."
"What? Let me look!" Muller came jostling forward. Unable to
step aside rapidly enough, Rawlins received the brunt of the ema-
nation. It was not as painful this time. Images of autumn came to
him: withered leaves, dying flowers, a dusty wind, early twilight.
More regret than anguish over the shortness of life, the necessity of
the condition. Meanwhile Muller, oblivious, was peering intently
at the alabaster bars of the cage.
"It's withdrawn by several centimeters already. Why didn't you
teU me?"
"I tried to. But you weren't listening."
"No. No. My damned soliloquizing." Muller chuckled. "Ned,
I've been waiting years to see this. The cage actually in motion!
Look how smoothly it moves, gliding into the ground. This is
strange, Ned. It's never opened twice the same year before, and
here it's opening for the second time this week."
"Maybe you've just failed to notice a lot of the other openings,"
Rawlins suggested. "While you slept, maybe—"
"I doubt it. Look at that!"
"Why do you think it's doing it right now?"
"Enemies all around," said Muller. "The city accepts me as a
native by now. I've been here so long. But it must be trying to get
you into a cage. The enemy. Man."
The cage was fully open now. There was no sign of the bars ex-
cept the row of small openings in the pavement.
Rawlins said, "Have you ever tried to put anything in the
cages? Animals?"
"Yes. I dragged a big dead beast inside one. Nothing happened.
Then I caught some live little ones. Nothing happened." He
frowned. "I once thought of stepping into the cage myself to see
if it would close automatically when it sensed a live human being.
But I didn't. When you're alone, you don't try experiments like
that." He paused a moment, "How would you like to help me in a
little experiment right now, eh, Ned?"
Rawlins caught his breath. The thin air abruptly seemed like
fire in his lungs.
Muller said quietly, "Just step across into the alcove and wait a
minute or so. See if the cage closes on you. That would be impor-
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"And if it does," Rawlins said, not taking him seriously, "do
you have a key to let me out?"
"I have a few weapons. We can always blast you out by lasing
the bars."
"That's destructive. You warned me not to destroy anything
here."
"Sometimes you destroy in order to learn. Go on, Ned. Step
into the alcove."
Muller's voice grew flat and strange. He was standing in an odd
expectant half-crouch, hands at his sides, fingertips bent inward
toward his thighs. As though he's going to throw me into the cage
himself, Rawlins thought.
Boardman said quietly in Rawlins' ear, "Do as he says, Ned.
Get into the cage. Show him that you trust him."
I trust him, Rawlins told himself, but I don't trust that cage.
He had uncomfortable visions of the floor of the cage dropping
out as soon as the bars were in place: of himself dumped into
some underground vat of acid or lake of fire. The disposal pit for
trapped enemies. What assurance do I have that it isn't like that?
"Do it, Ned," Boardman murmured.
It was a grand, crazy gesture. Rawlins stepped over the row of
small openings and stood with his back to the wall. Almost at once
the curving bars rose from the ground and locked themselves
seamlessly into place above his head. The floor seemed stable. No
death-rays lashed out at him. His worst fears were not realized;
but he was a prisoner.
"Fascinating," Muller said. "It must scan for intelligence. When
I tried with animals, nothing happened. Dead or alive. What do
you make of that, Ned?"
"I'm very glad to have helped your research. I'd be happier if
you'd let me out now."
"I can't control the movements of the bars."
"You said you'd lase them open."
"But why be destructive so fast? Let's wait, shall we? Perhaps
the bars will open again of their own accord. You're perfectly safe
in there. I'll bring you food, if you have to eat. Will your people
miss you if you're not back by nightfall?"
"I'll send a message to them," said Rawlins glumly. "But I
hope that I'm out by then."
"Stay cool," Boardman advised. "If necessary, we can get you
out of that ourselves. It's important to humor Muller in everything

108 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
you can until you've got real rapport with him. If you hear me,
touch your right hand to your chin."
Rawlins touched his right hand to his chin.
Muller said, "That was pretty brave of you, Ned. Or stupid. I'm
sometimes not sure if there's a distinction. But I'm grateful, any-
way. I had to know about those cages."
"Glad to have been of assistance. You see, human beings aren't
all that monstrous."
"Not consciously. It's the sludge inside that's ugly. Here, let me
remind you." He approached the cage and put his hands on the
smooth bars, white as bone. Rawlins felt the emanation intensify.
"That's what's under the skull. I've never really felt it myself, of
course. I extrapolate it from the responses of others. It must be
foul"
"I could get used to it," Rawlins said. He sat down crosslegged.
"Did you make any attempt to have it undone when you returned
to Earth from Beta Hydri IV?"
"I talked to the shape-up boys. They couldn't begin to figure
out what changes had been made in my neural flow, and so they
couldn't begin to figure out how to fix things. Nice?"
"How long did you stay?"
"A few months. Long enough to discover that there wasn't one
human being I knew who didn't turn green after a few minutes of
close exposure to me. I started to stew in self-pity, and in self-
loathing, which is about the same thing. I was going to kill myself,
you know, to put the world out of its misery."
Rawlins said, "I don't believe that. Some men just aren't capa-
ble of suicide. You're one who isn't."
"So I discovered, and thank you. I didn't kill myself, you no-
tice. I tried some fancy drugs, and then I tried drink, and then I
tried living dangerously. And at the end of it I was still alive. I
was in and out of four neuropsychiatry wards in a single month. I
tried wearing a padded lead helmet to shield the thought radia-
tions. It was like trying to catch neutrinos in a bucket. I caused a
panic in a licensed house on Venus. All the girls stampeded out
stark naked once the screaming began." Muller spat. "You know,
I could always take society or leave it. When I was among people
I was happy, I was cordial, I had the social graces. I wasn't a slick
sunny article like you, all overflowing with kindness and nobility,
but I interacted with others. I related, I got along. Then I could go
on a trip for a year and a half and not see or speak to anyone, and

The Mail in the Maze
109
that was all right too. But once I found out that I was shut off
from society for good, I discovered that I had needed it after all.
But that's over. I outgrew the need, boy. I can spend a hundred
years alone and never miss one soul. I've trained myself to see hu-
manity as humanity sees me—something sickening, a damp hun-
kering crippled thing best avoided. To hell with you all. I don't
owe any of you anything, love included. I have no obligations. I
could leave you to rot in that cage, Ned, and never feel upset
about it. I could pass that cage twice a day and smile at your
skull. It isn't that I hate you, either you personally or the whole
galaxy full of your kind. It's simply that I despise you. You're
nothing to me. Less than nothing. You're dirt. I know you now,
and you knew me."
"You speak as if you belong to an alien race," Rawlins said in
wonder.
"No. I belong to the human race. I'm the most human being
there is, because I'm the only one who can't hide his humanity.
You feel it? You pick up the ugliness? What's inside me is also in-
side you. Go to the Hydrans and they'll help you liberate it, and
then people will run from you as they run from me. I speak for
man. I tell the truth. I'm the skull beneath the face, boy. I'm the
hidden intestines. I'm all the garbage we pretend isn't there, all
the filthy animal stuff, the lusts, the little hates, the sicknesses, the
envies. And I'm the one who posed as a god. Hybris. I was re-
minded of what I really am."
Rawlins said quietly, "Why did you decide to come to
Lemnos?"
"A man named Charles Boardman put the idea into my head."
Rawlins recoiled in surprise at the mention of the name.
Muller said, "You know him?"
"Well, yes. Of course. He—he's a very important man in the
government."
"You might say that. It was Boardman who sent me to Beta
Hydri IV, you know? Oh, he didn't trick me into it, he didn't
have to persuade me in any of his slippery ways. He knew me well
enough. He simply played on my ambitions. There's a world there
with aliens on it, he said, and we want a man to visit it. Probably
a suicide mission, but it would be man's first contact with another
intelligent species, and are you interested? So of course I went. He
knew I couldn't resist something like that. And afterward, when I
came back this way, he tried to duck me a while—either because

110 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
he couldn't abide being near me or because he couldn't abide his
own guilt. And finally I caught up with him and I said, look at
me, Charles, this is how I am now, where can I go, what shall I
do? I got up close to him. This far away. His face changed color.
He had to take pills. I could see the nausea in his eyes. And he
reminded me about the maze on Lemnos."
"Why?"
"He offered it as a place to hide. I don't know if he was being
kind or cruel. I suppose he thought I'd be killed on my way into
the maze—a decent finish for my sort of chap, or at any rate better
than taking a gulp of carniphage and melting down a sewer. But of
course I told Boardman I wouldn't think of it. I wanted to cover
my trail. I blew up and insisted that the last thing in the world I'd
do was come here. Then I spent a month on the skids in Under
New Orleans, and when I surfaced again I rented a ship and came
here. Using maximum diversionary tactics to insure that nobody
found out my true destination. Boardman was right. This was the
place to come."
Rawlins said, "How did you get inside the maze?"
"Through sheer bad luck."
"Bad luck?"
"I was trying to die in a blaze of glory," said Muller. "I didn't
give a damn if I survived the maze or not. I just plunged right in
and headed for the middle."
"I can't believe that!"
"Well, it's true, more or less. The trouble was, Ned, I'm a sur-
vival type. It's an innate gift, maybe even something paranormal. I
have unusual reflexes. I have a kind of sixth sense, as they say.
Also my urge to stay alive is well developed. Besides that, I had
mass detectors and some other useful equipment. So I came into
the maze, and whenever I saw a corpse lying about I looked a little
sharper than usual, and I stopped and rested when I felt my
visualization of the place beginning to waver. I fully expected to
be killed in Zone H. I wanted it. But it was my luck to make it
where everybody else failed because I didn't care one way or the
other, I suppose. The element of tension was removed. I moved
like a cat, everything twitching at once, and I got past the tough
parts of the maze somehow, much to my disaopointment, and here
I am."
"Have you ever gone outside it?"
"No. Now and then I go as far as Zone E, where your friends

The Mail in the Maze	111
are. Twice I've been to F. Mostly I remain in the three inner
zones. I've furnished things quite nicely for myself. I have a radia-
tion locker for my meat supply, and a building I use as my library,
and a place where I keep my woman cubes, and I do some tax-
idermy in one of the other buildings. I hunt quite a lot, also. And
I examine the maze and try to analyze its workings. I've dictated
several cubes of memoirs on my findings. I bet you archaeologist
fellows would love to run through those cubes."
"I'm sure we'd learn a great deal from them," Rawlins said.
"I know you would. I'd destroy them before I'd let any of you
see them. Are you getting hungry, boy?"
"A little." #
"Don't go away. I'll bring you some lunch."
Muller strode toward the nearby buildings and disappeared.
Rawlins said quietly, "This is awful, Charles. He's obviously out
of his mind."
"Don't be sure of it," Boardman replied. "No doubt nine years
of isolation can have effects on a man's stability, and Muller
wasn't all that stable the last time I saw him. But he may be play-
ing a game with you—pretending to be crazy to test your good
faith."
"And if he isn't?"
"In terms of what we want from him, it doesn't matter in the
slightest if he's insane. It might even help."
"I don't understand that."
"You don't need to," said Boardman evenly. "Just relax. You're
doing fine so far."
Muller returned, carrying a platter of meat and a handsome
crystal beaker of water. "Best I can offer," he said, pushing a
chunk of meat between the bars. "A local beast. You eat solid
food, don't you?"
"Yes."
"At your age, I guess you would. What did you say you were,
twenty-five?"
"Twenty-three."
"That's even worse." Muller gave him the water. It had an
agreeable flavor, or lack of flavor. Muller sat quietly before the
cage, eating. Rawlins noticed that the effect of his emanation no
longer seemed so disturbing, even at a range of less than five me-
ters. Obviously one builds a tolerance to it, he thought. If one
wants to make the attempt.

112 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
Rawlins said, after a while, "Would you come out and meet my
companions in a few days?"
"Absolutely not."
"They'd be eager to talk to you."
"I have no interest in talking to them. I'd sooner talk to wild
beasts."
"You talk to me," Rawlins pointed out.
"For the novelty of it. And because your father was a good
friend. And because, as human beings go, boy, you're reasonably
acceptable. But I don't want to be thrust into any miscellaneous
mass of bug-eyed archaeologists."
"Possibly meet two or three of them," Rawlins suggested. "Get
used to the idea of being among people again."
"No
"I don't see—"
Muller cut him off. "Wait a minute. Why should I get used to
the idea of being among people again?"
Rawlins said uneasily, "Well, because there are people here, be-
cause it's not a good idea to get too isolated from—"
"Are you planning some sort of trick? Are you going to catch
me and pull me out of this maze? Come on, come on, boy, what's
in back of that little mind of yours? What motive do you have for
softening me up for human contact?"
Rawlins faltered. In the awkward silence Boardman spoke
quickly, supplying the guile he lacked, prompting him. Rawlins
listened and did his best.
He said, "You're making me out to be a real schemer, Dick.
But I swear to you I've got nothing sinister in mind. I admit I've
been softening you up a little, jollying you, trying to make friends
with you, and I guess I'd better tell you why."
"I guess you'd better!"
"It's for the archaeological survey's sake. We can spend only a
few weeks here. You've been here—what is it, nine years? You
know so much about this place, Dick, and I think it's unfair of
you to keep it to yourself. So what I was hoping, I guess, was that
I could get you to ease up, first become friendly with me, and then
maybe come to Zone E, talk to the others, answer their questions,
explain what you know about the maze—"
"Unfair to keep it to myself?"
"Well, yes. To hide knowledge is a sin."

The Mail in the Maze
113
"Is it fair of mankind to call me unclean, and run away from
me?"
"That's a different matter," Rawlins said. "It's beyond all
fairness. It's a condition you have—an unfortunate condition that
you didn't deserve, and everyone is quite sorry that it came upon
you, but on the other hand, you surely must realize that from the
viewpoint of other human beings it's rather difficult to take a de-
tached attitude toward your—your—"
"Toward my stink," Muller supplied. "All right. It's rather
difficult to stand my presence. Therefore I willingly refrain from
inflicting it upon your friends. Get it out of your head that I'm
going to speak to them or sip tea with them or have anything at all
to do with them. I have separated myself from the human race
and I stay separated. And it's irrelevant that I've granted you the
privilege of bothering me. Also, while I'm instructing you, I want
to remind you that my unfortunate condition was not undeserved.
I earned it by poking my nose into places where I didn't belong,
and by thinking I was superhuman for being able to go to such
places. Hybris. I told you the word."
Boardman continued to instruct him. Rawlins, with the sour
taste of lies on his tongue, went on, "I can't blame you for being
bitter, Dick. But I still think it isn't right for you to withhold in-
formation from us. I mean, look back on your own exploring
days. If you landed on a planet, and someone had vital informa-
tion you had come to find, wouldn't you make every effort to get
that information—even though the other person had certain private
problems which—"
"I'm sorry," said Muller frostily, "I'm beyond caring," and he
walked away, leaving Rawlins alone in the cage with two chunks
of meat and the nearly empty beaker of water.
When Muller was out of sight Boardman said, "He's a touchy
one, all right. But I didn't expect sweetness from him. You're get-
ting to him, Ned. You're just the right mixture of guile and na-
ivete."
"And I'm in a cage."
"That's no problem. We can send a drone to release you if the
cage doesn't open by itself soon."
"Muller isn't going to work out," Rawlins murmured. "He's full
of hate. It trickles out of him everywhere. We'll never get him to
cooperate. I've never seen such hate in one man."
"You don't know what hate is," said Boardman. "And neither

114 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
does he. I tell you everything is moving well. There are bound to
be some setbacks, but the fact that he's talking to you at all is the
important thing. He doesn't want to be full of hate. Give him half
a chance to get off his frozen position and he will."
"When will you send the probe to release me?"
"Later," said Boardman. "If we have to."
Muller did not return. The afternoon grew darker and the air
became chilly. Rawlins huddled uncomfortably in the cage. He
tried to imagine this city when it had been alive, when this cage
had been used to display prisoners captured in the maze. In the
eye of his mind he saw a throng of the city-builders, short and
thick, with dense coppery fur and greenish skin, swinging their
long arms and pointing toward the cage. And in the cage huddled
a thing like a giant scorpion, with waxy claws that scratched at the
stone paving blocks, and fiery eyes, and a savage tail that awaited
anyone who came too close. Harsh music sounded through the
city. Alien laughter. The warm musky reek of the city-builders.
Children spitting at the thing in the cage. Their spittle like flame.
Bright moonlight, dancing shadows. A trapped creature, hideous
and malevolent, lonely for its own kind, its hive on a world of
Alphecca or Markab, where tailed waxy things moved in shining
tunnels. For days the city-builders came, mocked, reproached.
The creature in the cage grew sick of their massive bodies and
their intertwining spidery fingers, of their flat faces and ugly tusks.
And a day came when the floor of the maze gave way, for they
were tired of the outworlder captive, and down he went, tail lash-
ing furiously, down into a pit of knives.
It was night. Rawlins had not heard from Boardman for several
hours. He had not seen Muller since early afternoon. Animals
were prowling the plaza, mostly small ones, all teeth and claws.
Rawlins had come unarmed today. He was ready to trample on
any beast that slipped between the bars of his cage.
Hunger and cold assailed him. He searched the darkness for
Muller. This had ceased to be a joke.
"Can you hear me?" he said to Boardman.
"We're going to get you out soon."
"Yes, but when?"
"We sent a probe in, Ned."
"It shouldn't take more than fifteen minutes for a probe to
reach me. These zones aren't hazardous."

The Mail in the Maze
115
Boardman paused. "Muller intercepted the probe and destroyed
it an hour ago."
"Why didn't you tell me that?"
"We're sending several drones at once," Boardman told him.
"Muller's bound to overlook at least one of them. Everything's
perfectly all right, Ned. You're in no danger."
"Until something happens," Rawlins said gloomily.
But he did not press the point. Cold, hungry, he slouched
against the wall and waited. He saw a small lithe beast stalk and
kill a much bigger animal a hundred meters away in the plaza. He
watched scavengers scurrying in to rip away slabs of bloody meat.
He listened to the sounds of rending and tearing. His view was
partially obstructed, and he craned his neck to search for the
drone probe that would set him free. No probe appeared.
He felt like a sacrificial victim, staked out for the kill.
The scavengers had finished their work. They came padding
across the plaza toward him—little weasel-shaped beasts with big
tapering heads and paddle-shaped paws from which yellow recurv-
ing claws protruded. Their eyes were red in yellow fields. They
studied him with interest, solemnly, thoughtfully. Blood, thick and
purplish, was smeared over their muzzles.
They drew nearer. A long narrow snout intruded between two
bars of his cage. Rawlins kicked at it. The snout withdrew. To his
left, another jutted through. Then there were three snouts.
And then the scavengers began slipping into the cage on all
sides.

NINE
Boardman had established a comfortable little nest for himself
in the Zone F camp. At his age he offered no apologies. He had
never been a Spartan, and now, as the price he exacted for making
these strenuous and risky journeys, he carried his pleasures
around with him. Drones had fetched his belongings from the
ship. Under the milky-white curve of the extrusion dome he had
carved a private sector with radiant heating, glow-drapes, a gravity
suppressor, even a liquor console. Brandy and other delights were
never far away. He slept on a soft inflatable mattress covered with
a thick red quilt inlaid with heater strands. He knew that the other
men in the camp, getting along on far less, bore him no resent-
ment. They expected Charles Boardman to live well wherever he
was.
Greenfield entered. "We've lost another drone, sir," he said
crisply. "That leaves three in the inner zones."
Boardman flipped the ignition cap on a cigar. He sucked fumes
a moment, crossed and uncrossed his legs, exhaled, smiled. "Is
Muller going to get those too?"
"I'm afraid so. He knows the access routes better than we do.
He's covering them all."
"And you haven't sent any drones in through routes we haven't
charted?"
"Two, sir. Lost them both."
"Umm. We'd better send out a great many probes at once, then,
and hope we can slip at least one of them past Muller. That boy is
getting annoyed at being caged. Change the program, will you?
The brain can manage diversionary tactics, if it's told. Say, twenty
probes entering simultaneously."
"We have only three left," Greenfield said.
Boardman bit convulsively into his cigar. "Three here in the
camp, or three altogether?"
"Three in camp. Five more outside the maze. They're working
their way inward now."
"Who allowed this to happen? Call Hosteen! Get those tem-

The Mail in the Maze
117
plates working! I want fifty drones built by morning! No, make it
eighty! Of all the stupidity, Greenfield!"
"Yes, sir."
"Get out!"
"Yes, sir."
Boardman puffed furiously. He dialed for brandy, the thick,
rich, viscous stuff made by the Prolepticalist Fathers on Deneb
XIII. The situation was growing infuriating. He knocked back half
a snifter of the brandy, gasped, filled the glass again. He knew that
he was in danger of losing his perspective—the worst of sins. The
delicacy of this assignment was getting to him. All these mincing
steps, the tiny complications, the painstaking edgings toward and
away from the* goal. Rawlins in the cage. Rawlins and his moral
qualms. Muller and his neurotic world-outlook. The little beasts
that nipped at your heels here and thoughtfully eyed your throat.
The traps these demons had built. And the waiting extragalactics,
saucer-eyed, radio-sensed, to whom even a Charles Boardman was
no more than an insensate vegetable. Doom overhanging all. Irri-
tably Boardman stubbed out his cigar, and immediately stared at
its unfinished length in astonishment. The ignition cap would not
work a second time. He leaned forward, got a beam of infrared
from the room generator, and kindled it once more, puffing ener-
getically until it was lit. With a petulant gesture of his hand
Boardman reactivated his communication link with Ned Rawlins.
The screen showed him moonlight, curving bars, and small
furry snouts bristling with teeth.
"Ned?" he said. "Charles here. We're getting you those drones,
boy. We'll have you out of that stupid cage in five minutes, do you
hear, five minutes!"
2
Rawlins was very busy.
It seemed almost funny. There was no end to the supply of the
little beasts. They came nosing through the bars two and three at a
time, weasels, ferrets, minks, stoats, whatever they were, all teeth
and eyes. But they were scavengers, not killers. God knew what
drew them to the cage. They clustered about him, brushing his an-
kles with their coarse fur, pawing him, slicing through his skin
with their claws, biting his shins.

118 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
He trampled them. He learned very quickly that a booted foot
placed just behind the head could snap a spinal column quickly
and effectively. Then, with a swift kick, he could sweep his victim
into a comer of the cage, where others would pounce upon it at
once. Cannibals, too. Rawlins developed a rhythm of it. Turn,
stomp, kick. Turn, stomp, kick. Turn, stomp, kick. Crunch.
Crunch. Crunch.
They were cutting him up badly, though.
For the first five minutes he scarcely had time to pause for
breath. Turn. Stomp. Kick. He took care of at least twenty of
them in that time. Against the far side of the cage a heap of rag-
ged little corpses had risen, with their comrades nosing around
hunting for the tender morsels. At last a moment came when all
the scavengers currently inside the cage were busy with their fallen
cohorts, and no more lurked outside. Rawlins had a momentary
respite. He seized a bar with one hand and lifted his left leg to ex-
amine the miscellany of cuts, scotches, and bites. Do they give a
posthumous Stellar Cross if you die of galactic rabies, he won-
dered? His leg was bloody from the knee down, and the wounds,
though not deep, were hot and painful. Suddenly he discovered
why the scavengers had come to him. While he paused he had
time to inhale, and he smelled the ripe fragrance of rotting meat.
He could almost visualize it: a great bestial corpse, split open at
the belly to expose red sticky organs, big black flies circling over-
head, perhaps a maggot or two circumnavigating the mound of
flesh-
Nothing was rotting in here. The dead scavengers hadn't had
time to go bad; little was left of most of them but picked bones by
now anyway.
Rawlins realized that it must be some sensory delusion: an ol-
factory trap touched off by the cage, evidently. The cage was
broadcasting the stink of decay. Why? Obviously to lure that pack
of little weasels inside. A refined form of torture. He wondered if
Muller had somehow been behind it, going off to a nearby control
center to set up the scent.
He had no further time for contemplation. A fresh battalion of
beasts was scurrying across the plaza toward the cage. These
looked slightly larger, although not so large that they would not fit
between the bars, and their fangs had an ugly gleam in the moon-
light. Rawlins hastily stomped three of the snuffling, gorging can-
nibals still alive in his cage and, in a wondrous burst of inspira-

The Mail in the Maze
119
tion, stuffed them through the bars, giving them a wristflip that
tossed them eight or ten meters outside the cage. Good. The new-
comers halted, skidding, and began at once to pounce on the
twitching and not quite dead bodies that landed before them. Only
a few of the scavengers bothered to enter the cage, and these came
spaced widely enough so that Rawlins had a chance to trample
each in turn and toss it out to feed the onrushing horde. At that
rate, he thought, if only new ones would stop coming he could get
rid of them all.
New ones finally did stop coming. He had killed seventy or
eighty by this time. The stink of raw blood overlaid the synthetic
stench of rot; his legs ached from all the carnage, and his brain
was orbiting dfezyingly. But at length the night grew peaceful once
more. Bodies, some clad in fur, some just a framework of bone,
lay strewn in a wide arc before the cage. A thick, deep-hued pud-
dle of mingled bloods spread over a dozen square meters. The last
few survivors, stuffed on their gluttony, had gone slinking away
without even trying to harass the occupant of the cage. Weary,
drained, close to laughter and close to tears, Rawlins clung to the
bars and did not look down at his throbbing blood-soaked legs.
He felt the fire rising in them. He imagined alien microorganisms
launching their argosies in his bloodstream. A bloated purpling
corpse by morning, a martyr to Charles Boardman's over-reaching
deviousness. What an idiot's move to step into the cage! What a
doltish way to win Muller's trust!
Yet the cage had its uses, Rawlins realized suddenly.
Three bulky brutes paraded toward him from different direc-
tions. They had the stride of lions, but the swinishness of boars:
low-slung sharp-backed creatures, 100 kilograms or so, with long
pyramidal heads, slavering thin-lipped mouths, and tiny squinting
eyes arranged in two sets of two on either side just in front their
ragged droopy ears. Curving tusks jutted down and intersected
smaller and sharper canine teeth that rose from powerful jaws.
The trio of uglies inspected one another suspiciously, and per-
formed a complex series of loping movements which neatly dem-
onstrated the three-body problem as they executed circular in-
terlocking trots by way of staking out territory. They rooted about
a bit in the heap of scavenger corpses, but clearly they were no
scavengers themselves; they were looking for living meat, and
their disdain for the broken cannibalized little bodies was evident.
When they had completed their inspection they swung about to

120 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
stare at Rawlins, standing at a three-quarters-profile angle so that
each of them had one pair of eyes looking at him straight on.
Rawlins was grateful for the security of his cage. He would not
care to be outside, unprotected and exhausted, with these three
cruising the city for their dinner.
At that moment, of course, the bars of the cage silently began
to retract.
3
Muller, arriving just then, took in the whole scene. He paused
only briefly to admire the seductive vanishing of the cage into the
recessed slots. He contemplated the three hungry pigs and the
dazed, bloody form of Rawlins standing suddenly exposed before
them. "Get down!" Muller yelled.
Rawlins got down by taking four running steps to the left, slip-
ping on the blood-slicked pavement, and skidding into a heap of
small cadavers at the edge of the street. In the same moment
Muller fired, not bothering with keying in the manual sighting
since these were not edible animals. Three quick bolts brought the
pigs down. They did not move again. Muller started to go to
Rawlins, but then one of the robots from the camp in Zone F ap-
peared, gliding cheerfully toward them. Muller cursed softly. He
pulled the destructor globe from his pocket and aimed the window
at the robot. The probe turned a mindless blank face at him as he
fired.
The robot disintegrated. Rawlins had managed to get up. "You
shouldn't have blasted it," he said woozily. "It was just coming to
help."
"No help was needed," said Muller. "Can you walk?"
"I think so."
"How badly are you hurt?"
"I've been chewed on, that's all. It isn't as bad as it looks."
"Come with me," Muller said. Already more scavengers were
filing through the plaza, drawn by the mysterious telegraphy of
blood. Small, toothy things were getting down to serious work on
the trio of fallen boars. Rawlins looked unsteady; he seemed to be
talking to himself. Forgetting his own emanation, Muller seized
him by the arm. Rawlins winced and twitched away, and then, as
if repenting the appearance of rudeness, gave Muller his arm

The Mail in the Maze	121
again. They crossed the plaza together. Rawlins was shaking, and
Muller did not know whether he was more disturbed by his nar-
row escape or by the jangling propinquity of an unshielded mind.
"In here," Muller said roughly.
They stepped into the hexagonal cell where he kept his diagno-
stat. Muller sealed the door, and Rawlins sank down limply on the
bare floor. His blond hair was pasted by perspiration to his fore-
head. His eyes were moving jerkily, the pupils dilated.
Muller said, "How long were you under attack?"
"Fifteen, twenty minutes. I don't know. There must have been
fifty or a hundred of them. I kept breaking their backs. A quick
crunching sound, you know, like splitting twigs. And then the cage
went away." Rawlins laughed wildly. "That was the best part. I
had just finished smashing up all those little bastards and was
catching my breath, and then the three big monsters came along,
and so naturally the cage vanished and—"
"Easy," Muller said, "you're talking so fast I can't follow ev-
erything. Can you get those boots off?"
"What's left of them."
"Yes. Get them off and we'll patch those legs of yours. Lemnos
has no shortage of infectious bacteria. And protozoa, and for all I
know algae and trypanosomes, and more."
Rawlins picked at the catches. "Can you help me? I'm afraid
that I can't-"
"You won't like it if I come any closer," Muller warned.
"To hell with that!"
Muller shrugged. He approached Rawlins and manipulated the
broken and bent snaps of the boots. The metal chasing was
scarred by tiny teeth; so were the boots themselves, and so were
the legs. In a few moments Rawlins was out of his boots and leg-
gings. He lay stretched out on the floor, grimacing and trying to
look heroic. His legs were in bad shape, though none of the
wounds seemed really serious; it was just that there were so many
of them. Muller got the diagnostat going. The lamps glowed and
the receptor slot beckoned.
"It's an old model," Rawlins said. "I'm not sure what to do."
"Stick your legs in front of the scanner."
Rawlins swiveled about. A blue light played on his wounds. In
the bowels of the diagnostat things chuttered and clicked. A swab
came forth on a jointed arm and ran deftly and lightly up his left
leg to a point just above the knee. The machine engulfed the

122 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
bloody swab and began to digest it back to its component mole-
cules while a second swab emerged to clean Rawlins' other leg.
Rawlins bit his lip. He was getting a coagulant as well as a
cleanser so that when the swabs had done their work all blood was
gone and the shallow gouges and rips were revealed. It still looked
pretty bad, Muller thought, though not as grim as before.
The diagnostat produced an ultrasonic node and injected a
golden fluid into Rawlins' rump. Pain-damper, Muller guessed. A
second injection, deep amber, was probably some kind of all-pur-
pose antibiotic to ward off infection. Rawlings grew visibly less
tense. Now a variety of arms sprang forward from various sectors
of the device, inspecting Rawlins' lesions in detail and scanning
them for necessary repairs. There was a humming sound and three
sharp clicks. Then the diagnostat began to seal the wounds,
clamping them firmly.
"Lie still," Muller told him. "You'll be all right in a couple of
minutes."
"You shouldn't be doing this," said Rawlins. "We have our
own medical supplies back in camp. You must be running short on
necessities. All you had to do was let the drone probe take me
back to my camp, and—"
"I don't want those robots crawling around in here. And the
diagnostat has at least a fifty-year supply of usefuls. I don't get sick
often. It can synthesize most of what it's ever going to need for
me. So long as I feed it protoplasm from time to time, it can do the
rest."
"At least let us send you replacements for some of the rare
drugs."
"Not necessary. No charity wanted. Ah! There, it's done with
you. Probably you won't even have scars."
The machine released Rawlins, who swung away from it and
looked up at Muller. The wildness was gone from the boy's face
now. Muller lounged against the wall, rubbing his shoulderblades
against the angle where two faces of the hexagon met, and said, "I
didn't think that you'd be attacked by beasts or I wouldn't have
left you alone so long. You aren't armed?"
"No."
"Scavengers don't bother living things. What made them go
after you?"
"The cage did," Rawlins said. "It began to broadcast the smell

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123
of rotting flesh. A lure. Suddenly they were crawling all over me. I
thought they'd eat me alive."
Muller grinned. "Interesting. So the cage is programmed as a
trap too. We get some useful information out of your little predic-
ament, then. I can't tell you how interested I am in those cages. In
every part of this weird environment of mine. The aqueduct. The
calendar pylons. The streetcleaning apparatus. I'm grateful to you
for helping me learn a little."
"I know someone else who has that attitude," said Rawlins.
"That it doesn't matter what the risk or cost so long as you collect
some useful data out of the experience. Board—"
He cut the word short with a crisp biting gesture.
"Who?"
"Bordoni," Rawlins said. "Emilio Bordoni, my epistemology
professor at college. He gave this marvelous course. Actually it
was applied hermeneutics, a course in how to learn."
"That's heuristics," said Muller.
"Are you sure? I have a distinct impression—"
"It's wrong," said Muller. "You're talking to an authority. Her-
meneutics is the art of interpretation. Originally Scriptural inter-
pretation but now applying to all communications functions. Your
father would have known that. My mission to the Hydrans was an
experiment in applied hermeneutics. It wasn't successful."
"Heuristics. Hermeneutics." Rawlins laughed. "Well, anyway,
I'm glad to have helped you learn something about the cages. My
heuristic good deed. Am I excused from the next round?"
"I suppose," Muller said. Somehow an odd feeling of good
will had come over him. He had almost forgotten how pleasant it
was to be able to help another person. Or to enjoy lazy, irrelevant
conversation. He said, "Do you drink, Ned?"
"Alcoholic beverages?"
"So I mean."
"In moderation."
"This is our local liqueur," said Muller. "It's produced by
gnomes somewhere in the bowels of the planet." He produced a
delicate flask and two wide-mouthed goblets. Carefully he tipped
about twenty centiliters into each goblet. "I get this in Zone C,"
he explained, handing Rawlins his drink. "It rises from a fountain.
It really ought to be labeled DRINK ME, I guess."
Gingerly Rawlins tasted it. "Strong!"
"About sixty per cent alcohol, yes. Lord knows what the rest

124 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
of it is, or how it's synthesized or why. I simply accept it. I like
the way it manages to be both sweet and gingery at the same time.
It's terribly intoxicating, of course. It's intended as another trap, I
suppose. You get happily drunk—and then the maze gets you." He
raised his goblet amiably. "Cheers!"
"Cheers!"
They laughed at the archaic toast and drank.
Careful, Dickie, Muller told himself. You're getting downright
sociable with this boy. Remember where you are. And why. What
kind of ogre are you, acting this way?
"May I take some of this back to camp with me?" Rawlins
asked.
"I suppose so. Why?"
"There's a man there who'd appreciate it. He's a gourmet of
sorts. He's traveling with a liquor console that dispenses a hun-
dred different drinks, I imagine, from about forty different worlds.
I can't even remember the names."
"Anything from Marduk?" Muller asked. "The Deneb worlds?
Rigel?"
"I really can't be sure. I mean, I enjoy drinking, but I'm no
connoisseur."
"Perhaps this friend of yours would be willing to exchange—"
Muller stopped. "No. No. Forget I said that. I'm not getting into
any deals."
"You could come back to camp with me," said Rawlins. "He'd
give you the run of the console, I'm sure."
"Very subtle of you. No." Muller glowered at his liqueur. "I
won't be eased into it, Ned. I don't want anything to do with the
others."
"I'm sorry you feel that way."
"Another drink?"
"No. I'll have to start getting back to camp now. It's late. I
wasn't supposed to spend the whole day here, and I'll catch hell
for not doing my share of the work."
"You were in the cage most of the day. They can't blame you
for that."
"They might. They were complaining a little yesterday. I don't
think they want me to visit you."
Muller felt a sudden tightness within.
Rawlins went on, "After the way I kicked away a day's work
today I wouldn't be surprised if they refused to let me come in

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125
here again. They'll be pretty stuffy about it. I mean, considering
that you don't seem very cooperative, they'll regard it as wasted
time for me to be paying calls on you when I could be manning
the equipment in Zone E or F." Rawlins finished his drink and got
to his feet, grunting a little. He looked down at his bare legs.
The diagnostat had covered the wounds with a nutrient spray,
flesh-colored; it was almost impossible to tell that his skin had
been broken anywhere. Stiffly, he pulled his tattered leggings on.
"I won't bother with the boots," he said. "They're in bad shape,
and it won't be pleasant trying to get them on. I suppose I can get
back to camp barefoot."
"The pav.ement is very smooth," Muller said.
"You'll give me some of that liqueur for my friend?"
Silently Muller extended the flask, half full.
Rawlins clipped it to his belt. "It was an interesting day. I hope
I can come again."
4
Boardman said, as Rawlins limped back toward Zone E, "How
are your legs?"
"Tired. They're healing fast. I'll be all right."
"Be careful not to drop that flask."
"Don't worry, Charles. I have it well fastened. I wouldn't de-
prive you of the experience."
"Ned, listen to me, we did try to get the drones to you. I was
watching every terrible minute of it when those animals were at-
tacking you. But there was nothing we could do. Muller was inter-
cepting our probes and knocking them out."
'"All right," Rawlins said.
"He's clearly unstable. He wasn't going to let one of those
drones into the inner zones."
"All right, Charles, I survived."
Boardman could not let go of it. "It occurred to me that if we
hadn't tried to send the drones at all, you would have been better
off, Ned. The drones kept Muller busy for a long while. He might
have gone back to your cage instead. Let you out. Or killed the
animals. He—" Halting, Boardman quirked his lips and denounced
himself inwardly for maundering. A sign of age. He felt the folds
of flesh at his belly. He needed another shape-up. Bring his age

126 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
forward to an apparent sixty or so, while actually cutting the
physiological deterioration back to biological fifty. Older outside
than within. A facade of shrewdness to hide shrewdness.
He said, after a long while, "It seems you and Muller are quite
good friends now. I'm pleased. It's coming to be time for you to
tempt him out."
"How do I do that?"
"Promise him a cure," Boardman said.

TEN
They met again on the third day afterward, at midday in Zone
B. Muller seemed relieved to see him, which was the idea. Rawlins
came diagonally across the oval ball-court, or whatever it was,
that lay between two snub-nosed dark blue towers, and Muller
nodded. "How are your legs?"
"Doing fine."
"And your friend—he liked the liqueur?"
"He loved it," Rawlins said, thinking of the glow in Board-
man's foxy eyes. "He sends back your flask with some special
brandy in it and hopes you'll treat him to a second round."
Muller eyed the flask as Rawlins held it forth. "He can go to
hell," Muller said coolly. "I won't get into any trades. If you give
me that flask I'll smash it."
"Why?"
"Give it here, and I'll show you. No. Wait. Wait. I won't. Here,
let me have it."
Rawlins surrendered it. Muller cradled the lovely flask tenderly
in both hands, activated the cap, and put it to his lips. "You
devils," he said in a soft voice. "What is this, from the monastery
on Deneb XIII?"
"He didn't say. He just said you'd like it."
"Devils. Temptations. It's a trade, damn you! But only this
once. If you show up here again with more liqueur—anything-the
elixir of the gods—anything, I'll refuse it. Where have you been all
week, anyway?"
"Working. I told you they frowned on my coming to see you."
He missed me, Rawlins thought. Charles is right: I'm getting to
him. Why does he have to be such a difficult character?
"Where are they excavating?" Muller asked.
"They aren't excavating at all. They're using sonic probes at the
border between Zones E and F, trying to determine the chronol-
ogy—whether the whole maze was built at once, or in accretive
layers out from the middle. What's your opinion, Dick?"
"Go to hell. No free archaeology out of me!" Muller sipped the

128 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
brandy again. "You're standing pretty close to me, aren't you?"
"Four or five meters, I guess."
"You were closer when you gave me the brandy. Why didn't
you look sick? Didn't you feel the effect?"
"I felt it, yes."
"And hid your feelings like the good stoic you are?"
Shrugging, Rawlins said genially, "I guess the effect loses im-
pact on repeated exposure. It's still pretty strong, but not the way
it was for me the first day. Have you ever noticed that happening
with someone else?"
"There were no repeated exposures with anyone else," said
Muller. "Come over here, boy. See the sights. This is my water
supply. Quite elegant. This black pipe runs right around Zone B.
Onyx, I guess. Semiprecious. Handsome, at any rate." Muller
knelt and stroked the aqueduct. "There's a pumping system.
Brings up water from some underground aquifer, maybe a thou-
sand kilometers down, I don't know. This planet doesn't have any
surface water, does it?"
"It has oceans."
"Aside from—well, whatever. Over here, you see, here's one of
the spigots. Every fifty meters. As far as I can tell it's the water
supply for the entire city, right here, so perhaps the builders didn't
need much water. It couldn't have been very important if they set
things up like this. No conduits that I've found. No real plumbing.
Thirsty?"
"Not really."
Muller cupped his hand under the ornately engraved spigot, a
thing of concentric ridges. Water gushed. Muller took a few quick
gulps; the flow ceased the moment the hand was removed from the
area below the spigot. A scanning system of some kind, Rawlings
thought. Clever. How had it lasted all these millions of years?
"Drink," Muller said. "You may get thirsty later on."
"I can't stay long." But he drank anyway. Afterward they
walked into Zone A, an easy stroll. The cages had closed again;
Rawlins saw several of them, and shuddered. He would try no
such experiments today. They found benches, slabs of polished
stone that curled at the ends into facing seats intended for some
species very much broader in the buttock than the usual H. sa-
piens. Sitting like this they could talk at a distance, Rawlings feel-
ing only mild discomfort from Muller's emanation, and yet there
was no sensation of separation.

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129
Muller was in a talkative mood.
The conversation was fitful, dissolving every now and then into
an acid spray of anger or self-pity, but most of the time Muller
remained calm and even charming—an older man clearly enjoying
the company of a younger one, the two of them exchanging opin-
ions, experiences, scraps of philosophy, Muller spoke a good deal
about his early career, the planets he had seen, the delicate negoti-
ations on behalf of Earth with the frequently prickly colony-
worlds. He mentioned Boardman's name quite often; Rawlins kept
his face studiously blank. Muller's attitude toward Boardman
seemed to be one of deep admiration shot through with furious
loathing. He could not forgive Boardman, apparently, for having
played on his own weaknesses in getting him to go to the Hydrans.
Not a rational attitude, Rawlins thought. Given Muller's trait of
overweening curiosity, he would have fought for that assignment,
Boardman or no, risks or no.
"And what about you?" Muller asked finally. "You're brighter
than you pretend to be. Hampered a little by your shyness, but
plenty of brains, carefully hidden behind college-boy virtues.
What do you want for yourself, Ned? What does archaeology give
you?"
Rawlins looked him straight in the eyes. "A chance to recapture
a million pasts. I'm as greedy as you are. I want to know how
things happened, how they got this way. Not just on Earth or in
the System. Everywhere."
"Well spoken!"
I thought so too, Rawlins thought, hoping Boardman was
pleased by his newfound eloquence.
He said, "I suppose I could have gone in for diplomatic service,
the way you did. Instead I chose this. I think it'll work out.
There's so much to discover, here and everywhere else. We've
only begun to look."
"The ring of dedication is in your voice."
"I suppose."
"I like to hear that sound. It reminds me of the way I used to
talk."
Rawlins said, "Just so you don't think I'm hopelessly pure I
ought to say that it's personal curiosity that moves me on, more
than abstract love of knowledge."
"Understandable. Forgivable. We're not too different, really.
Allowing for forty-odd years between us. Don't worry so much

130 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
about your motives, Ned. Go to the stars, see, do. Enjoy. Eventu-
ally life will smash you, the way it's smashed me, but that's far off.
Sometime, never, who knows? Forget about that."
"I'll try," Rawlins said.
He felt the warmth of the man now, the reaching out of genuine
sympathies. There was still that carrier wave of nightmare,
though, the unending broadcast out of the mucky depths of the
soul, attenuated at this distance but unmistakable. Imprisoned by
his pity, Rawlins hesitated to say what it now was time to say.
Boardman prodded him irritably. "Go on, boy! Slip it in!"
"You look very far away," Muller said.
"Just thinking how—how sad it is that you won't trust us at all,
that you have such a negative attitude toward humanity."
"I come by it honestly."
"You don't need to spend the rest of your life in this maze,
though. There's a way out."
"Garbage."
"Listen to me," Rawlins said. He took a deep breath and
flashed his quick, transparent grin. "I talked about your case to
our expedition medic. He's studied neurosurgery. He knew all
about you. He says there's now a way to fix what you have.
Recently developed, the last couple of years. It—shuts off the
broadcast, Dick. He said I should tell you. We'll take you back to
Earth. For the operation, Dick. The operation. The cure."
2
The sharp glittering barbed word came swimming along on the
breast of a torrent of bland sounds and speared him in the gut.
Cure! He stared. There was reverberation from the looming dark
buildings. Cure. Cure. Cure. Muller felt the poisonous temptation
gnawing at his liver. "No," he said. "That's garbage. A cure's im-
possible."
"How can you be so sure?"
"I know."
"Science progresses in nine years. They understand how the
brain works, now. Its electrical nature. What they did, they built a
tremendous simulation in one of the lunar labs—oh, a few years
ago, and they ran it all through from start to finish. As a matter of
fact I'm sure they're desperate to have you back, because you

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131
prove all their theories. In your present condition. And by operat-
ing on you, reversing your broadcast, they'll demonstrate that they
were right. All you have to do is come back with us."
Muller methodically popped his knuckles. "Why didn't you
mention this earlier?"
"I didn't know a thing about it."
"Of course."
"Really. We didn't expect to be finding you here, you realize.
At first nobody was too sure who you were, why you were here. I
explained it. And then the medic remembered that there was this
treatment. What's wrong—don't you believe me?"
"You look so angelic," Muller said. "Those sweet blue eyes
and that golden hair. What's your game, Ned? Why are you reel-
ing off all this nonsense?"
Rawlins reddened. "It isn't nonsense!"
"I don't believe you. And I don't believe in your cure."
"It's your privilege. But you'll be the loser if—"
"Don't threaten meI"
"I'm sorry."
There was a long, sticky silence.
Muller revolved a maze of thoughts. To leave Lemnos? To have
the curse lifted? To hold a woman in his arms again? Breasts like
fire against his skin? Lips? Thighs? To rebuild his career. To reach
across the heavens once more? To shuck nine years of anguish?
To believe? To go? To submit?
"No," he said carefully. "There is no cure for what I have."
"You keep saying that. But you can't know."
"It doesn't fit the pattern. I believe in destiny, boy. In compen-
sating tragedy. In the overthrow of the proud. The gods don't deal
out temporary tragedies. They don't take back their punishments
after a few years. Oedipus didn't get his eyes back. Or his mother.
They didn't let Prometheus off his rock. They—"
"You aren't living a Greek play," Rawlins told him. "This is
the real world. The patterns don't always fall neatly. Maybe the
gods have decided that you've suffered enough. And so long as
we're having a literary discussion—they forgave Orestes, didn't
they? So why isn't nine years here enough for you?"
"Is there a cure?"
"The medic says there is."
"I think you're lying to me, boy."
Rawlins glanced away. "What do I have to gain by lying?"

132 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"I can't guess."
"All right, I'm lying," Rawlins said brusquely. "There's no way
to help you. Let's talk about something else. Why don't you show
me the fountain where that liqueur rises?"
"It's in Zone C," said Muller. "I don't feel like going there just
now. Why did you tell me that story if it wasn't true?"
"I said we'd change the subject."
"Let's assume for the moment that it is true," Muller persisted.
"That if I go back to Earth I can be cured. I want to let you know
that I'm not interested, not even with a guarantee. I've seen Earth-
men in their true nature. They kicked me when I was down. Not
sporting, Ned. They stink. They reek. They gloried in what had
happened to me."
"That isn't so!"
"What do you know? You were a child. Even more then than
now. They treated me as filth because I showed them what was in-
side themselves. A mirror for their dirty souls. Why should I go
back to them now? Why do I need them? Worms. Pigs. I saw
them as they really are, those few months I was on Earth after
Beta Hydri IV. The look in the eyes, the nervous smile as they
back away from me. Yes, Mr. Muller. Of course, Mr. Muller. Just
don't come too close, Mr. Muller. Boy, come by here some time at
night and let me show you the constellations as seen from
Lemnos. I've given them my own names. There's the Dagger, a
long keen one. It's about to be thrust into the Back. Then there's
the Shaft. And you can see the Ape, too, and the Toad. They in-
terlock. The same star is in the forehead of the Ape and the left
eye of the Toad. That star is Sol, my friend. An ugly little yellow
star, the color of thin vomit. Whose planets are populated by ugly
little people who have spread like trickling urine over the whole
universe."
"Can I say something that might offend you?" Rawlins asked.
"You can't offend me. But you can try."
"I think your outlook is distorted. You've lost your perspective,
all these years here."
"No. I've learned how to see for the first time."
"You're blaming humanity for being human. It's not easy to ac-
cept someone like you. If you were sitting here in my place, and I
in yours, you'd understand that. It hurts to be near you. It hurts.
Right now I feel pain in every nerve. If I came closer I'd feel like

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133
crying. You can't expect people to adjust quickly to somebody
like that. Not even your loved ones could—"
"I had no loved ones."
"You were married."
"Terminated."
"Liaisons, then."
"They couldn't stand me when I came back."
"Friends?"
"They ran," Muller said. "On all six legs they scuttled away
from me."
"You didn't give them time."
"Time enough."
"No," Rawlins persisted. He shifted about uneasily on the
chair. "Now I'm going to say something that will really hurt you,
Dick. I'm sorry, but I have to. What you're telling me is the kind
of stuff I heard in college. Sophomore cynicism. The world is des-
picable, you say. Evil, evil, evil. You've seen the true nature of
mankind, and you don't want to have anything to do with man-
kind ever again. Everybody talks that way at eighteen. But it's a
phase that passes. We get over the confusions of being eighteen,
and we see that the world is a pretty decent place, that people try
to do their best, that we're imperfect but not loathsome—"
"An eighteen-year-old has no right to those opinions. I do. I
come by my hatreds the hard way."
"But why cling to them? You seem to be glorying in your own
misery. Break loose! Shake it off! Come back to Earth with us and
forget the past. Or at least forgive."
"No forgetting. No forgiving." Muller scowled. A tremor of
fear shook him, and he shivered. What if this were true? A genu-
ine cure? Leave Lemnos? He was a trifle embarrassed. The boy
had scored a palpable hit with that line about sophomore cyni-
cism. It was. Am I really such a misanthrope? A pose. He forced
me to adopt it. Polemic reasons. Now I choke on my own stub-
bornness. But there's no cure. The boy's transparent; he's lying,
though I don't know why. He wants to trap me, to get me aboard
that ship of theirs. What if it's true? Why not go back? Muller
could supply his own answers. It was the fear that held him. To
see Earth's billions. To enter the stream of life. Nine years on a
desert island and he dreaded to return. He slipped into a pit of
depression, recognizing hard truths. The man who would be a god

134 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
was just a pitiful neurotic now, clinging to his isolation, spitting
defiance at a possible rescuer. Sad, Muller thought. Very sad.
Rawlins said, "I can feel the flavor of your thoughts changing."
"You can?"
"Nothing specific. But you were angry and bitter before. Now
I'm getting something—wistful."
"No one ever told me he could detect meanings," Muller said in
wonder. "No one ever said much. Only that it was painful to be
near me. Disgusting."
"Why did you go wistful just then, though? If you did. Thinking
of Earth?"
"Maybe I was." Muller hastily patched the sudden gap in his
armor. His face darkened. He clenched his jaws. He stood up and
deliberately approached Rawlins, watching the young man strug-
gling to hide his real feelings of discomfort. Muller said, "I think
you'd better get about your archaeologizing now, Ned. Your
friends will be angry again."
"I still have some time."
"No, you don't. Go!"
3
Against Charles Boardman's express orders, Rawlins insisted
on returning all the way to the Zone F camp that evening. The
pretext was that Rawlins had to deliver the new flask of liqueur
which he had finally been able to wheedle out of Muller. Board-
man wanted one of the other men to pick up the flask, sparing
Rawlins from the risks of Zone F's snares. Rawlins needed the di-
rect contact, though. He was badly shaken. His resolve was sag-
ging.
He found Boardman at dinner. A polished dining-board of dark
wood mortised with light woods sat before him. Out of elegant
stoneware he ate candied fruits, brandied vegetables, meat ex-
tracts, pungent juices. A carafe of wine of a deep olive hue was
near his fleshy hand. Mysterious pills of several types rested in the
shallow pits of an oblong block of black glass; from time to time
Boardman popped one into his mouth. Rawlins stood at the sec-
tor opening for a long while before Boardman appeared to notice
him.
"I told you not to come here, Ned," the old man said finally.

The Mail in the Maze	135
"Muller sends you this." Rawlins put the flask down beside the
carafe of wine.
"We could have talked without this visit."
"I'm tired of that. I needed to see you." Boardman left him
standing and did not interrupt his meal. "Charles, I don't think I
can keep up the pretense with him."
"You did an excellent job today," said Boardman, sipping his
wine. "Quite convincing."
"Yes, I'm learning how to tell lies. But what's the use? You
heard him. Mankind disgusts him. He's not going to cooperate
once we get him out of the maze."
"He isn't sincere. You said it yourself, Ned. Cheap sophomore
cynicism. The .man loves mankind. That's why he's so bitter—
because his love has turned sour in his mouth. But it hasn't turned
to hate. Not really."
"You weren't there, Charles. You weren't talking to him."
"I watched. I listened. And I've known Dick Muller for forty-
odd years."
"The last nine years are the ones that count. They've twisted
him." Rawlins bent into a crouch to get on Boardman's level.
Boardman nudged a candied pear onto his fork, equalized gravity,
and flipped it idly toward his mouth. He's intentionally ignoring
me, Rawlins thought. He said, "Charles, be serious. I've gone in
there and told Muller some monstrous lies. I've offered him a
completely fraudulent cure, and he threw it back in my face."
"Saying he didn't believe it existed. But he does believe, Ned.
He's simply afraid to come out of hiding."
"Please. Listen. Assume he does come to believe me. Assume
he leaves the maze and puts himself in our hands. Then what?
Who gets the job of telling him that there isn't any cure, that
we've tricked him shamelessly, that we merely want him to be our
ambassador again, to visit a bunch of aliens twenty times as
strange and fifty times as deadly as the ones that ruined his life?
I'm not going to break that news to him!"
"You won't have to, Ned. I'll be the one."
"And how will he react? Are you simply expecting him to smile
and bow and say, very clever, Charles, you've done it again? To
yield and do whatever you want? No. He couldn't possibly. You
can get him out of the maze, maybe, but the very methods you use
for getting him out make it inconceivable that he can be of any
use to you once he is out."

136 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"That isn't necessarily true," said Boardman calmly.
"Will you explain the tactics you propose to use, then, once
you've informed him that the cure is a he and that there's a dan-
gerous new job he has to undertake?"
"I prefer not to discuss future strategy now."
"I resign," Rawlins said.
4
Boardman had been expecting something like that. A noble ges-
ture; a moment of headstrong defiance; a rush of virtue to the
brain. Abandoning now his studied detachment, he looked up, his
eyes locking firmly on Rawlins'. Yes, there was strength there.
Yes, determination. But not guile. Not yet.
Quietly Boardman said, "You resign? After all your talk of
service to mankind? We need you, Ned. You're the indispensable
man, our link to Muller."
"My dedication to mankind includes a dedication to Dick
Muller," Rawlins said stiffly. "He's part of mankind, whether he
thinks so or not. I've already committed a considerable crime
against him. If you won't let me in on the rest of this scheme, I'm
damned if I'll have any part in it."
"I admire your convictions."
"My resignation still stands."
"I even agree with your position," said Boardman. "I'm not
proud of what we must do here. I see it as part of historical neces-
sity—the need for an occasional betrayal for the greater good. I
have a conscience too, Ned, an eighty-year-old conscience, very
well developed. It doesn't atrophy with age. We just learn to live
with its complaints, that's all."
"How are you going to get Muller to cooperate? Drug him?
Torture him? Brainblast him?"
"None of those."
"What, then? I'm serious, Charles. My role in this job ends
right here unless I know what's ahead."
Boardman coughed, drained his wine, ate a peach, took three
pills in quick succession. Rawlins' rebellion had been inevitable,
and he was prepared for it, and yet he was annoyed that it had
come. Now was the time for calculated risks. He said, "I see that
it's time to drop the pretenses, then, Ned. I'll tell you what's in
store for Dick Muller—but I want you to consider it within the

The Mail in the Maze
137
framework of the larger position. Don't forget that the little game
we've been playing on this planet isn't simply a matter of private
moral postures. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I have to
remind you that mankind's fate is at stake."
"I'm listening, Charles."
"Very well. Dick Muller must go to our extragalactic friends
and convince them that human beings are indeed an intelligent
species. Agreed? He alone is capable of doing this, because of his
unique inability to cloak his thoughts."
"Agreed."
"Now, it isn't necessary to convince the aliens that we're good
people, or that we're honorable people, or that we're lovable peo-
ple. Simply that we have minds and can think. That we feel, that
we sense, that we are something other than clever machines. For
our purposes, it doesn't matter what emotions Dick Muller is ra-
diating so long as he's radiating something."
"I begin to see."
"Therefore, once he's out of the maze we can tell him what his
assignment is to be. No doubt he'll get angry at our trickery. But
beyond his anger he may see where his duty lies. I hope so. You
seem to think he won't. But it makes no difference, Ned. He won't
be given an option once he leaves his sanctuary. He'll be taken to
the aliens and handed over to them to make contact. It's brutal, I
know. But necessary."
"His cooperation is irrelevant, then," said Rawlins slowly.
"He'll just be dumped. Like a sack."
"A thinking sack. As our friends out there will learn."
«j	»
"No, Ned. Don't say anything now. I know what you're think-
ing. You hate the scheme. You have to. I hate it myself. Just go
off, now, and think it over. Examine it from all sides before you
come to a decision. If you want out tomorrow, let me know and
we'll carry on somehow without you, but promise me you'll sleep
on it, first. Yes? This is no time for a snap judgment."
Rawlins' face was pale a moment. Then color flooded into it.
He clamped his lips. Boardman smiled benignly. Rawlins clenched
his fists, squinted, turned, hastily went out.
A calculated risk.
Boardman took another pill. Then he reached for the flask
Muller had sent him. He poured a little. Sweet, gingery, strong.
An excellent liqueur. He let it rest a while on his tongue.

ELEVEN
Muller had almost come to like the Hydrans. What he remem-
bered most clearly and most favorably about them was their
grace of motion. They seemed virtually to float. The strangeness
of their bodies had never bothered him much; he was fond of say-
ing that one did not need to go far from Earth to find the gro-
tesque. Giraffes. Lobsters. Sea anemones. Squids. Camels. Look
objectively at a camel and ask yourself what is less strange about
its body than about a Hydran's.
He had landed in a damp, dreary part of the planet, a little to
the north of its equator, on an amoeboid continent occupied by a
dozen large quasicities, each spread out over several thousand
square kilometers. His life-support system, specially designed for
this mission, was little more than a thin filtration sheet that clung
to him like a second skin. It fed air to him through a thousand
dialysis plaques. He moved easily if not comfortably within it.
He walked for an hour through a forest of the giant toadstool-
like trees before he came upon any of the natives. The trees ran to
heights of several hundred meters; perhaps the gravity, five-eighths
Earthnorm, had something to do with that. Their curving trunks
did not look sturdy. He suspected that an external woody layer no
thicker than a fingertip surrounded a broad core of soggy pulp.
The cap-like crowns of the trees met in a nearly continuous can-
opy overhead, cutting almost all light from the forest floor. Since
the planet's cloud layer permitted only a hazy pearl-colored glow
to come through, and even that was intercepted by the trees, a ma-
roon darkness prevailed below.
When he encountered the aliens he was surprised to find that
they were about three meters tall. Not since childhood had he felt
so diminished; he stood ringed by them, straining upward to meet
their eyes. Now it was time for his exercise in applied hermeneu-
tics. In a quiet voice he said, "My name is Richard Muller. I come
in friendship from the peoples of the Terran Cultural Sphere."
Of course they could not understand that. But they remained

The Mail in the Maze	139
motionless. He imagined that their expressions were not un-
friendly.
Dropping to his knees, Muller traced the Pythagorean Theorem
in the soft moist soil.
He looked up. He smiled. "A basic concept of geometry. A uni-
versal pattern of thought."
Their vertical slitlike nostrils flickered slightly. They inclined
their heads. He imagined that they were exchanging thoughtful
glances. With eyes in a circlet entirely around their heads, they did
not need to change posture to do that.
"Let me display some further tokens of our kinship," Muller
said to them.
He sketched a line on the ground. A short distance from it he
sketched a pair of lines. At a greater distance he drew three lines.
He filled in the signs. 1 + 11 = 111.
"Yes?" he said. "We call it addition."
The jointed limbs swayed. Two of his listeners touched arms.
Muller remembered how they had obliterated the spying eye as
soon as they had discovered it, not hesitating even to examine it.
He had been prepared for the same reaction. Instead they were lis-
tening. A promising sign. He stood up and pointed to his marks
on the ground.
"Your turn," he said. He spoke quite loudly. He smiled quite
broadly. "Show me that you understand. Speak to me in the uni-
versal language of mathematics."
No response at first.
He pointed again. He gestured at his symbols, then extended his
hand, palm upraised, to the nearest Hydran.
After a long pause one of the other Hydrans moved fluidly for-
ward and let one of its globe-like foot-pedestals hover over the
lines in the soil. The leg moved lightly and the lines vanished as
the alien smoothed the soil.
"All right," said Muller. "Now you draw something."
The Hydran returned to its place in the circle.
"Very well," Muller said. "There's another universal language.
I hope this doesn't offend your ears." He drew a soprano recorder
from his pocket and put it between his lips. Playing through the
filtration sheet was cumbersome. He caught breath and played a
diatonic scale. Their limbs fluttered a bit. They could hear, then,
or at any rate could sense vibrations. He shifted to the minor, and
gave them another diatonic scale. He tried a chromatic scale. They

140 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
looked a trifle more agitated. Good for you, he thought. Connois-
seurs. Perhaps the whole-tone scale is more in keeping with the
cloudiness of this planet, he decided. He played both of them, and
gave them a bit of Debussy for good measure.
"Does that get to you?" he asked.
They appeared to be conferring.
They walked away from him.
He tried to follow. He was unable to keep up, and soon he lost
sight of them in the dark, misty forest; but he persevered, and
found them clustered, as if waiting for him, farther on. When he
neared them they began to move again. In this way they led him,
by fits and starts, into their city.
He subsisted on synthetics. Chemical analysis showed that it
would be unwise to try local foods.
He drew the Pythagorean Theorem many times. He sketched a
variety of arithmetical processes. He played Schonberg and Bach.
He constructed equilateral triangles. He ventured into solid geom-
etry. He sang. He spoke French, Russian, and Mandarin, as well
as English, to show them the diversity of human tongues. He dis-
played a chart of the periodic table. After six months he still knew
nothing more about the workings of their minds than he had an
hour before landing. They tolerated his presence, but they said
nothing to him; and when they communicated with one another it
was mainly in quick, evanescent gestures, touches of the hand,
flickers of the nostrils. They had a spoken language, it seemed, but
it was so soft and breathy that he could not begin to distinguish
words or even syllables. He recorded whatever he heard, of
course.
Eventually they wearied of him and came for him.
He slept.
He did not discover until much later what had been done to
him while he slept.
2
He was eighteen years old, naked under the California stars.
The sky was ablaze. He felt he could reach for the stars and pluck
them from the heavens.
To be a god. To possess the universe.
He turned to her. Her body was cool and slender, slightly tense.

The Mail in the Maze
141
He cupped her breasts. He let his hand move across her flat belly.
She shivered a little. "Dick," she said. "Oh." To be a god, he
thought. He kissed her lightly, and then not lightly. "Wait," she
said. "I'm not ready." He waited. He helped her get ready, or did
the things he thought would help her get ready, and shortly she
began to gasp. She spoke his name again. How many stars can a
man visit in one lifetime? If each star has an average of twelve
planets, and there are one hundred million stars within a galactic
globe X light-years in diameter. . . . Her thighs opened. His eyes
closed. He felt soft old pine needles against his knees and elbows.
She was not his first, but the first that counted. As the lightning
ripped through his brain he was dimly aware of her response, ten-
tative, halting, then suddenly vigorous. The intensity of it fright-
ened him, but only for a moment, and he rode with her to the end.
To be a god must be something like this.
They rolled over. He pointed to the stars and called off their
names for her, getting half of them wrong, but she did not need to
know that. He shared his dreams with her. Later they made love a
second time, and it was even better.
He hoped it would rain at midnight, so they could dance in the
rain, but the sky was clear. They went swimming instead, and
came out shivering, laughing. When he took her home she washed
down her pill with Chartreuse. He told her that he loved her.
They exchanged Christmas cards for several years.
3
The eighth world of Alpha Centauri B was a gas giant, with a
low-density core and gravity not much more troublesome than
that of Earth. Muller had honeymooned there the second time. It
was partly a business trip, for there were troubles with the colo-
nists on the sixth planet; they were talking of setting up a whirl-
pool effect that would suck away most of the eighth world's highly
useful atmosphere to use as raw materials.
Muller's conferences with the locals went fairly well. He per-
suaded them to accept a quota system for their atmospheric grabs,
and even won their praise for the little lesson in interplanetary
morality he had administered. Afterward he and Nola were gov-
ernment guests for a holiday on the eighth world. Nola, unlike
Lorayn, was the traveling sort. She would be accompanying him
on many of his voyages.

142 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
Wearing support suits, they swam in an icy methane lake. They
ran laughing along ammonia coasts. Nola was as tall as he, with
powerful legs, dark red hair, green eyes. They embraced in a
warm room of one-way windows overhanging a forlorn sea that
stretched for hundreds of thousands of kilometers.
"For always," she said.
"Yes, For always,"
Before the week ended they quarreled bitterly, But it was only a
game; for the more fiercely they quarreled, the more passionate
was the reconciliation. For a while. Later they stopped bothering
to quarrel When the option in the marriage contract came up, nei-
ther of them wanted to renew. Afterward, as his reputation grew,
he sometimes received friendly letters from her. He had tried to
see her when he returned from Beta Hydri IV to Earth. Nola, he
thought, would help Mm in his troubles. She cf all people would
not turn away from him. For old times5 sake.
But she was vacationing on Vesta with her seventh husband.
Muller found that out from her fifth husband. He had been her
third. He did not call her. He began to see there was no point in it.
4
The surgeon said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Muller. There's nothing we
can do for you. I wouldn't want to raise false hopes. We've
graphed your whole neural network. We can't find the sites of al-
teration. I'm terribly sorry."
- 5
He had had nine years to sharpen his memories. He had filled a
few cubes with reminiscences, but that had mainly been in the
early years of his exile, when he worried about having his past
drift away to be lost in fog. He discovered that the memories grew
keener with age. Perhaps it was training. He could summon sights,
sounds, tastes, odors. He could reconstruct whole conversations
convincingly. He was able to quote the full texts of several treaties
he had negotiated. He could name England's kings in sequence
from first to last, William I through William VTL He remembered
the names of the girls whose bodies he had known.
He admitted to himself that, given the chance, he would go

The Mail in the Maze
143
back. Everything else had been pretense and bluster. He had
fooled neither Ned Rawlins nor himself, he knew. The contempt
he felt for mankind was real, but not the wish to remain isolated.
He waited eagerly for Rawlins to return. While he waited he
drank several goblets of the city's liqueur; he went on a killing
spree, nervously gunning down animals he could not possibly con-
sume in a year's time; he conducted intricate dialogues with him-
self; he dreamed of Earth.
6
Rawlins was running. Muller, standing a hundred meters deep
in Zone C, saw him come striding through the entrance, breath-
less, flushed.
"You shouldn't run in here," Muller said, "not even in the safer
zones. There's absolutely no telling—"
Rawlins sprawled down beside a flanged limestone tub, gripping
its sides and sucking air. "Get me a drink, will you?" he gasped.
"That liqueur of yours—"
"Are you all right?"
"No."
Muller went to the fountain nearby and filled a handy flask with
the sharp liqueur. Rawlins did not wince at all as Muller drew
near to give it to him. He seemed altogether unaware of Muller's
emanation. Greedily, sloppily, he emptied the flask, letting driblets
of the gleaming fluid roll down his chin and on his clothes. Then
he closed his eyes a moment.
"You look awful," Muller said. "As though you've just been
raped, I'd say."
"I have."
"What's the trouble?"
"Wait. Let me get my breath. I ran all the way from Zone F."
"You're lucky to be alive, then."
"Perhaps."
"Another drink?"
"No," said Rawlins. "Not just yet."
Muller studied him, perplexed. The change was striking and un-
settling, and mere fatigue could not account for it all. Rawlins was
bloodshot, flushed, puffy-faced; his facial muscles were tightly
knit; his eyes moved randomly, seeking and not finding. Drunk?
Sick? Drugged?

144 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
Rawlins said nothing.
After a long moment Muller said, just to fill the vacuum of si-
lence, "I've done a lot of thinking about our last conversation.
I've decided that I was acting like a damned fool. All that cheap
misanthropy I was dishing up." Muller knelt and tried to peer into
the younger man's shifting eyes. "Look here, Ned, I want to take
it all back. I'm willing to return to Earth for treatment. Even if the
treatment's experimental, I'll chance it. I mean, the worst that can
happen is that it won't cure me, and—"
"There's no treatment," said Rawlins dully.
"No—treatment . . ."
"No treatment. None. It was all a lie."
"Yes. Of course."
"You said so yourself," Rawlins reminded him. "You didn't be-
lieve a word of what 1 was saying. Remember?"
"A lie."
"You didn't understand why I was saying it, but you said it was
nonsense. You told me I was lying. You wondered what I had to
gain by lying. I was lying, Dick."
"Lying."
"Yes."
"But I've changed my mind," said Muller softly. "I was ready
to go back to Earth."
"There's no hope of a cure," Rawlins told him.
He slowly rose to his feet and ran his hand through his long
golden hair. He arranged his disarrayed clothing. He picked up
the flask, went to the liqueur fountain and filled it. Returning, he
handed the flask to Muller, who drank from it. Rawlins finished
the flask. Something small and voracious-looking ran past them
and slipped through the gate leading to Zone D.
Finally Muller said, "Do you want to explain some of this?"
"We aren't archaeologists."
"Go on."
"We came here looking especially for you. It wasn't any acci-
dent. We knew all along where you were. You were tracked from
the time you left Earth nine years ago."
"I took precautions."
"They weren't any use. Boardman knew where you were going,
and he had you tracked. He left you in peace because he had no
use for you. But when a need developed he had to come after you.
He was holding you in reserve, so to speak."

The Mail in the Maze
145
"Charles Boardman sent you to fetch me?" Muller asked.
"That's why we're here, yes. That's the whole purpose of this
expedition," Rawlins replied tonelessly. "I was picked to make
contact with you because you once knew my father and might
trust me. And because I have an innocent face. All the time
Boardman was directing me, telling me what to say, coaching me,
even telling me what mistakes to make, how to blunder success-
fully. He told me to get into that cage, for instance. He thought it
would help win your sympathy."
"Boardman is here? Here on Lemnos?"
"In Zone F. He's got a camp there."
"Charles Qoardman?"
"He's here, yes. Yes."
Muller's face was stony. Within, all was turmoil. "Why did he
do all this? What does he want with me?"
Rawlins said, "You know that there's a third intelligent race in
the universe, beside us and the Hydrans."
"Yes. They had just been discovered when I left. That was why
I went to visit the Hydrans. I was supposed to arrange a defensive
alliance with them, before these other people, these extragalactics,
came in contact with us. It didn't work. But what does this have
to-"
"How much do you know about these extragalactics?"
"Very little," Muller admitted. "Essentially, nothing but what
I've just told you. The day I agreed to go to Beta Hydri IV was
the first time I had heard about them. Boardman told me, but he
wouldn't say anything else. All he said was that they were ex-
tremely intelligent—a superior species, he said—and that they lived
in a neighboring cluster. And that they had a galactic drive and
might visit us some day."
"We know more about them now," Rawlins said.
"First tell me what Boardman wants with me."
"Everything in order, and it'll be easier." Rawlins grinned, per-
haps a bit tipsily. He leaned against the stone tub and stretched his
legs far out in front of himself. He said, "We don't actually know
a great deal about the extragalactics. What we did was send out a
ramjet, throw it into warp, and bring it out a few thousand light-
years away. Or a few million light-years. I don't know the details.
Anyway, it was a drone ship with all sorts of eyes. The place it
went to was one of the X-ray galaxies, classified information, but
I've heard it was either in Cygnus A or Scorpius II. We found that

146 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
one planet of the galactic system was inhabited by an advanced
race of very alien aliens."
"How alien?"
"They can see all up and down the spectrum," Rawlins said.
"Their basic visual range is in the high frequencies. They see by
the light of X-rays. They also seem to be able to make use of the
radio frequencies to see, or at least to get some kind of sensory in-
formation. And they pick up most wavelengths in between, except
that they don't have a great deal of interest in the stuff between in-
frared and ultraviolet. What we like to call the visible spectrum."
"Wait a minute. Radio senses? Do you have any idea how long
radio waves are? If they're going to get any information out of a
single wave, they'll need eyes or receptors or whatever of gigantic
size. How big are these beings supposed to be?"
"They could eat elephants for breakfast," said Rawlins.
"Intelligent life doesn't come that big."
"What's the limitation? This is a gas giant planet, all ocean, no
gravity to speak of. They float. They have no square-cube prob-
lems."
"And a bunch of superwhales has developed a technological
culture?" Muller asked. "You won't get me to believe—"
"They have," said Rawlins. "I've told you, these are very alien
aliens. They can't build machinery themselves. But they have
slaves."
"Oh," said Muller quietly.
"We're only beginning to understand this, and of course I don't
have much of the inside information myself, but as I piece it to-
gether it seems that these beings make use of lower life-forms,
turning them essentially into radio-controlled robots. They'll use
anything with limbs and mobility. They started with certain ani-
mals of their own planet, a small dolphin-like form perhaps on the
threshold of intelligence, and worked through them to achieve a
space drive. Then they got to neighboring planets—land planets—
and took control of pseudoprimates, protochimps of some kind.
They look for fingers. Manual dexterity counts a great deal with
them. At present their sphere of influence covers some eighty
light-years and appears to be spreading at an exponential rate."
Muller shook his head. "This is worse nonsense than the stuff
you were handing me about a cure. Look, there's a limiting veloc-
ity for radio transmission, right? If they're controlling flunkeys
from eighty light-years away, it'll take eighty years for any com-

The Mail in the Maze	147
mand to reach its destination. Every twitch of a muscle, every
trifling movement—"
"They can leave their home world," said Rawlins.
"But if they're so big-"
"They've used their slave beings to build gravity tanks. They
also have a star drive. All their colonies are run by overseers in
orbit a few thousand kilometers up, floating in a simulated home-
world environment. It takes one overseer to run one planet. I sup-
pose they rotate tours of duty."
Muller closed his eyes a moment. The image came to him of
these colossal, unimaginable beasts spreading through their distant
galaxy, impressing animals of all sorts into service, forging a cap-
tive society, vicariously technological, and drifting in orbit like
spaceborne whales to direct and coordinate the grandiose improb-
able enterprise while themselves remaining incapable of the
smallest physical act. Monstrous masses of glossy pink proto-
plasm, fresh from the sea, bristling with perceptors functioning at
both ends of the spectrum. Whispering to one another in pulses of
X-rays. Sending out orders via radio. No, he thought. No.
"Well," he said at length, "what of it? They're in another
galaxy."
"Not any longer. They've impinged on a few of our outlying
colonies. Do you know what they do when they find a human
world? They station an orbiting overseer above it and take control
of the colonists. They find that humans make outstanding slaves,
which isn't very surprising. At the moment they have six of our
worlds. They had a seventh, but we shot up their overseer. Now
they make it much harder to do that. They just take control of our
missiles as they home in, and throw them back."
"If you're inventing this," said Muller, "I'll kill you!"
"It's true. I swear."
"When did this begin?"
"Within the past year."
"And what happens? Do they just march right through our gal-
axy and turn us all into zombies?"
"Boardman thinks we have one chance to prevent that."
"Which is?"
Rawlins said, "The aliens don't appear to realize that we're in-
telligent beings. We can't communicate with them, you see. They
function on a completely nonverbal level, some kind of telepathic
system. We've tried all sorts of ways to reach them, bombarding

148 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
them with messages at every wavelength, without any flicker of a
sign that they're receiving us. Boardman believes that if we could
persuade them that we have—well, souls—they might leave us
alone. God knows why he thinks so. It's some kind of computer
prediction. He feels that these aliens work on a consistent moral
scheme, that they're willing to grab any animals which look useful,
but that they wouldn't touch a species that's on the same side of
the intelligence boundary as they are. And if we could show them
somehow—"
"They see that we have cities. That we have a star drive.
Doesn't that prove intelligence?"
"Beavers make dams," said Rawlins. "But we don't make trea-
ties with beavers. We don't pay reparations when we drain their
marshes. We know that in some way a beaver's feelings don't
count."
"Do we? Or have we simply decided arbitrarily that beavers are
expendable? And what's this talk of an intelligence boundary?
There's a continuous spectrum of intelligence, from the protozoa
up through the primates. We're a little smarter than the chimps,
sure, but is it a qualitative difference? Does the mere fact that we
can record our knowledge and use it again make that much of a
change?"
"I don't want to argue philosophy with you," Rawlins said
hoarsely. "I'm trying to tell you what the situation is—and how it
affects you."
"Yes. How it affects me."
"Boardman thinks that we really can get the radio beasts to
leave our galaxy alone if we show them that we're closer to them
in intelligence than we are to their other slaves. If we get across to
them that we have emotions, needs, ambitions, dreams,"
Muller spat. "Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, or-
gans, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do
we not bleed?"
"Like that, yes."
"How do we get this across to them if they don't speak a verbal
language?"
"Don't you see?" Rawlins asked.
"No, I -yes. Yes. God, yes!"
"We have one man, out of all our billions, who doesn't need
words to communicate. He broadcasts his inner feelings. His soul.
We don't know what frequency he uses, but they might."

The Mail in the Maze	149
"Yes. Yes."
"And so Boardman wanted to ask you to do one more thing
for mankind. To go to these aliens. To allow them to pick up your
broadcast. To show them what we are, that we're something more
than beasts."
"Why the talk of taking me to Earth to be cured, then?"
"A trick. A trap. We had to get you out of the maze somehow.
Once you were out, we could tell you the story and ask you to
help."
"Admitting that there was no cure?"
"Yes."
"What makes you think I would lift a finger to keep all of
man's worlds from being swallowed up?"
"Your help wouldn't have to be voluntary," Rawlins said.
7
Now it came flooding forth, the hatred, the anguish, the fear,
the jealousy, the torment, the bitterness, the mockery, the loath-
ing, the contempt, the despair, the viciousness, the fury, the des-
peration, the vehemence, the agitation, the grief, the pangs, the
agony, the furor, the fire. Rawlins pulled back as though singed.
Now Muller cruised the depths of desolation. A trick, a trick, all a
trick! Used again. Boardman's tool. Muller blazed. He spoke only
a few words aloud; the rest came from within, pouring out, the
gates wide, nothing penned back, a torrent of anger.
When the wild spasm passed Muller said, standing braced be-
tween two jutting facades, "Boardman would dump me onto the
aliens whether I was willing to go or not?"
"Yes. He said this was too important to allow you free choice.
Your wishes are irrelevant. The many against the one."
With deadly calm Muller said, "You're part of this conspiracy.
Why have you been telling me all this?"
"I resigned."
"Of course."
"No, I mean it. Oh, I was part of it. I was going along with
Boardman, yes, I was lying in everything I said to you. But I
didn't know the last part—that you wouldn't be given any choice. I
had to pull out there. I couldn't let them do this to you. I had to
tell you the truth."

150 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"Very thoughtful. I now have two options, eh, Ned? I can let
myself be dragged out of here to play catspaw for Boardman again
—or I can kill myself a minute from now and let mankind go to
hell. Yes?"
"Don't talk like that," Rawlins said edgily.
"Why not? Those are my options. You were kind enough to tell
me the real situation, and now I can react as I choose. You've
handed me a death sentence, Ned."
"No."
"What else is there? Let myself be used again?"
"You could—cooperate with Boardman," Rawlins said. He
licked his lips. "I know it sounds crazy, But you could show him
what you're made of. Forget all this bitterness. Turn the other
cheek. Remember that Boardman isn't all of humanity. There are
billions of innocent people—"
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
"Yes!"
"Every one of those billions would run from me if I came
near."
"What of it? They can't help that! But they're your own
people!"
"And I'm one of theirs. They didn't think of that when they
cast me out."
"You aren't being rational."
"No I'm not. And I don't intend to start now. Assuming that it
could affect humanity's destiny in the slightest if I became ambas-
sador to these radio people—and I don't buy that idea at all—it
would give me great pleasure to shirk my duty. I'm grateful to you
for your warning. Now that at last I know what's going on here, I
have the excuse I've been looking for all along. I know a thousand
places here where death is quick and probably not painful. Then
let Charles Boardman talk to the aliens himself. I—"
"Please don't move, Dick," said Boardman from a point about
thirty meters behind him.

TWELVE
Boardman found all this distasteful. But it was also necessary,
and he was not surprised that events had taken this turn. In his
original analysis he had forecast two events of equal probability:
that Rawlins would succeed in winning Muller out of the maze,
and that Rawlins would ultimately rebel and blurt out the truth.
He was prepared for either.
Now Boardman had advanced into the center of the maze, com-
ing from Zone F to follow Rawlins before the damage became ir-
reparable. He could predict one of Muller's likely responses: sui-
cide. Muller would never commit suicide out of despair, but he
might do it by way of vengeance. With Boardman were Ottavio,
Davis, Reynolds, and Greenfield. Hosteen and the others were
monitoring from outer zones. All were armed.
Muller turned. The look on his face was not easy to behold.
"I'm sorry, Dick," Boardman said. "We had to do this."
"You have no shame at all, do you?" Muller asked.
"Not where Earth is concerned."
"I realized that a long time ago. But I thought you were human,
Charles. I didn't comprehend your depths."
"I wish we didn't have to do any of this, Dick. But we do.
Come with us."
"No."
"You can't refuse. The boy's told you what's at stake. We al-
ready owe you more than we can ever repay, Dick, but run the
debt a little higher. Please."
"I'm not leaving Lemnos. I feel no sense of obligation to hu-
manity. I won't do your work."
"Dick-"
Muller said, "Fifty meters to the northwest of where I stand is
a flame pit. I'm going to walk over and step into it. Within ten sec-
onds there will be no more Richard Muller. One unfortunate ca-
lamity will cancel out another, and Earth will be no worse off than
it was before I acquired my special ability. Since you people didn't

152 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
appreciate that ability before, I can't see any reason for letting you
make use of it now."
"If you want to kill yourself," Boardman said, "why not wait a
few months?"
"Because I don't care to be of service."
"That's childish. The last sin I'd ever imagine you committing."
"It was childish of me to dream of stars," Muller said. "I'm
simply being consistent. The galactics can eat you alive, Charles. I
don't care if they do. Won't you fancy being a slave? Somewhere
under your skull you'll still be there, screaming to be released, and
the radio messages will tell you which arm to lift, which leg to
move. I wish I could last long enough to see that. But I'm going to
walk into that flame pit. Do you want to wish me a good journey?
Come close, let me touch your arm. Get a good dose of me first.
Your last. I'll cease to give offense." Muller was trembling. His
face was sweaty. His upper lip quivered.
Boardman said, "At least come out to Zone F with me. Let's
sit down quietly and discuss this over brandy."
"Side by side?" Muller laughed. "You'd vomit. You couldn't
bear it."
"I'm willing to talk."
"I'm not," Muller said. He took a shaky step toward the north-
west. His big powerful body seemed shrunken and withered, noth-
ing but sinews stretching tighter over a yielding armature. He took
another step. Boardman watched. Ottavio and Davis stood beside
him to the left; Reynolds and Greenfield on the other side, be-
tween Muller and the flame pit. Rawlins, like an afterthought, was
alone at the far side of the group.
Boardman felt a throbbing in his larynx, a stirring and a tickle
of tension in his loins. A great weariness possessed him, and at the
same time a fierce soaring excitement of a kind he had not known
since he had been a young man. He allowed Muller to take a third
step toward self-destruction. Then, casually, Boardman gestured
with two flicking fingers.
Greenfield and Reynolds pounced.
Catlike they darted forth, ready for this, and caught Muller by
the inner forearms. Boardman saw the grayness sweep over their
faces as the impact of Muller's field got to them. Muller struggled,
heaved, tried to break loose. Davis and Ottavio were upon him
now too. In the gathering darkness the group formed a surging
Laocoon, Muller only half visible as the smaller men coiled and

The Mail in the Maze	153
wound about his flexed battling body. A stungun would have been
easier, Boardman reflected. But stunguns were risky, sometimes,
on humans. They had been known to send hearts into wild runa-
ways. They had no defibrillator here.
A moment more, and Muller was forced to his knees.
"Disarm him," Boardman said.
Ottavio and Davis held him. Reynolds and Greenfield searched
him. From a pocket Greenfield pulled forth the deadly little win-
dowed globe. "That's all he seems to be carrying," Greenfield
said.
"Check carefully."
They checked. Meanwhile Muller remained motionless, his face
frozen, his eyes stony. It was the posture and the expression of a
man at the headsman's block. At length Greenfield looked up
again. "Nothing," he said.
Muller said, "One of my left upper molars contains a secret
compartment full of carniphage. I'll count to ten and bite hard,
and I'll melt away before your eyes."
Greenfield swung around and grabbed for Muller's jaws.
Boardman said, "Leave him alone. He's joking."
"But how do we know—" Greenfield began.
"Let him be. Step back." Boardman gestured. "Stand five me-
ters away from him. Don't go near him unless he moves."
They stepped away, obviously grateful to get back from the full
thrust of Muller's field. Boardman, fifteen meters from him, could
feel faint strands of pain. He went no closer.
"You can stand up now," Boardman said. "But please don't try
to move. I regret this, Dick."
Muller got to his feet. His face was black with hatred. But he
said nothing, nor did he move.
"If we have to," Boardman said, "we'll tape you in a webfoam
cradle and carry you out of the maze to the ship. We'll keep you in
foam from then on. You'll be in foam when you meet the aliens.
You'll be absolutely helpless. I would hate to do that to you,
Dick. The other choice is willing cooperation. Go with us of your
own free will to the ship. Do what we ask of you. Help us this last
time."
"May your intestines rust," said Muller almost casually. "May
you live a thousand years with worms eating you. May you choke
on your own smugness and never die."
"Help us. Willingly."

154 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"Put me in the webfoam, Charles. Otherwise I'll kill myself the
first chance I get."
"What a villain I must seem, eh?" Boardman said. "But I don't
want to do it this way. Come willingly, Dick."
Muller's reply was close to a snarl.
Boardman sighed. This was an embarrassment. He looked to-
ward Ottavio.
"The webfoam," he said.
Rawlins, who had been standing as though in a trance, burst
into sudden activity. He darted forward, seized Reynolds' gun
from its holster, ran toward Muller and pressed the weapon into
his hand. "There," he said thickly. "Now you're in charge!"
2
Muller studied the gun as though he had never seen one before,
but his surprise lasted only a fraction of a second. He slipped his
hand around its comfortable butt and fingered the firing stud. It
was a familiar model, only slightly changed from those he had
known. In a quick flaring burst he could kill them all. Or himself.
He stepped back so they could not come upon him from the rear.
Probing with his kickstaff, he checked the wall, found it trust-
worthy, and planted his shoulderblades against it. Then he moved
the gun in an arc of some 270°, taking them all in.
"Stand close together," he said. "The six of you. Stand one
meter apart in a straight row, and keep your hands out where I
can see them at all times."
He enjoyed the black, glowering look that Boardman threw at
Ned Rawlins. The boy seemed dazed, flushed, confused, a figure in
a dream. Muller waited patiently as the six men arranged them-
selves according to his orders. He was surprised at his own
calmness.
"You look unhappy, Charles," he said. "How old are you now,
eighty years? You'd like to five that other seventy, eighty, ninety, I
guess. You have your career planned, and the plan doesn't include
dying on Lemnos. Stand still, Charles. And stand straight. You
won't win any pity from me by trying to look old and sagging. I
know that dodge. You're as healthy as I am, beneath the phony
flab. Healthier. Straight, Charles!"
Boardman said raggedly, "If it'll make you feel better, Dick,

The Mail in the Maze
155
kill me. And then go aboard the ship and do what we want you to
do. I'm expendable."
"Do you mean that?"
"Yes."
"I almost think you do," Muller said wonderingly. "You crafty -
old bastard, you're offering a trade! Your life for my cooperation!
But where's the quid pro quo? I don't enjoy killing. It won't
soothe me at all to burn you down. I'll still have my curse."
"The offer stands."
"Rejected," Muller said. "If I kill you, it won't be as part of
any deal. But I'm much more likely to kill myself. You know, I'm
a decent man at heart. Somewhat unstable, yes, and who's to
blame me for that? But decent. I'd rather use this gun on me than
on you. I'm the one who's suffering. I can end it."
"You could have ended it at any time in the past nine years,"
Boardman pointed out. "But you survived. You devoted all your
ingenuity to staying alive in this murderous place."
"Ah. Yes. But that was different! An abstract challenge, man
against the maze. A test of my skills. Ingenuity. But if I kill myself
now, I thwart you. I put the thumb to the nose, with all of man-
kind watching. I'm the indispensable man, you say? What better
way then, to pay mankind back for my pain?"
"We regretted your suffering," said Boardman.
"I'm sure you wept bitterly for me. But that was all you did.
You let me go creeping away, diseased, corrupt, unclean. Now
comes the release. Not really suicide, but revenge." Muller smiled.
He turned the gun to finest beam and let its muzzle rest against his
chest. A touch of the finger, now. His eyes raked their faces. The
four soldiers did not seem to care. Rawlins appeared deep in
shock. Only Boardman was animated with concern and fright. "I
could kill you first, I suppose, Charles. As a lesson to our young
friend—the wages of deceit is death. But no. That would spoil ev-
erything. You have to live, Charles. To go back to Earth and
admit that you let the indispensable man slip through your grasp.
What a blotch on your career! To fail your most important assign-
ment! Yes. Yes. My pleasure. Falling dead here, leaving you to
pick up the pieces."
His finger tightened on the stud.
"Now," he said. "Quickly."
"No!" Boardman screamed. "For the love of—"
"Man," said Muller, and laughed, and did not fire. His arm

156 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
relaxed. He tossed the weapon contemptuously toward Boardman.
It landed almost at his feet.
"Foam!" Boardman cried. "Quick!"
"Don't bother," said Muller. "I'm yours."
3
Rawlins took a long while to understand it. First they had the
problem of getting out of the maze. Even with Muller as their
leader, it was a taxing job. As they had suspected, coming upon
the traps from the inner side was not the same as working through
them from without. Warily Muller took them through Zone E;
they could manage F well enough by now; and after they had dis-
mantled their camp, they pressed on into G. Rawlins kept expect-
ing Muller to bolt suddenly and hurl himself into some fearful
snare. But he seemed as eager to come alive out of the maze as
any of them. Boardman, oddly, appeared to recognize that.
Though he watched Muller closely, he left him unconfined.
Feeling that he was in disgrace, Rawlins kept away from the
others on the nearly silent outward march. He considered his ca-
reer in ruins. He had jeopardized the lives of his companions and
the success of the mission. Yet it had been worth it, he felt. A time
comes when a man takes his stand against what he believes to be
wrong.
The simple moral pleasure that he took in that was balanced
and overbalanced by the knowledge that he had acted naively, ro-
mantically, foolishly. He could not bear to face Boardman now.
He thought more than once of letting one of the deadly traps of
these outer zones have him; but that too, he decided, would be
naive, romantic, and foolish.
He watched Muller striding ahead—tall, proud, all tensions re-
solved, all doubts crystallized. And he wondered a thousand times
why Muller had given back the gun.
Boardman finally explained it to him when they camped for the
night in a precarious plaza near the outward side of Zone G.
"Look at me," Boardman said. "What's the matter? Why can't
you look at me?"
"Don't toy with me, Charles. Get it over with."
"Get what over with?"
"The tonguelashing. The sentence."

The Mail in the Maze
157
"It's all right, Ned. You helped us get what we wanted. Why
should I be angry?"
"But the gun—I gave him the gun—"
"Confusion of ends and means again. He's coming with us. He's
doing what we wanted him to do. That's what counts."
Floundering, Rawlins asked, "And if he had killed himself—or
us?"
"He wouldn't have done either."
"You can say that, now. But for the first moment, when he held
the gun—"
"No," Boardman said. "I told you earlier, we'd work on his
sense of honor. Which we had to reawaken. You did that. Look,
here I am, the brutal agent of a brutal and amoral society, right?
And I confirm all of Muller's worst thoughts about mankind. Why
should he help a tribe of wolves? And here you are, young and in-
nocent, full of hope and dreams. You remind him of the mankind
he once served, before the cynicism corroded him. In your blun-
dering way you try to be moral in a world that shows no trace of
morality or meaning. You demonstrate sympathy, love for a fel-
low man, the willingness to make a dramatic gesture for the sake
of righteousness. You show Muller that there's still hope in hu-
manity. See? You defy me, and give him a gun and make him
master of the situation. He could do the obvious, and burn us
down. He could do the slightly less obvious, and burn himself. Or
he could match your gesture with one of his own, top it, commit a
deliberate act of renunciation, express his revived sense of moral
superiority. He does it. He tosses away the gun. You were vital,
Ned. You were the instrument through which we won him."
"You make it sound so ugly when you spell it out that way,
Charles. As if you had planned even this. Pushing me so far that
I'd give him the gun, knowing that he—"
Boardman smiled.
"Did you?" Rawlins demanded suddenly. "No. You couldn't
have calculated all those twists and turns. Now, after the fact,
you're trying to claim credit for having engineered it all. But I saw
you in the moment I handed him the gun. There was fear on your
face, and anger. You weren't at all sure what he was going to do.
Only when everything worked out could you claim it went accord-
ing to plan. I see through you, Charles!"
"How delightful to be transparent," Boardman said gaily.

158 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
4
The maze seemed uninterested in holding them. Carefully they
traced their outward path, but they met few challenges and no se-
rious dangers. Quickly they went toward the ship.
They gave Muller a forward cabin, well apart from the quarters
of the crew. He seemed to accept that as a necessity of his condi-
tion, and showed no offense. He was withdrawn, subdued, self-
contained; an ironic smile often played on his lips, and much of
the time his eyes displayed a glint of contempt. But he was willing
to do as they directed. He had had his moment of supremacy; now
he was theirs.
Hosteen and his men bustled through the liftoff preparations.
Muller remained in his cabin. Boardman went to him, alone, un-
armed. He could make noble gestures too.
They faced each other across a low table. Muller waited, silent,
his face cleansed of emotion. Boardman said after a long moment,
"I'm grateful to you, Dick."
"Save it."
"I don't mind if you despise me. I did what I had to do. So did
the boy. And now so will you. You couldn't forget that you were
an Earthman, after all."
"I wish I could."
"Don't say that. It's easy, glib, cheap bitterness, Dick. We're
both too old for glibness. The universe is a perilous place. We do
our best. Everything else is unimportant."
He sat quite close to Muller. The emanation hit him broadside,
but he deliberately remained in place. That wave of despair well-
ing out to him made him feel a thousand years old. The decay of
the body, the crumbling of the soul, the heat-death of the galaxy
... the coming of winter . . . emptiness . . . ashes. . . .
"When we reach Earth," said Boardman crisply, "I'll put you
through a detailed briefing. You'll come out of it knowing as much
about the radio people as we do, which isn't saying a great deal.
After that you'll be on your own. But I'm sure you'll realize, Dick,
that the hearts and souls of billions of Earthmen will be praying
for your success and safety."
"Who's being glib now?" Muller asked.
"Is there anyone you'd like me to have waiting for you when we
dock Earthside?"

The Mail in the Maze
159
"No."
"I can send word ahead. There are people who've never
stopped loving you, Dick. They'll be there if I ask them."
Muller said slowly, "I see the strain in your eyes, Charles. You
feel the nearness of me, and it's ripping you apart You feel it in
your gut. In your forehead. Back of your breastbone. Your face is
going gray. Your cheeks are sagging. You'll sit here if it kills you,
yes, because that's your style. But it's hell for you. If there's any-
one on Earth who never stopped loving me, Charles, the least I
can do is spare her from hell. I don't want to meet anyone. I don't
want to see anyone. I don't want to talk to anyone."
"As you wdsh," said Boardman. Beads of sweat hung from his
bushy brows and dropped to his cheeks. "Perhaps you'll change
your mind when you're close to Earth."
"I'll never be close to Earth again," Muller said.

THIRTEEN
He spent three weeks absorbing all that was known of the giant
extragalactic beings. At his insistence he did not set foot on Earth
during that time, nor was his return from Lemnos made known to
the public. They gave him quarters in a bunker on Luna and he
lived quietly beneath Copernicus, moving like a robot through
steely gray corridors lit by warm glowing torches. They showed
him all the cubes. They ran off a variety of reconstructs in every
sensory mode. Muller listened. He absorbed. He said very little.
They kept well away from him, as they had on the voyage from
Lemnos. Whole days passed in which he saw no human being.
When they came to him they remained at a distance of ten meters
and more.
He did not object.
The exception was Boardman, who visited him three times a
week and made a point always of coming well within the pain
range. Muller found that contemptible. Boardman seemed to be
patronizing him with this voluntary and wholly unnecessary
submission to discomfort. "I wish you'd keep away," Muller told
him on the fifth visit. "We can talk by screen. Or you could stay
by the door."
"I don't mind the close contact."
"I do," said Muller. "Has it ever occurred to you that I've
begun to find mankind as odious as mankind finds me? The reek
of your meaty body, Charles—it goes into my nostrils like a spike.
Not just you; all the others too. Sickening. Hideous. Even the look
of your faces. The pores. The stupid gaping mouths. The ears.
Look at a human ear closely some time, Charles. Have you ever
seen anything more repulsive than that pink wrinkled cup? You all
disgust me!"
"I'm sorry you feel that way," Boardman said.
The briefing went on and on. Muller was ready after the first
week to undertake his assignment, but no, first they had to feed
him all the data in the bank. He absorbed the information with
twitchy impatience. A shadow of his old self remained to find it

The Mail in the Maze
161
fascinating, a challenge worth accepting. He would go. He would
serve as before. He would honor his obligation.
At last they said he could depart.
From Luna they took him by iondrive to a point outside the
orbit of Mars, where they transferred him to a warp-drive ship al-
ready programmed to kick him to the edge of the galaxy. Alone.
He would not, on this voyage, have to take care not to distress the
crew by his presence. There were several reasons for this, the most
important being that the mission was officially considered close to
suicidal; and, since a ship could make the voyage without the use
of a crew, it would have been rash to risk lives—other than his, of
course. But he was a volunteer, Besides, Muller had requested a
solo flight.
He did not see Boardman during the five days prior to his de-
parture, nor had he seen Ned Rawlins at all since their return
from Lemnos. Muller did not regret the absence of Boardman, but
he sometimes wished he could have another hour with Rawlins.
There was promise in that boy. Behind all the confusion and the
foggy innocence, Muller thought, lay the seeds of manhood.
From the cabin of his small sleek ship he watched the techni-
cians drifting in space, getting ready to sever the transfer line.
Then they were returning to their own ship. Now he heard from
Boardman, a final message, a Boardman special, inspirational, go
forth and do your duty for mankind, et cetera, et cetera. Muller
thanked him graciously for his words.
The communications channel was cut.
Moments later Muller entered warp.
2
The aliens had taken possession of three solar systems on the
fringes of the galactic lens, each star having two Earth-settled
planets. Muller's ship was aimed at a greenish-gold star whose
worlds had been colonized only forty years before. The fifth
planet, dry as iron, belonged to a Central Asian colonization soci-
ety which was trying to establish a series of pastoral cultures
where nomad virtues could be practiced. The sixth, with a more
typically Earthlike mixture of climates and environments, was oc-
cupied by representatives of half a dozen colonization societies,
each on its own continent. The relations between these groups,

162 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
often intricate and touchy, had ceased to matter within the past
twelve months, for both planets now were under control of ex-
tragalactic overseers.
Muller emerged from warp twenty light-seconds from the sixth
planet. His ship automatically went into an observation orbit, and
the scanners began to report. Screens showed him the surface pic-
ture; via template overlay he was able to compare the configura-
tions of the outposts below with the pattern as it had been prior to
alien conquest. The amplified images were quite interesting. The
original settlements appeared on his screen in violet, and the re-
cent extensions in red. Muller observed that about each of the
colonies, regardless of its original ground plan, there had sprouted
a network of angular streets and jagged avenues. Instinctively he
recognized the geometries as alien. There sprang to mind the vivid
memory of the maze; and though the patterns here bore no resem-
blance to those of the maze, they were alike in their lack of recog-
nizable symmetries. He rejected the possibility that the labyrinth
of Lemnos had been built long ago by direction of the radio
beings. What he saw here was only the similarity of total
difference. Aliens built in alien ways.
In orbit, seven thousand kilometers above the sixth planet, was
a glistening capsule, slightly longer on one axis than on the other,
which had about the mass of a large interstellar transport ship.
Muller found a similar capsule in orbit about the fifth world. The
overseers.
It was impossible for him to open communications with either
of these capsules or with the planets beyond. All channels were
blocked. He twisted dials fitfully for more than an hour, ignoring
the irritable responses of the ship's brain which kept telling him to
give up the idea. At last he conceded.
He brought his ship close to the nearer orbiting capsule. To his
surprise the ship remained under his control. Destructive missiles
that had come this close to alien overseers had been comman-
deered, but he was able to navigate. A hopeful sign? Was he under
scan, and was the alien able to distinguish him from a hostile
weapon? Or was he being ignored?
At a distance of one million kilometers he matched velocities
with the alien satellite and put his ship in a parking orbit around
it. He entered his drop-capsule. He ejected himself and slid from
his ship into darkness.

The Man in the Maze
163
3
Now the alien seized him. There was no doubt. The drop-cap-
sule was programmed for a minimum-expenditure orbit that would
bring it skimming past the alien in due time, but Muller swiftly
discovered that he was deviating from that orbit. Deviations are
never accidental. His capsule was accelerating beyond the pro-
gram, which meant that it had been grasped and was being drawn
forward. He accepted that. He was icily calm, expecting nothing
and prepared for everything. The drop-capsule eased down. He
saw the gleaming bulk of the alien satellite now.
Skin to metal skin, the vehicles met and touched and joined.
A hatch slid open.
He drifted within.
His capsule came to rest on a board platform in an immense
cavernous room hundreds of meters long, high, and broad. Fully
suited, Muller stepped from it. He activated his gravity pads; for,
as he had anticipated, gravity in here was so close to null that the
pull was imperceptible. In the blackness he saw only a faint
purplish glow. Against a backdrop of utter silence he heard a res-
onant booming sound, like an enormously amplified sigh, shudder-
ing through the struts and trusses of the satellite. Despite his grav-
ity pads he felt dizzy; beneath him the floor rolled. Through his
mind went a sensation like the throbbing of the sea; great waves
slammed against ragged beaches; a mass of water stirred and
groaned in its global cavity; the world shivered beneath the bur-
den. Muller felt a chill that his suit could not counteract. An irre-
sistible force drew him. Hesitantly he moved, relieved and sur-
prised to see that his limbs still obeyed his commands though he
was not entirely their master. The awareness of something vast
nearby, something heaving and pulsating and sighing, remained
with him.
He walked down a night-drowned boulevard. He came to a low
railing—a dull red line against the deep darkness—and pressed his
leg against it, keeping contact with it as he moved forward. At one
point he slipped and as he hit the railing with his elbow he heard
the clang of metal traveling through the entire structure. Blurred
echoes drifted back to him. As though walking the maze he passed
through corridors and hatches, across interlocking compartments,

164 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
over bridges that spanned dark abysses, down sloping ramplike
debouchments into lofty chambers whose ceilings were dimly visi-
ble. Here he moved in blind confidence, fearing nothing. He could
barely see. He had no vision of the total structure of this satellite.
He could scarcely imagine the purpose of these inner partitions.
From that hidden giant presence came silent waves, an ever-in-
tensifying pressure. He trembled in its grip. Still he moved on,
until now he was in some central gallery, and by a thin blue glow
he was able to discern levels dwindling below him, and far be-
neath his balcony a broad tank, and within the tank something
sparkling, something huge.
"Here I am," he said. "Richard Muller. Earthman."
He gripped the railing and peered downward, expecting any-
thing. Did the great beast stir and shift? Did it grunt? Did it call to
him in a language he understood? He heard nothing. But he felt a
great deal: slowly, subtly, he became aware of a contact, of a min-
gling, of an engulfment.
He felt his soul escaping through his pores.
The drain was unrelenting. Yet Muller chose not to resist; he
yielded, he welcomed, he gave freely. Down in the pit the monster
tapped his spirit, opened petcocks of neural energy, drew forth
from him, demanded more, drew that too.
"Go on," Muller said, and the echoes of his voice danced
around him, chiming, reverberating. "Drink! What's it like? A bit-
ter brew, eh? Drink! Drink!" His knees buckled, and he sagged
forward, and he pressed his forehead to the cold railing as his last
reservoirs were plumbed.
He surrendered himself gladly, in glittering droplets. He gave
up first love and first disappointment, April rain, fever and ache.
Pride and hope, warmth and cold, sweet and sour. The scent of
sweat and the touch of flesh, the thunder of music, the music of
thunder, silken hair knotted between his fingers, lines scratched in
spongy soil. Snorting stallions; glittering schools of tiny fish; the
towers of Newer Chicago; the brothels of Under New Orleans.
Snow. Milk. Wine. Hunger. Fire. Pain. Sleep. Sorrow. Apples.
Dawn. Tears. Bach. Sizzling grease. The laughter of old men. The
sun on the horizon, the moon on the sea, the light of other stars,
the fumes of rocket fuel, summer flowers on a glacier's flank. Fa-
ther. Mother. Jesus. Mornings. Sadness. Joy. He gave it all, and
much more, and he waited for an answer. None came to him. And

The Mail in the Maze
165
when he was wholly empty he lay face downward, drained, hol-
low, staring blindly into the abyss.
4
When he was able to leave, he left. The hatch opened to pass
his drop-capsule, and it rose toward his ship. Shortly he was in
warp. He slept most of the way. In the vicinity of Antares he cut
in the override, took command of the ship, and filed for a change
of course. There was no need to return to Earth. The monitor sta-
tion recorded his request, checked routinely to see that the chan-
nel was clear, and allowed him to proceed at once to Lemnos.
Muller entered warp again instantly.
When he emerged, not far from Lemnos, he found another ship
already in orbit and waiting for him. He started to go about his
business anyway, but the other ship insisted on making contact.
Muller accepted the communication.
"This is Ned Rawlins," a strangely quiet voice said. "Why have
you changed your flight plan?"
"Does it matter? I've done my job."
"You haven't filed a report."
"I'm reporting now, then. I visited the alien. We had a pleasant,
friendly chat. Then it let me go home. Now I'm almost home. I
don't know what effect my visit will have on the future of human
history. End of report."
"What are you going to do now?"
"Go home, I said. This is home."
"Lemnos?"
"Lemnos."
"Dick, let me come aboard. Give me ten minutes with you—in
person. Please don't say no."
"I don't say no," Muller replied.
Soon a small craft detached itself from the other ship and
matched velocities with his. Patiently, Muller allowed the rendez-
vous to take place. Rawlins stepped into his ship and shed his hel-
met. He looked pale, drawn, older. His eyes held a different ex-
pression. They faced one another for a long silent moment.
Rawlins advanced and took Muller's wrist in greeting.
"I never thought I'd see you again, Dick," he began. "And I
wanted to tell you—"

166 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
He stopped abruptly.
"Yes?" Muller asked.
"I don't feel it," said Rawlins. "J don't feel it!"
"What?"
"You. Your field. Look, I'm right next to you. I don't feel a
thing. All that nastiness, the pain, the despair—it isn't coming
through!"
"The alien drank it all," said Muller calmly. "I'm not surprised.
My soul left my body. Not all of it was put back."
"What are you talking about?"
"I could feel it soaking up everything that was within me. I
knew it was changing me. Not deliberately. It was just an inciden-
tal alteration. A byproduct."
Rawlins said slowly, "You knew it, then. Even before I came
on board."
"This confirms it, though."
"And yet you want to return to the maze. Why?"
"It's home."
"Earth's your home, Dick. There's no reason why you shouldn't
go back. You've been cured."
"Yes," said Muller. "A happy ending to my doleful story. I'm
fit to consort with humanity again. My reward for nobly risking
my life a second time among aliens. How neatly done! But is hu-
manity fit to consort with me?"
"Don't go down there, Dick. You're being irrational now.
Charles sent me to get you. He's terribly proud of you. We all are.
It would be a big mistake to lock yourself away in the maze now."
"Go back to your own ship, Ned," Muller said.
"If you go into the maze, so will I."
"I'll kill you if you do. I want to be left alone, Ned, do you un-
derstand that? I've done my job. My last job. Now I retire, purged
of my nightmares." Muller forced a thin smile. "Don't come after
me, Ned. I trusted you, and you would have betrayed me. Every-
thing else is incidental. Leave my ship now. We've said all that we
need to say to each other, I think, except goodbye."
"Dick-"
"Goodbye, Ned. Remember me to Charles. And to all the
others."
"Don't do this!"
"There's something down there I don't want to lose," Muller
said. "I'm going to claim it now. Stay away. All of you. Stay

The Mail in the Maze
167
away. I've learned the truth about Earthmen. Will you go now?"
Silently Rawlins suited up. He moved toward the hatch. As he
stepped through it, Muller said, "Say goodbye to all of them for
me, Ned. I'm glad you were the last one I saw. Somehow it was
easier that way."
Rawlins vanished through the hatch.
A short while later Muller programmed his ship for a hyper-
bolic orbit on a twenty-minute delay, got into his drop-capsule,
and readied himself for the descent to Lemnos. It was a quick
drop and a good landing. He came down right in the impact area,
two kilometers from the gateway to the maze. The sun was high
and bright. Muller walked briskly toward the maze.
He had done what they wanted him to do.
Now he was going home.
5
"He's still making gestures," Boardman said. "He'll come out
of there."
"I don't think so," replied Rawlins. "He meant that."
"You stood next to him, and you felt nothing?"
"Nothing. He doesn't have it any more."
"Which he realizes?"
"Yes."
"He'll come out, then," Boardman said. "We'll watch him, and
when he asks to be taken off Lemnos, we'll take him off. Sooner
or later he'll need other people again. He's been through so much
that he needs to think everything through, and I guess he sees the
maze as the best place for that. He isn't ready to plunge back into
normal life again. Give him two years, three, four. He'll come out.
The two sets of aliens have cancelled each other's work on him,
and he's fit to rejoin society."
"I don't think so," Rawlins said quietly. "I don't think it can-
celled out so evenly. Charles, I don't think he's human at all—any
more."
Boardman laughed. "Shall we bet? I'll offer five to one that
Muller comes out of the maze voluntarily within five years."
"Well-"
"It's a bet, then."
Rawlins left the older man's office. Night had fallen. He crossed

168 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
the bridge outside the building. In an hour he'd be dining with
someone warm and soft and willing, who was awed beyond meas-
ure by her liaison with the famous Ned Rawlins. She was a good
listener, who coaxed him for tales of daring deeds and nodded
gravely as he spoke of the challenges ahead. She was also good in
bed.
He paused on the bridge to look upward at the stars.
A million million blazing points of light shimmered in the sky.
Out there lay Lemnos, and Beta Hydri IV, and the worlds occu-
pied by the radio beings, and all man's dominion, and even, invisi-
ble but real, the home galaxy of the others. Out there lay a laby-
rinth in a broad plain, and a forest of spongy trees hundreds of
meters high, and a thousand planets planted with the young cities
of Earthmen, and a tank of strangeness orbiting a conquered
world. In the tank lay something unbearably alien. On the thou-
sand planets lived worried men fearing the future. Under the
spongy trees walked graceful silent creatures with many arms. In
the maze dwelled a . . . man.
Perhaps, Rawlins thought, I'll visit Muller in a year or two.
It was too early to tell how the patterns would form. No one yet
knew how the radio people were reacting, if at all, to the things
they had learned from Richard Muller. The role of the Hydrans,
the efforts of men in their own defense, the coming forth of Muller
from the maze, these were mysteries—shifting, variable. It was ex-
citing and a little frightening to think that he would live through
the time of testing that lay ahead.
He crossed the bridge. He watched starships shattering the
darkness overhead. He stood motionless, feeling the pull of the
stars. All the universe tugged at him, each star exerting its finite
power. The glow of the heavens dazzled him. Beckoning pathways
lay open. He thought of the man in the maze. He thought too of
the girl, lithe and passionate, dark-eyed, her eyes mirrors of silver,
her body awaiting him.
Suddenly he was Dick Muller, once also twenty-four years old,
with the galaxy his for the asking. Was it any different for you, he
wondered? What did you feel when you looked up at the stars?
Where did it hit you? Here. Here. Just where it hits me. And you
went out there. And found. And lost. And found something else.
Do you remember, Dick, the way you once felt? Tonight in your
windy maze, what will you think about? Will you remember?
Why did you turn away from us, Dick?

The Mail in the Maze	169
What have you become?
He hurried to the girl who waited for him. They sipped young
wine, tart, electric. They smiled through a candle's flickering glow.
Later her softness yielded to him, and still later they stood close
together on a balcony looking out over the greatest of all man's
cities. Lights stretched toward infinity, rising to meet those other
lights above. He slipped his arm around her, put his hand on her
bare flank, held her against him.
She said, "How long do you stay this time?"
"Four more days."
"And when will you come back?"
"When the job's done."
"Ned, will you ever rest? Will you ever say you've had enough,
that you won't go out any longer, that you'll take one planet and
stick to it?"
"Yes," he said vaguely. "I suppose. After a while."
"You don't mean it. You're just saying it. None of you ever set-
tle down."
"We can't," he murmured. "We keep going. There are always
more worlds . . . new suns. . . ."
"You want too much. You want the whole universe. It's a sin,
Ned. You have to accept limits."
"Yes," he said. "You're right. I know you're right." His fingers
traveled over satin-smooth flesh. She trembled. He said, "We do
what we have to do. We try to learn from the mistakes of others.
We serve our cause. We attempt to be honest with ourselves. How
else can it be?"
"The man who went back into the maze—"
"—is happy," Rawlins said. "He's following his chosen course."
"How can that be?"
"I can't explain."
"He must hate us all terribly to turn his back on the whole uni-
verse like that."
"He's beyond hate," Rawlins said. "Somehow. He's at peace.
Whatever he is."
"Whatever?"
"Yes," he said gently. He felt the midnight chill and led her in-
side. They stood by the bed. The candle was nearly out. He kissed
her solemnly, and thought of Dick Muller again, and wondered
what maze was waiting for him at the end of his own path. He
drew her into his arms and felt the impress of hardening flesh

170 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
against his own cool skin. They lowered themselves. His hands
sought, grasped, caressed. Her breath grew ragged.
When I see you again, Dick, I have much to tell you, he
thought.
She said, "Why did he lock himself into the maze again, Ned?"
"For the same reason that he went among aliens in the first
place. For the reason that it all happened."
"And that reason was?"
"He loved mankind," Rawlins said. It was as good an epitaph
as any. He held the girl tightly. But he left before dawn.

NightwingS

For Harlan,
to remind him of open windows,
the currents of the Delaware River,
quarters with two heads,
and other pitfalls.

Parti
NIGHTWINGS
Roum is a city built on seven hills. They say it was a capital of
man in one of the earlier cycles. I did not know of that, for my
guild was Watching, not Remembering; but yet as I had my first
glimpse of Roum, coming upon it from the south at twilight, I
could see that in former days it must have been of great
significance. Even now it was a mighty city of many thousands of
souls.
Its bony towers stood out sharply against the dusk. Lights glim-
mered appealingly. On my left hand the sky was ablaze with
splendor as the sun relinquished possession; streaming bands of
azure and violet and crimson folded and writhed about one an-
other in the nightly dance that brings the darkness. To my right,
blackness had already come. I attempted to find the seven hills,
and failed, and still I knew that this was that Roum of majesty to-
ward which all roads are bent, and I felt awe and deep respect for
the works of our bygone fathers.
We rested by the long straight road, looking up at Roum. I said,
"It is a goodly city. We will find employment there."
Beside me, Avluela fluttered her lacy wings. "And food?" she
asked in her high, fluty voice. "And shelter? And wine?"
"Those too," I said. "All of those."
"How long have we been walking, Watcher?" she asked.
"Two days. Three nights."
"If I had been flying, it would have been more swift."
"For you," I said. "You would have left us far behind and
never seen us again. Is that your desire?"
She came close to me and rubbed the rough fabric of my sleeve,
and then she pressed herself at me the way a flirting cat might do.
Her wings unfolded into two broad sheets of gossamer through
which I could still see the sunset and the evening lights, blurred,
distorted, magical. I sensed the fragrance of her midnight hair. I
put my arms to her and embraced her slender, boyish body.

174 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
She said, "You know it is my desire to remain with you always,
Watcher. Always!"
"Yes, Avluela."
"Will we be happy in Roum?"
"We will be happy," I said, and released her.
"Shall we go into Roum now?"
"I think we should wait for Gormen," I said, shaking my head.
"Hell be back soon from his explorations." I did not want to tell
her of my weariness. She was only a child, seventeen summers old;
what did she know of weariness or of age? And I was old. Not as
old as Roum, but old enough.
"While we wait," she said, "may I fly?"
"Fly, yes."
I squatted beside our cart and warmed my hands at the throb-
bing generator while Avluela prepared to fly. First she removed
her garments, for her wings have little strength and she cannot lift
such extra baggage. Lithely, deftly, she peeled the glassy bubbles
from her tiny feet and wriggled free of her crimson jacket and of
her soft, furry leggings. The vanishing light in the west sparkled
over her slim form. Like all Fliers, she carried no surplus body
tissue: her breasts were mere bumps, her buttocks flat, her thighs
so spindly that there was a span of inches between them when she
stood. Could she have weighed more than a quintal? I doubt it.
Looking at her, I felt, as always, gross and earthbound, a thing of
loathsome flesh, and yet I am not a heavy man.
By the roadside she genuflected, knuckles to the ground, head
bowed to knees, as she said whatever ritual it is that the Fliers say.
Her back was to me. Her delicate wings fluttered, filled with life,
rose about her like a cloak whipped up by the breeze. I could not
comprehend how such wings could possibly lift even so slight a
form as Avluela's. They were not hawk-wings but butterfly-wings,
veined and transparent, marked here and there with blotches of
pigment, ebony and turquoise and scarlet. A sturdy ligament
joined them to the two flat pads of muscle beneath her sharp
shoulderblades; but what she did not have was the massive breast-
bone of a flying creature, the bands of corded muscle needed for
flight. Oh, I know that the Fliers use more than muscle to get
aloft, that there are mystical disciplines in their mystery. Even so,
I, who was of the Watchers, remained skeptical of the more fan-
tastic guilds.
Avluela finished her words. She rose; she caught the breeze with

Nightwings 175
her wings; she ascended several feet. There she remained, sus-
pended between earth and sky, while her wings beat frantically. It
was not yet night, and Avluela's wings were merely nightwings. By
day she could not fly, for the terrible pressure of the solar wind
would hurl her to the ground. Now, midway between dusk and
dark, it was still not the best time for her to go up. I saw her
thrust toward the east by the remnant of light in the sky. Her arms
as well as her wings thrashed; her small pointed face was grim
with concentration; on her thin lips were the words of her guild.
She doubled her body and shot it out, head going one way, rump
the other; and abruptly she hovered horizontally, looking ground-
ward, her win^s thrashing against the air. Up, Avluela! Up!
Up it was, as by will alone she conquered the vestige of light
that still glowed.
With pleasure I surveyed her naked form against the darkness. I
could see her clearly, for a Watcher's eyes are keen. She was five
times her own height in the air, now, and her wings spread to their
full expanse, so that the towers of Roum were in partial eclipse
for me. She waved. I threw her a kiss and offered words of love.
Watchers do not marry, not do they engender children, but yet
Avluela was as a daughter to me, and I took pride in her flight.
We had traveled together a year now, since we had first met in
Agupt, and it was as though I had known her all my long life.
From her I drew a renewal of strength. I do not know what it was
she drew from me: security, knowledge, a continuity with the days
before her birth. I hoped only that she loved me as I loved her.
Now she was far aloft. She wheeled, soared, dived, pirouetted,
danced. Her long black hair streamed from her scalp. Her body
seemed only an incidental appendage to those two great wings
which glistened and throbbed and gleamed in the night. Up she
rose, glorying in her freedom from gravity, making me feel all the
more leaden-footed; and like some slender rocket she shot
abruptly away in the direction of Roum. I saw the soles of her
feet, the tips of her wings; then I saw her no more.
I sighed. I thrust my hands into the pits of my arms to keep
them warm. How is it that I felt a winter chill while the girl
Avluela could soar joyously bare through the sky?
It was now the twelfth of the twenty hours, and time once again
for me to do the Watching. I went to the cart, opened my cases,
prepared the instruments. Some of the dial covers were yellowed
and faded; the indicator needles had lost their luminous coating;

176 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
sea stains defaced the instrument housings, a relic of the time that
pirates had assailed me in Earth Ocean. The worn and cracked
levers and nodes responded easily to my touch as I entered the
preliminaries. First one prays for a pure and perceptive mind; then
one creates the affinity with one's instruments; then one does the
actual Watching, searching the starry heavens for the enemies of
man. Such was my skill and my craft. I grasped handles and
knobs, thrust things from my mind, prepared myself to become an
extension of my cabinet of devices.
I was only just past my threshold and into the first phase of
Watchfulness when a deep and resonant voice behind me said,
"Well, Watcher, how goes it?"
I sagged against the cart. There is a physical pain in being
wrenched so unexpectedly from one's work. For a moment I felt
claws clutching at my heart. My face grew hot; my eyes would not
focus; the saliva drained from my throat. As soon as I could, I
took the proper protective measures to ease the metabolic drain,
and severed myself from my instruments. Hiding my trembling as
much as possible, I turned around.
Gormon, the other member of our little band, had appeared
and stood jauntily beside me. He was grinning, amused at my dis-
tress, but I could not feel angry with him. One does not show
anger at a guildless person no matter what the provocation.
Tightly, with effort, I said, "Did you spend your time reward-
ingly?"
"Very. Where's Avluela?"
I pointed heavenward. Gormon nodded.
"What have you found?" I asked.
"That this city is definitely Roum."
"There never was doubt of that."
"For me there was. But now I have proof."
"Yes?"
"In the overpocket. Look!"
From his tunic he drew his overpocket, set it on the pavement
beside me, and expanded it so that he could insert his hands into
its mouth. Grunting a little, he began to pull something heavy
from the pouch—something of white stone—a long marble column,
I now saw, fluted, pocked with age.
"From a temple of Imperial Roum!" Gormon exulted.
"You shouldn't have taken that."
"Wait!" he cried, and reached into the overpocket once more.

Nightwings 177
He took from it a handful of circular metal plaques and scattered
them jingling at my feet. "Coins! Money! Look at them, Watcher!
The faces of the Caesars!"
"Of whom?"
"The ancient rulers. Don't you know your history of past cy-
cles?"
I peered at him curiously. "You claim to have no guild, Gor-
mon. Could it be you are a Rememberer and are concealing it
from me?"
"Look at my face, Watcher. Could I belong to any guild?
Would a Changeling be taken?"
"True enough," I said, eyeing the golden hue of him, the thick
waxen skin, the red-pupiled eyes, the jagged mouth. Gormon had
been weaned on teratogenetic drugs; he was a monster, handsome
in his way, but a monster nevertheless, a Changeling, outside the
laws and customs of man as they are practiced in the Third Cycle
of civilization. And there is no guild of Changelings.
"There's more," Gormon said. The overpocket was infinitely
capacious; the contents of a world, if need be, could be stuffed
into its shriveled gray maw, and still it would be no longer than a
man's hand. Gormon took from it bits of machinery, reading
spools, an angular thing of brown metal that might have been an
ancient tool, three squares of shining glass, five slips of paper-
paper/—and a host of other relics of antiquity. "See?" he said. "A
fruitful stroll, Watcher! And not just random booty. Everything
recorded, everything labeled, stratum, estimated age, position
when in situ. Here we have many thousands of years of Roum."
"Should you have taken these things?" I asked doubtfully.
"Why not? Who is to miss them? Who of this cycle cares for
the past?"
"The Rememberers."
"They don't need solid objects to help them do their work."
"Why do you want these things, though?"
"The past interests me, Watcher. In my guildless way I have my
scholarly pursuits. Is that wrong? May not even a monstrosity
seek knowledge?"
"Certainly, certainly. Seek what you wish. Fulfill yourself in
your own way. This is Roum. At dawn we enter. I hope to find
employment here."
"You may have difficulties."
"How so?"

178 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"There are many Watchers already in Roum, no doubt. There
will be little need for your services."
"I'll seek the favor of the Prince of Roum," I said.
"The Prince of Roum is a hard and cold and cruel man."
"You know of him?"
Gormon shrugged. "Somewhat." He began to stuff his artifacts
back in the overpocket. "Take your chances with him, Watcher.
What other choice do you have?"
"None," I said, and Gormon laughed, and I did not.
He busied himself with his ransacked loot of the past. I found
myself deeply depressed by his words. He seemed so sure of him-
self in an uncertain world, this guildless one, this mutated mon-
ster, this man of inhuman look; how could he be so cool, so cas-
ual? He lived without concern for calamity and mocked those who
admitted to fear. Gormon had been traveling with us for nine
days, now, since we had met him in the ancient city beneath the
volcano to the south by the edge of the sea. I had not suggested
that he join us; he had invited himself along, and at Avluela's bid-
ding I accepted. The roads are dark and cold at this time of year,
and dangerous beasts of many species abound, and an old man
journeying with a girl might well consider taking with him a
brawny one like Gormon. Yet there were times I wished he had
not come with us, and this was one.
Slowly I walked back to my equipment.
Gormon said, as though first realizing it, "Did I interrupt you at
your Watching?"
I said mildly, "You did."
"Sorry. Go and start again. I'll leave you in peace." And he
gave me his dazzling lopsided smile, so full of charm that it took
the curse off the easy arrogance of his words.
I touched the knobs, made contact with the nodes, monitored
the dials. But I did not enter Watchfulness, for I remained aware
of Gormon's presence and fearful that he would break into my
concentration once again at a painful moment, despite his prom-
ise. At length I looked away from the apparatus. Gormon stood at
the far side of the road, craning his neck for some sight of
Avluela. The moment I turned to him he became aware of me.
"Something wrong, Watcher?"
"No. The moment's not propitious for my work. I'll wait."
"Tell me," he said. "When Earth's enemies really do come
from the stars, will your machines let you know it?"

Nightwings 179
"I trust they will."
"And then?"
"Then I notify the Defenders."
"After which your life's work is over?"
"Perhaps," I said.
"Why a whole guild of you, though? Why not one master center
where the Watch is kept? Why a bunch of itinerant Watchers
drifting from place to place?"
"The more vectors of detection," I said, "the greater the chance
of early awareness of the invasion."
"Then an individual Watcher might well turn his machines on
and not see anything, with an invader already here."
"It could happen. And so we practice redundancy."
"You carry it to an extreme, I sometimes think." Gormon
laughed. "Do you actually believe an invasion is coming?"
"I do," I said stiffly. "Else my life was a waste."
"And why should the star people want Earth? What do we have
here besides the remnants of old empires? What would they do
with miserable Roum? With Perris? With Jorslem? Rotting cities!
Idiot princes! Come, Watcher, admit it: the invasion's a myth, and
you go through meaningless motions four times a day. Eh?"
"It is my craft and my science to Watch. It is yours to jeer.
Each of us to our speciality, Gormon."
"Forgive me," he said with mock humility. "Go then, and
Watch."
"I shall."
Angrily I turned back to my cabinet of instruments, determined
now to ignore any interruption, no matter how brutal. The stars
were out; I gazed at the glowing constellations, and automatically
my mind registered the many worlds. Let us Watch, I thought. Let
us keep our vigil despite the mockers.
I entered full Watchfulness.
I clung to the grips and permitted the surge of power to rush
through me. I cast my mind to the heavens and searched for hos-
tile entities. What ecstasy! What incredible splendor! I who had
never left this small planet roved the black spaces of the void,
glided from star to burning star, saw the planets spinning like
tops. Faces stared back at me as I journeyed, some without eyes,
some with many eyes, all the complexity of the many-peopled gal-
axy accessible to me. I spied out possible concentrations of inimi-
cable force. I inspected drilling-grounds and military encamp-

180 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
ments. I sought, as I had sought four times daily for all my adult
life, for the invaders who had been promised us, the conquerors
who at the end of days were destined to seize our tattered world.
I found nothing, and when I came up from my trance, sweaty
and drained, I saw Avluela descending.
Feather-light she landed. Gormon called to her, and she ran,
bare, her little breasts quivering, and he enfolded her smallness in
his powerful arms, and they embraced, not passionately but
joyously. When he released her she turned to me.
"Roum," she gasped. "Roum!"
"You saw it?"
"Everything! Thousands of people! Lights! Boulevards! A mar-
ket! Broken buildings many cycles old! Oh, Watcher, how won-
derful Roum is!"
"Your flight was a good one, then," I said.
"A miracle!"
"Tomorrow we go to dwell in Roum."
"No, Watcher, tonight, tonight!" She was girlishly eager, her
face bright with excitement. "It's just a short journey more! Look,
it's just over there!"
"We should rest first," I said. "We do not want to arrive weary
in Roum."
"We can rest when we get there," Avluela answered. "Come!
Pack everything! You've done your Watching, haven't you?"
"Yes. Yes."
"Then let's go. To Roum! To Roum!"
I looked in appeal at Gormon. Night had come; it was time to
make camp, to have our few hours of sleep.
For once Gormon sided with me. He said to Avluela, "The
Watcher's right. We can all use some rest. We'll go on into Roum
at dawn."
Avluela pouted. She looked more like a child than ever. Her
wings drooped; her underdeveloped body slumped. Petulantly she
closed her wings until they were mere fist-sized humps on her
back, and picked up the garments she had scattered on the road.
She dressed while we made camp. I distributed food tablets; we
entered our receptacles; I fell into troubled sleep and dreamed of
Avluela limned against the crumbling moon, and Gormon flying
beside her. Two hours before dawn I arose and performed my first
Watch of the new day, while they still slept. Then I aroused them,

Nightwings 181
and we went onward toward the fabled imperial city, onward to-
ward Roum.
2
The morning's light was bright and harsh, as though this were
some young world newly created. The road was all but empty;
people do not travel much in these latter days unless, like me, they
are wanderers by habit and profession, Occasionally we stepped
aside to let a chariot of some member of the guild of Masters go
by, drawn by a dozen expressionless neuters harnessed in series.
Four such vehicles went by in the first two hours of the day, each
shuttered and sealed to hide the Master's proud features from the
gaze of such common folk as we. Several rollerwagons laden with
produce passed us, and a number of floaters soared overhead.
Generally we had the road to ourselves, however.
The environs of Roum showed vestiges of antiquity: isolated
columns, the fragments of an aqueduct transporting nothing from
nowhere to nowhere, the portals of a vanished temple. That was
the oldest Roum we saw, but there were accretions of the later
Roums of subsequent cycles: the huts of peasants, the domes of
power drains, the hulls of dwelling-towers. Infrequently we met
with the burned-out shell of some ancient airship. Gormon ex-
amined everything, taking samples from time to time. Avluela
looked, wide-eyed, saying nothing. We walked on, until the walls
of the city loomed before us.
They were of a blue glossy stone, neatly joined, rising to a
height of perhaps eight men. Our road pierced the wall through a
corbeled arch; the gate stood open. As we approached the gate, a
figure came toward us; he was hooded, masked, a man of extraor-
dinary height wearing the somber garb of the guild of Pilgrims.
One does not approach such a person oneself, but one heeds him
if he beckons. The Pilgrim beckoned.
Through his speaking grille he said, "Where from?"
"The south. I lived in Agupt awhile, then crossed Land Bridge
to Talya," I replied.
"Where bound?"
"Roum, awhile."
"How goes the Watch?"
"As customary."

182 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"You have a place to stay in Roum?" the Pilgrim asked.
I shook my head. "We trust to the kindness of the Will."
"The Will is not always kind," said the Pilgrim absently. "Nor
is there much need of Watchers in Roum. Why do you travel with
a Flier?"
"For company's sake. And because she is young and needs pro-
tection."
"Who is the other one?"
"He is guildless, a Changeling."
"So I can see. But why is he with you?"
"He is strong and I am old, and so we travel together. Where
are you bound, Pilgrim?"
"Jorslem. Is there another destination for my guild?"
I conceded the point with a shrug.
The Pilgrim said, "Why do you not come to Jorslem with me?"
"My road lies north now. Jorslem is in the south, close by
Agupt."
"You have been to Agupt and not to Jorslem?" he said, puz-
zled.
"Yes. The time was not ready for me to see Jorslem."
"Come now. We will walk together on the road, Watcher, and
we will talk of the old times and of the times to come, and I will
assist you in your Watching, and you will assist me in my com-
munions with the Will. Is it agreed?"
It was a temptation. Before my eyes flashed the image of Jors-
lem the Golden, its holy buildings and shrines, its places of re-
newal where the old are made young, its spires, its tabernacles.
Even though I am a man set in his ways, I was willing at the mo-
ment to abandon Roum and go with the Pilgrim to Jorslem.
I said, "And my companions—"
"Leave them. It is forbidden for me to travel with the guildless,
and I do not wish to travel with a female. You and I, Watcher,
will go to Jorslem together."
Avluela, who had been standing to one side frowning through
all this colloquy, shot me a look of sudden terror.
"I will not abandon them," I said.
"Then I go to Jorslem alone," said the Pilgrim. Out of his robe
stretched a bony hand, the fingers long and white and steady. I
touched my fingers reverently to the tips of his, and the Pilgrim
said, "Let the Will give you mercy, friend Watcher. And when you
reach Jorslem, search for me."

Nightwings 183
He moved on down the road without further conversation.
Gormon said to me, "You would have gone with him, wouldn't
you?"
"I considered it."
"What could you find in Jorslem that isn't here? That's a holy
city and so is this. Here you can rest awhile. You're in no shape
for more walking now."
"You may be right," I conceded, and with the last of my energy
I strode toward the gate of Roum.
Watchful eyes scanned us from slots in the wail. When we were
at midpoint in the gate, a fat, pockmarked Sentinel with sagging
jowls halted us and asked our business in Roum. I stated my guild
and purpose, and he gave a snort of disgust.
"Go elsewhere, Watcher! We need only useful men here."
"Watching has its uses," I said mildly.
"No doubt. No doubt." He squinted at Avluela. "Who's this?
Watchers are celibates, no?"
"She is nothing more than a traveling companion."
The Sentinel guffawed coarsely. "It's a route you travel often, I
wager! Not that there's much to her. What is she, thirteen, four-
teen? Come here, child. Let me check you for contraband." He
ran his hands quickly over her, scowling as he felt her breasts,
then raising an eyebrow as he encountered the mounds of her
wings below her shoulders. "What's this? What's this? More in
back than in front! A Flier, are you? Very dirty business, Fliers
consorting with foul old Watchers." He chuckled and put his hand
on Avluela's body in a way that sent Gormon starting forward in
fury, murder in his fire-circled eyes. I caught him in time and
grasped his wrist with all my strength, holding him back lest he
ruin the three of us by an attack on the Sentinel. He tugged at me,
nearly pulling me over; then he grew calm and subsided, icily
watching as the fat one finished checking Avluela for "contra-
band."
At length the Sentinel turned in distaste to Gormon and said,
"What kind of thing are you?"
"Guildless, your mercy," Gormon said in sharp tones. "The
humble and worthless product of teratogenesis, and yet never-
theless a free man who desires entry to Roum."
"Do we need more monsters here?"
"I eat little and work hard."

184 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"You'd work harder still, if you were neutered," said the Sen-
tinel.
Gormon glowered. I said, "May we have entry?"
"A moment." The Sentinel donned his thinking cap and nar-
rowed his eyes as he transmitted a message to the memory tanks.
His face tensed with the effort; then it went slack, and moments
later came the reply. We could not hear the transaction at all; but
from his disappointed look, it appeared evident that no reason had
been found to refuse us admission to Roum.
"Go on in," he said. "The three of you. Quickly!"
We passed beyond the gate.
Gormon said, "I could have split him open with a blow."
"And be neutered by nightfall. A little patience, and we've
come into Roum."
"The way he handled her-!"
"You take a very possessive attitude toward Avluela," I said.
"Remember that she's a Flier, and not sexually available to the
guildless."
Gormon ignored my thrust. "She arouses me no more than you
do, Watcher. But it pains me to see her treated that way. I would
have killed him if you hadn't held me back."
Avluela said, "Where shall we stay, now that we're in Roum?"
"First let me find the headquarters of my guild," I said. "I'll
register at the Watchers' Inn. After that, perhaps we'll hunt up the
Fliers' Lodge for a meal."
"And then," said Gormon drily, "we'll go to the Guildless Gut-
ter and beg for coppers."
"I pity you because you are a Changeling," I told him, "but I
find it ungraceful of you to pity yourself. Come."
We walked up a cobbled, winding street away from the gate and
into Roum itself. We were in the outer ring of the city, a residen-
tial section of low, squat houses topped by the unwieldy bulk of
defense installations. Within lay the shining towers we had seen
from the fields the night before; the remnant of ancient Roum
carefully preserved across ten thousand years or more; the market,
the factory zone, the communications hump, the temples of the
Will, the memory tanks, the sleepers' refuges, the outworlders'
brothels, the government buildings, the headquarters of the vari-
ous guilds.
At the corner, beside a Second Cycle building with walls of rub-
bery texture, I found a public thinking cap and slipped it on my

Nightwings 185
forehead. At once my thoughts raced down the conduit until they
came to the interface that gave them access to one of the storage
brains of a memory tank. I pierced the interface and saw the wrin-
kled brain itself, pale gray against the deep green of its housing. A
Rememberer once told me that, in cycles past, men built machines
to do their thinking for them, although these machines were
hellishly expensive and required vast amounts of space and drank
power gluttonously. That was not the worst of our forefathers'
follies; but why build artificial brains when death each day liber-
ated scores of splendid natural ones to hook into the memory
tanks? Was it that they lacked the knowledge to use them? I find
that hard to believe.
I gave the brain my guild identification and asked the coordi-
nates of our inn. Instantly I received them, and we set out, Avlu-
ela on one side of me, Gormon on the other, myself wheeling, as
always, the cart in which my instruments resided.
The city was crowded. I had not seen such throngs in sleepy,
heat-fevered Agupt, nor at any other point on my northward jour-
ney. The streets were full of Pilgrims, secretive and masked. Jos-
tling through them went busy Rememberers and glum Merchants
and now and then the litter of a Master. Avluela saw a number of
Fliers, but was barred by the tenets of her guild from greeting
them until she had undergone her ritual purification. I regret to
say that I spied many Watchers, all of whom looked upon me dis-
dainfully and without welcome. I noted a good many Defenders
and ample representation of such lesser guilds as Vendors, Servi-
tors, Manufactories, Scribes, Communicants, and Transporters.
Naturally, a host of neuters went silently about their humble busi-
ness, and numerous outworlders of all descriptions flocked the
streets, most of them probably tourists, some here to do what
business could be done with the sullen, poverty-blighted people of
Earth. I noticed many Changelings limping furtively through the
crowd, not one of them as proud of bearing as Gormon beside me.
He was unique among his kind; the others, dappled and piebald
and asymmetrical, limbless or overlimbed, deformed in a thousand
imaginative and artistic ways, were slinkers, squinters, shufflers,
hissers, creepers; they were cutpurses, brain-drainers, organ-
peddlers, repentance-mongers, gleam-buyers, but none held him-
self upright as though he thought he were a man.
The guidance of the brain was exact, and in less than an hour

186 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
of walking we arrived at the Watchers' Inn. I left Gormon and
Avluela outside and wheeled my cart within.
Perhaps a dozen members of my guild lounged in the main hall.
I gave them the customary sign, and they returned it languidly.
Were these the guardians on whom Earth's safety depended?
Simpletons and weaklings!
"Where may I register?" I asked.
"New? Where from?"
"Agupt was my last place of registry."
"Should have stayed there. No need of Watchers here."
"Where may I register?" I asked again.
A foppish youngster indicated a screen in the rear of the great
room. I went to it, pressed my fingertips against it, was interro-
gated, and gave my name, which a Watcher may utter only to an-
other Watcher and only within the precincts of an inn. A panel
shot open, and a puffy-eyed man who wore the Watcher emblem
on his right cheek and not on the left, signifying his high rank in
the guild, spoke my name and said, "You should have known bet-
ter than to come to Roum. We're over our quota."
"I claim lodging and employment nonetheless."
"A man with your sense of humor should have been born into
the guild of Clowns," he said.
"I see no joke."
"Under laws promulgated by our guild in the most recent ses-
sion, an inn is under no obligation to take new lodgers once it has
reached its assigned capacity. We are at our assigned capacity.
Farewell, my friend."
I was aghast. "I know of no such regulation! This is incredible!
For a guild to turn away a member from its own inn—when he ar-
rives footsore and numb! A man of my age, having crossed Land
Bridge out of Agupt, here as a stranger and hungry in Roum—"
"Why did you not check with us first?"
"I had no idea it would be necessary."
"The new regulations—"
"May the Will shrivel the new regulations!" I shouted. "I de-
mand lodging! To turn away one who has Watched since before
you were born—"
"Easy, brother, easy."
"Surely you have some corner where I can sleep—some crumbs
to let me eat—"
Even as my tone had changed from bluster to supplication, his

Nightwings 187
expression softened from indifference to mere disdain. "We have
no room. We have no food. These are hard times for our guild,
you know. There is talk that we will be disbanded altogether, as a
useless luxury, a drain upon the Will's resources. We are very lim-
ited in our abilities. Because Roum has a surplus of Watchers, we
all are on short rations as it is, and if we admit you our rations
will be all the shorter."
"But where will I go? What shall I do?"
"I advise you," he said blandly, "to throw yourself upon the
mercy of the Prince of Roum."
3
Outside, I told that to Gormon, and he doubled with laughter,
guffawing so furiously that the striations on his lean cheeks blazed
like bloody stripes. "The mercy of the Prince of Roum!" he re-
peated. "The mercy—of the Prince of Roum—"
"It is customary for the unfortunate to seek the aid of the local
ruler," I said coldly.
"The Prince of Roum knows no mercy," Gormon told me.
"The Prince of Roum will feed you your own limbs to ease your
hunger!"
"Perhaps," Avluela put in, "we should try to find the Fliers'
Lodge. They'll feed us there."
"Not Gormon," I observed. "We have obligations to one an-
other."
"We could bring food out to him," she said.
"I prefer to visit the court first," I insisted. "Let us make sure
of our status. Afterward we can improvise living arrangements, if
we must."
She yielded, and we made our way to the palace of the Prince
of Roum, a massive building fronted by a colossal column-ringed
plaza, on the far side of the river that splits the city. In the plaza
we were accosted by mendicants of many sorts, some not even
Earthborn; something with ropy tendrils and a corrugated, nose-
less face thrust itself at me and jabbered for alms until Gormon
pushed it away, and moments later a second creature, equally
strange, its skin pocked with luminescent craters and its limbs
studded with eyes, embraced my knees and pleaded in the name of
the Will for my mercy. "I am only a poor Watcher," I said, in-

188 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
dicating my cart, "and am here to gain mercy myself." But the
being persisted, sobbing out its misfortunes in a blurred, feathery
voice, and in the end, to Gormon's immense disgust, I dropped a
few food tablets into the shelf-like pouch on its chest. Then we
muscled on toward the doors of the palace. At the portico a more
horrid sight presented itself: a maimed Flier, fragile limbs bent
and twisted, one wing half-unfolded and severely cropped, the
other missing altogether. The Flier rushed upon Avluela, called
her by a name not hers, moistened her leggings with tears so
copious that the fur of them matted and stained. "Sponsor me to
the lodge," he appealed. "They have turned me away because I
am crippled, but if you sponsor me—" Avluela explained that she
could do nothing, that she was a stranger to this lodge. The bro-
ken Flier would not release her, and Gormon with great delicacy
lifted him like the bundle of dry bones that he was and set him
aside. We stepped up onto the portico and at once were con-
fronted by a trio of soft-faced neuters, who asked our business and
admitted us quickly to the next line of barrier, which was manned
by a pair of wizened Indexers. Speaking in unison, they queried
us.
"We seek audience," I said. "A matter of mercy."
"The day of audience is four days hence," said the Indexer on
the right. "We will enter your request on the rolls."
"We have no place to sleep!" Avluela burst out. "We are hun-
gry! We-"
I hushed her. Gormon, meanwhile, was groping in the mouth of
his overpocket. Bright things glimmered in his hand: pieces of
gold, the eternal metal, stamped with hawk-nosed, bearded faces.
He had found them grubbing in the ruins. He tossed one coin to
the Indexer who had refused us. The man snapped it from the air,
rubbed his thumb roughly across its shining obverse, and dropped
it instantly into a fold of his garment. The second Indexer waited
expectantly. Smiling, Gormon gave him his coin.
"Perhaps," I said, "we can arrange for a special audience
within."
"Perhaps you can," said one of the Indexers. "Go through."
And so we passed into the nave of the palace itself and stood in
the great, echoing space, looking down the central aisle toward the
shielded throne-chamber at the apse. There were more beggars in
here—licensed ones holding hereditary concessions—and also
throngs of Pilgrims, Communicants, Rememberers, Musicians,

Nightwings 189
Scribes, and Indexers. I heard muttered prayers; I smelled the
scent of spicy incense; I felt the vibration of subterranean gongs.
In cycles past, this building had been a shrine of one of the old
religions—the Christers, Gormon told me, making me suspect once
more that he was a Rememberer masquerading as a Changeling—
and it still maintained something of its holy character even though
it served as Roum's seat of secular government. But how were we
to get to see the Prince? To my left I saw a small ornate chapel
which a line of prosperous-looking Merchants and Landholders
was slowly entering. Peering past them, I noted three skulls
mounted on an interrogation fixture—a memory-tank input—and
beside them, a burly Scribe. Telling Gormon and Avluela to wait
for me in the aisle, I joined the line.
It moved infrequently, and nearly an hour passed before I
reached the interrogation fixture. The skulls glared sightlessly at
me; within their sealed crania, nutrient fluids bubbled and gurgled,
caring for the dead, yet still functional, brains whose billion billion
synaptic units now served as incomparable mnemonic devices. The
Scribe seemed aghast to find a Watcher in this line, but before he
could challenge me I blurted, "I come as a stranger to claim the
Prince's mercy. I and my companions are without lodging. My
own guild has turned me away. What shall I do? How may I gain
an audience?"
"Come back in four days."
"I've slept on the road for more days than that. Now I must
rest more easily."
"A public inn-"
"But I am guilded!" I protested. "The public inns would not
admit me while my guild maintains an inn here, and my guild re-
fuses me because of some new regulation, and—you see my predic-
ament?"
In a wearied voice the Scribe said, "You may have application
for a special audience. It will be denied, but you may apply."
"Where?"
"Here. State your purpose."
I identified myself to the skulls by my public designation, listed
the names and status of my two companions, and explained my
case. All this was absorbed and transmitted to the ranks of brains
mounted somewhere in the depths of the city, and when I was
done the Scribe said, "If the application is approved, you will be
notified."

190 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"Meanwhile where shall I stay?"
"Close to the palace, I would suggest."
I understood. I could join that legion of unfortunates packing
the plaza. How many of them had requested some special favor of
the Prince and were still there, months or years later, waiting to be
summoned to the Presence? Sleeping on stone, begging for crusts,
living in foolish hope!
But I had exhausted my avenues. I returned to Gormon and
Avluela, told them of the situation, and suggested that we now at-
tempt to hunt whatever accommodations we could. Gormon, guild-
less, was welcome at any of the squalid public inns maintained
for his kind; Avluela could probably find residence at her own
guild's lodge; only I would have to sleep in the streets—and not for
the first time. But I hoped that we would not have to separate. I
had come to think of us as a family, strange thought though that
was for a Watcher.
As we moved toward the exit, my timepiece told me softly that
the hour of Watching had come round again. It was my obligation
and my privilege to tend to my Watching wherever I might be, re-
gardless of the circumstances, whenever my hour came round; and
so I halted, opened the cart, activated the equipment. Gormon and
Avluela stood beside me. I saw smirks and open mockery on the
faces of those who passed in and out of the palace; Watching was
not held in very high repute, for we had Watched so long, and the
promised enemy had never come. Yet one has one's duties, comic
though they may seem to others. What is a hollow ritual to some
is a life's work to others. Doggedly I forced myself into a state of
Watchfulness. The world melted away from me, and I plunged
into the heavens. The familiar joy engulfed me; and I searched the
familiar places, and some that were not so familiar, my amplified
mind leaping through the galaxies in wild swoops. Was an armada
massing? Were troops drilling for the conquest of Earth? Four
times a day I Watched, and the other members of my guild did the
same, each at slightly different hours, so that no moment went by
without some vigilant mind on guard. I do not believe that that
was a foolish calling.
When I came up from my trance, a brazen voice was crying,
"—for the Prince of Roum! Make way for the Prince of Roum!"
I blinked and caught my breath and fought to shake off the last
strands of my concentration. A gilded palanquin borne by a pha-
lanx of neuters had emerged from the rear of the palace and was

Nightwings 191
proceeding down the nave toward me. Four men in the elegant
costumes and brilliant masks of the guild of Masters flanked the
litter, and it was preceded by a trio of Changelings, squat and
broad, whose throats were so modified to imitate the sounding-
boxes of bullfrogs; they emitted a trumpetiike boom of majestic
sound as they advanced. It struck me as most strange that a prince
would admit Changelings to his service, even ones as gifted as
these.
My cart was blocking the progress of this magnificent proces-
sion, and hastily I struggled to close it and move it aside before
the parade swept down upon me. Age and fear made my fingers
tremble, and I could not make the seaiings properly; wThile I fum-
bled in increasing clumsiness, the strutting Changelings drew so
close that the blare of their throats was deafening, and Gormon
attempted to aid me, forcing me to hiss at him that it is forbidden
for anyone not of my guild to touch the equipment, I pushed him
away; and an instant later a vanguard of neuters descended on me
and prepared to scourge me from the spot with sparkling whips.
"In the Will's name,'51 cried, "I am a Watcher!"
And in antiphonai response came the deep, calm, enormous
reply, "Let him be. He is a Watcher."
Ail motion ceased. The Prince of Roum had spoken.
The neuters drew back. The Changelings halted their music.
The bearers of the Palanquin eased it to the floor. All those in the
nave of the palace had pulled back, save only Gormon and Avlu-
ela and myself. The shimmering chain-curtains of the palanquin
parted. Two of the Masters hurried forward and thrust their hands
through the sonic barrier within, offering aid to their monarch.
The barrier died away with a whimpering buzz.
The Prince of Roum appeared.
He was so young! He was nothing more than a boy, his hair full
and dark, his face unlined. But he had been born to rule, and for
all his youth he was as commanding as anyone I had ever seen.
His lips were thin and tightly compressed; his aquiline nose was
sharp and aggressive; his eyes, deep and cold, were infinite pools.
He wore the jeweled garments of the guild of Doniiiiators, but in-
cised on his cheek was the double-barred cross of the Defenders,
and around his neck he carried the dark shawl of the Remem-
berers. A Dominator may enroll in as many guilds as he pleases,
and it would be a strange thing for a Dominator not also to be a

192 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
Defender; but it startled me to find this prince a Rememberer as
well. That is not normally a guild for the fierce.
He looked at me with little interest and said, "You choose an
odd place to do your Watching, old man."
"The hour chose the place, sire," I replied. "I was here, and my
duty compelled me. I had no way of knowing that you were about
to come forth."
"Your Watching found no enemies?"
"None, sire."
I was about to press my luck, to take advantage of the unex-
pected appearance of the Prince to beg for his aid; but his interest
in me died like a guttering candle as I stood there, and I did not
dare call to him when his head had turned. He eyed Gormon a
long moment, frowning and tugging at his chin. Then his gaze fell
on Avluela. His eyes brightened. His jaw muscles flickered. His
delicate nostrils widened. "Come up here, little Flier," he said,
beckoning. "Are you this Watcher's friend?"
She nodded, terrified.
The Prince held out a hand to her and grasped; she floated up
onto the palanquin, and with a grin so evil it seemed a parody of
wickedness, the young Dominator drew her through the curtain.
Instantly a pair of Masters restored the sonic barrier, but the pro-
cession did not move on. I stood mute. Gormon beside me was
frozen, his powerful body rigid as a rod. I wheeled my cart to a
less conspicuous place. Long moments passed. The courtiers re-
mained silent, discreetly looking away from the palanquin.
At length the curtain parted once more. Avluela came stum-
bling out, her face pale, her eyes blinking rapidly. She seemed
dazed. Streaks of sweat gleamed on her cheeks. She nearly fell,
and a neuter caught her and swung her down to floor level. Be-
neath her jacket her wings were partly erect, giving her a hunch-
backed look and telling me that she was in great emotional dis-
tress. In ragged, sliding steps she came to us, quivering, wordless;
she darted a glance at me and flung herself against Gormon's
broad chest.
The bearers lifted the palanquin. The Prince of Roum went out
from his palace.
When he was gone, Avluela stammered hoarsely, "The Prince
has granted us lodging in the royal hostelry!"

Nightwings 193
4
The hostelkeepers, of course, would not believe us.
Guests of the Prince were housed in the royal hostelry, which
was to the rear of the palace in a small garden of frostflowers and
blossoming ferns. The usual inhabitants of such a hostelry were
Masters and an occasional Dominator; sometimes a particularly
important Rememberer on an errand of research would win a
niche there, or some highly placed Defender visiting for purposes
of strategic planning. To house a Flier in a royal hostelry was
distinctly odd^ to admit a Watcher was unlikely; to take in a
Changeling or some other guildless person was improbable beyond
comprehension. When we presented ourselves, therefore, we were
met by Servitors whose attitude was at first one of high good
humor at our joke, then of irritation, finally of scorn. "Get away,"
they told us ultimately. "Scum! Rabble!"
Avluela said in a grave voice, "The Prince has granted us lodg-
ing here, and you may not refuse us."
"Away! Away!"
One snaggle-toothed Servitor produced a neural truncheon and
brandished it in Gormon's face, passing a foul remark about his
guildlessness. Gormon slapped the truncheon from the man's
grasp, oblivious to the painful sting, and kicked him in the gut, so
that he coiled and fell over, puking. Instantly a throng of neuters
came rushing from within the hostelry. Gormon seized another of
the Servitors and hurled him into the midst of them, turning them
into a muddled mob. Wild shouts and angry cursing cries attracted
the attention of a venerable Scribe who waddled to the door,
bellowed for silence, and interrogated us. "That's easily checked,"
he said, when Avluela had told the story, To a Servitor he said
contemptuously, "Send a think to the Indexers, fast!"
In time the confusion was untangled and we were admitted. We
were given separate but adjoining rooms. I had never known such
luxury before, and perhaps never shall again. The rooms were
long, high, and deep. One entered them through telescopic pits
keyed to one's own thermal output, to assure privacy. Lights
glowed at the resident's merest nod, for hanging from ceiling
globes and nestling in cupolas on the walls were spicules of slave-
light from one of the Brightstar worlds, trained through suffering

194 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
to obey such commands. The windows came and went at the
dweller's whim; when not in use, they were concealed by
streamers of quasi-sentient outworld gauzes, which not only were
decorative in their own right, but which functioned as monitors to
produce delightful scents according to requisitioned patterns. The
rooms were equipped with individual thinking caps connected to
the main memory banks. They likewise had conduits that sum-
moned Servitors, Scribes, Indexers, or Musicians as required. Of
course, a man of my own humble guild would not deign to make
use of other human beings that way, out of fear of their glowering
resentment; but in any case I had little need of them.
I did not ask of Avluela what had occurred in the Prince's
palanquin to bring us such bounty. I could well imagine, as could
Gormon, whose barely suppressed inner rage was eloquent of his
never-admitted love for my pale, slender little Flier.
We settled in. I placed my cart beside the window, draped it
with gauzes, and left it in readiness for my next period of Watch-
ing. I cleaned my body of grime while entities mounted in the wall
sang me to peace. Later I ate. Afterwards Avluela came to me,
refreshed and relaxed, and sat beside me in my room as we talked
of our experiences. Gormon did not appear for hours. I thought
that perhaps he had left this hostelry altogether, finding the atmos-
phere too rarefied for him, and had sought company among his
own guildless kind. But at twilight, Avluela and I walked in the
cloistered courtyard of the hostelry and mounted a ramp to watch
the stars emerge in Roum's sky, and Gormon was there. With him
was a lanky and emaciated man in a Rememberer's shawl; they
were talking in low tones.
Gormon nodded to me and said, "Watcher, meet my new
friend."
The emaciated one fingered his shawl. "I am the Rememberer
Basil," he intoned, in a voice as thin as a fresco that has been
peeled from its wall. "I have come from Perris to delve into the
mysteries of Roum. I shall be here many years."
"The Rememberer has fine stories to tell," said Gormon. "He is
among the foremost of his guild. As you approached, he was
describing to me the techniques by which the past is revealed.
They drive a trench through the strata of Third Cycle deposits,
you see, and with vacuum cores they lift the molecules of earth to
lay bare the ancient layers."
"We have found," Basil said, "the catacombs of Imperial

Nightwings 195
Roum, and the rubble of the Time of Sweeping, the books in-
scribed on slivers of white metal, written toward the close of the
Second Cycle. All these go to Perris for examination and
classification and decipherment; then they return. Does the past
interest you, Watcher?"
"To some extent." I smiled. "This Changeling here shows much
more fascination for it. I sometimes suspect his authenticity.
Would you recognize a Rememberer in disguise?"
Basil scrutinized Gormon; he lingered over the bizarre features,
the excessively muscular frame. "He is no Rememberer," he said
at length "But I agree that he has antiquarian interests. He has
asked me many profound questions."
"Such as?*
"He wishes to know the origin of guilds. He asks the name of
the genetic surgeon who crafted the first true-breeding Fliers. He
wonders why there are Changelings, and if they are truly under
the curse of the Will."
"And do you have answers for these?" I asked.
"For some," said Basil. "For some."
"The origin of guilds?"
"To give structure and meaning to a society that has suffered
defeat and destruction," said the Rememberer. "At the end of the
Second Cycle all was in flux. No man knew his rank nor his pur-
pose. Through our world strode haughty outworlders who looked
upon us all as worthless. It was necessary to establish fixed frames
of reference by which one man might know his value beside an-
other. So the first guilds appeared: Dominates, Masters, Mer-
chants, Landholders, Vendors and Servitors. Then came Scribes,
Musicians, Clowns and Transporters. Afterwards Indexers became
necessary, and then Watchers and Defenders. When the Years of
Magic gave us Fliers and Changelings, those guilds were added,
and then the guildless ones, the neuters, were produced, so that—"
"But surely the Changelings are guildless too!" said Avluela.
The Rememberer looked at her for the first time. "Who are
you, child?"
"Avluela of the Fliers. I travel with this Watcher and this
Changeling."
Basil said, "As I have been telling the Changeling here, in the
early days his kind was guilded. The guild was dissolved a thou-
sand years ago by the order of the Council of Dommators after an
attempt by a disreputable Changeling faction to seize control of

196 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
the holy places of Jorslem, and since that time Changelings have
been guildless, ranking only above neuters."
"I never knew that," I said.
"You are no Rememberer," said Basil smugly. "It is our craft
to uncover the past."
"True. True."
Gormon said, "And today, how many guilds are there?"
Discomfited, Basil replied vaguely, "At least a hundred, my
friend. Some are quite small; some are local. I am concerned only
with the original guilds and their immediate successors; what has
happened in the past few hundred years is in the province of
others. Shall I requisition an information for you?"
"Never mind," Gormon said. "It was only an idle question."
"Your curiosity is well developed," said the Rememberer.
"I find the world and all it contains extremely fascinating. Is
this sinful?"
"It is strange," said Basil. "The guildless rarely look beyond
their own horizons."
A Servitor appeared. With a mixture of awe and contempt he
genuflected before Avluela and said, "The Prince has returned. He
desires your company in the palace at this time."
Terror glimmered in Avluela's eyes. But to refuse was incon-
ceivable. "Shall I come with you?" she asked.
"Please. You must be robed and perfumed. He wishes you to
come to him with your wings open, as well."
Avluela nodded. The Servitor led her away.
We remained on the ramp a while longer; the Rememberer
Basil talked of the old days of Roum, and I listened, and Gormon
peered into the gathering darkness. Eventually, his throat dry, the
Rememberer excused himself and moved solemnly away. A few
moments later, in the courtyard below us, a door opened and
Avluela emerged, walking as though she were of the guild of Som-
nambulists, not of Fliers. She was nude under transparent dra-
peries, and her fragile body gleamed ghostly white in the star-
beams. Her wings were spread and fluttered slowly in a somber
systole and diastole. One Servitor grasped each of her elbows:
they seemed to be propelling her toward the palace as though she
were but a dreamed facsimile of herself and not a real woman.
"Fly, Avluela, fly," Gormon growled. "Escape while you can!"
She disappeared into a side entrance of the palace.

Nightwings 197
The Changeling looked at me. "She has sold herself to the
Prince to provide lodging for us."
"So it seems."
"I could smash down that palace!"
"You love her?"
"It should be obvious."
"Cure yourself," I advised. "You are an unusual man, but still
a Flier is not for you. Particularly a Flier who has shared the bed
of the Prince of Roum."
"She goes from my arms to his."
I was staggered. "You've known her?"
"More than once," he said, smiling sadly. "At the moment of
ecstasy her wfngs thrash like leaves in a storm."
I gripped the railing of the ramp so that I would not tumble
into the courtyard. The stars whirled overhead; the old moon and
its two blank-faced consorts leaped and bobbed. I was shaken
without fully understanding the cause of my emotion. Was it
wrath that Gormon had dared to violate a canon of the law? Was
it a manifestation of those pseudo-parental feelings I had toward
Avluela? Or was it mere envy of Gormon for daring to commit a
sin beyond my capacity, though not beyond my desires?
I said, "They could burn your brain for that. They could mince
your soul. And now you make me an accessory."
"What of it? That Prince commands, and he gets—but others
have been there before him. I had to tell someone."
"Enough. Enough."
"Will we see her again?"
"Princes tire quickly of their women. A few days, perhaps a
single night—then he will throw her back to us. And perhaps then
we shall have to leave this hostelry." I sighed. "At least we'll have
known it a few nights more than we deserved."
"Where will you go then?" Gormon asked.
"I will stay in Roum awhile."
"Even if you sleep in the streets? There does not seem to be
much demand for Watchers here."
"I'll manage," I said. "Then I may go toward Perris."
"To learn from the Rememberers?"
"To see Perris. What of you? What do you want in Roum?"
"Avluela."
"Stop that talk!"
"Very well," he said, and his smile was bitter. "But I will stay

198 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
here until the Prince is through with her. Then she will be mine,
and we'll find ways to survive. The guildless are resourceful. They
have to be. Maybe we'll scrounge lodgings in Roum awhile, and
then follow you to Perris. If you're willing to travel with monsters
and faithless Fliers."
I shrugged. "We'll see about that when the time comes."
"Have you ever been in the company of a Changeling before?"
"Not often. Not for long."
"I'm honored." He drummed on the parapet. "Don't cast me
off, Watcher. I have a reason for wanting to stay with you."
"Which is?"
"To see your face on the day your machines tell you that the
invasion of Earth has begun."
I let myself sag forward, shoulders drooping. "You'll stay with
me a long time, then."
"Don't you believe the invasion is coming?"
"Some day. Not soon."
Gormon chuckled. "You're wrong. It's almost here."
"You don't amuse me."
"What is it, Watcher? Have you lost your faith? It's been
known for a thousand years: another race covets Earth and owns
it by treaty, and will some day come to collect. That much was de-
cided at the end of the Second Cycle."
"I know all that, and I am no Rememberer." Then I turned to
him and spoke words I never thought I would say aloud. "For
twice your lifetime, Changeling, I've listened to the stars and done
my Watching. Something done that often loses meaning. Say your
own name ten thousand times and it will be an empty sound. I
have Watched, and Watched well, and in the dark hours of the
night I sometimes think I Watch for nothing, that I have wasted
my life. There is a pleasure in Watching, but perhaps there is no
real purpose."
His hand encircled my wrist. "Your confession is as shocking as
mine. Keep your faith, Watcher. The invasion comes!"
"How could you possibly know?"
"The guildless also have their skills."
The conversation troubled me. I said, "Is it painful to be guild-
less?"
"One grows reconciled. And there are certain freedoms to com-
pensate for the lack of status. I may speak freely to all."
"I notice."

Nightwings 199
"I move freely. I am always sure of food and lodging, though
the food may be rotten and the lodging poor. Women are attracted
to me despite all prohibitions. Because of them, perhaps. I am un-
troubled by ambitions."
"Never desire to rise above your rank?"
"Never."
"You might have been happier as a Rememberer."
"I am happy now. I can have a Rememberer's pleasures with-
out his responsibility."
"How smug you are!" I cried. "To make a virtue of guild-
lessness!"
"How else does one endure the weight of the Will?" He looked
toward the palace. "The humble rise. The mighty fall. Take this as
prophecy, Watcher: that lusty Prince in there will know more of
life before summer comes. I'll rip out his eyes for taking Avluela!"
"Strong words. You bubble with treason tonight."
"Take it as prophecy."
"You can't get close to him," I said. Then, irritated for taking
his foolishness seriously, I added, "And why blame him? He only
does as princes do. Blame the girl for going to him. She might
have refused."
"And lost her wings. Or died. No, she had no choice. I do!" In
a sudden, terrible gesture the Changeling held out thumb and
forefinger, double-jointed, long-nailed, and plunged them forward
into imagined eyes. "Wait," he said. "You'll see!"
In the courtyard two Chronomancers appeared, set up the ap-
paratus of their guild, and lit tapers by which to read the shape of
tomorrow. A sickly odor of pallid smoke rose to my nostrils. I had
now lost further desire to speak with the Changeling.
"It grows late," I said. "I need rest, and soon I must do my
Watching."
"Watch carefully," Gormon told me.
5
At night in my chamber I performed my fourth and last Watch
of that long day, and for the first time in my life I detected an
anomaly. I could not interpret it. It was an obscure sensation, a
mingling of tastes and sounds, a feeling of being in contact with
some colossal mass. Worried, I clung to my instruments far longer

200 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
than usual, but perceived no more clearly at the end of my seance
than at its commencement.
Afterward I wondered about my obligations.
Watchers are trained from childhood to be swift to sound the
alarm; and the alarm must be sounded when the Watcher judges
the world in peril. Was I now obliged to notify the Defenders?
Four times in my life the alarm had been given, on each occasion
in error; and each Watcher who had thus touched off a false mobi-
lization had suffered a fearful loss of status. One had contributed
his brain to the memory banks; one had become a neuter out of
shame; one had smashed his instruments and gone to live among
the guildless; and one, vainly attempting to continue in his profes-
sion, had discovered himself mocked by all his comrades. I saw no
virtue in scorning one who had delivered a false alarm, for was it
not preferable for a Watcher to cry out too soon than not at all?
But those were the customs of our guild, and I was constrained by
them.
I evaluated my position and decided that I did not have valid
grounds for an alarm.
I reflected that Gormon had placed suggestive ideas in my mind
that evening. I might possibly be reacting only to his jeering talk
of imminent invasion.
I could not act. I dared not jeopardize my standing by hasty
outcry. I mistrusted my own emotional state.
I gave no alarm.
Seething, confused, my soul roiling, I closed my cart and let
myself sink into a drugged sleep.
At dawn I woke and rushed to the window, expecting to find in-
vaders in the streets. But all was still; a winter grayness hung over
the courtyard, and sleepy Servitors pushed passive neuters about.
Uneasily I did my first Watching of the day, and to my relief the
strangenesses of the night before did not return, although I had it
in my mind that my sensitivity is always greater at night than upon
arising.
I ate and went to the courtyard. Gormon and Avluela were al-
ready there. She looked fatigued and downcast, depleted by her
night with the Prince of Roum, but I said nothing to her about it.
Gormon, slouching disdainfully against a wall embellished with
the shells of radiant mollusks, said to me, "Did your Watching go
well?"
"Well enough."

Nightwings 201
"What of the day?"
"Out to roam Roum," I said. "Will you come? Avluela?
Gormon?"
"Surely," he said, and she gave a faint nod; and, like the tour-
ists we were, we set off to inspect the splendid city of Roum.
Gormon acted as our guide to the jumbled pasts of Roum, bely-
ing his claim never to have been here before. As well as any
Rememberer he described the things we saw as we walked the
winding streets. All the scattered levels of thousands of years were
exposed. We saw the power domes of the Second Cycle, and the
Colosseum where at an unimaginably early date man and beast
contended like jungle creatures. In the broken hull of that building
of horrors Gormon told us of the savagery of that unimaginably
ancient time. "They fought," he said, "naked before huge throngs.
With bare hands men challenged beasts called lions, great hairy
cats with swollen heads; and when the lion lay in its gore, the vic-
tor turned to the Prince of Roum and asked to be pardoned for
whatever crime it was that had cast him into the arena. And if he
had fought well, the Prince made a gesture with his hand, and the
man was freed." Gormon made the gesture for us: a thumb
upraised and jerked backward over the right shoulder several
times. "But if the man had shown cowardice, or if the lion had
distinguished itself in the manner of its dying, the Prince made an-
other gesture, and the man was condemned to be slain by a second
beast." Gormon showed us that gesture too: the middle finger jut-
ting upward from a clenched fist and lifted in a short sharp thrust.
"How are these things known?" Avluela asked, but Gormon
pretended not to hear her.
We saw the line of fusion-pylons built early in the Third Cycle
to draw energy from the world's core; they were still functioning,
although stained and corroded. We saw the shattered stump of a
Second Cycle weather machine, still a mighty column at least
twenty men high. We saw a hill on which white marble relics of
First Cycle Roum sprouted like pale clumps of winter
deathflowers. Penetrating toward the inner part of the city, we
came upon the embankment of defensive amplifiers waiting in
readiness to hurl the full impact of the Will against invaders. We
viewed a market where visitors from the stars haggled with peas-
ants for excavated fragments of antiquity. Gormon strode into the
crowd and made several purchases. We came to a flesh-house for
travelers from afar, where one could buy anything from quasi-life

202 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
to mounds of passion-ice. We ate at a small restaurant by the edge
of the River Tver, where guildless ones were served without cere-
mony, and at Gormon's insistence we dined on mounds of a soft
doughy substance and drank a tart yellow wine, local specialties.
Afterward we passed through a covered arcade in whose many
aisles plump Vendors peddled star-goods, costly trinkets from
Afreek, and the flimsy constructs of the local Manufactories. Just
beyond we emerged in a plaza that contained a fountain in the
shape of a boat, and to the rear of this rose a flight of cracked and
battered stone-stairs ascending to a zone of rubble and weeds.
Gormon beckoned, and we scrambled into this dismal area, then
passed rapidly through it to a place where a sumptuous palace, by
its looks early Second Cycle or even First, brooded over a sloping
vegetated hill.
"They say this is the center of the world," Gormon declared.
"In Jorslem one finds another place that also claims the honor.
They mark the spot here by a map."
"How can the world have one center," Avluela asked, "when it
is round?"
Gormon laughed. We went in. Within, in wintry darkness, there
stood a colossal jeweled globe lit by some inner glow.
"Here is your world," said Gormon, gesturing grandly.
"Oh!" Avluela gasped. "Everything! Everything is here!"
The map was a masterpiece of craftsmanship. It showed natural
contours and elevations, its seas seemed deep liquid pools, its des-
erts were so parched as to make thirst spring in one's mouth, its
cities swirled with vigor and life. I beheld the continents, Eyrop,
Afreek, Ais, Stralya. I saw the vastness of Earth Ocean. I trav-
ersed the golden span of Land Bridge, which I had crossed so
toilfully on foot not long before. Avluela rushed forward and
pointed to Roum, to Agupt, to Jorslem, to Perris. She tapped the
globe at the high mountains north of Hind and said softly, "This
is where I was born, where the ice lives, where the mountains
touch the moons. Here is where the Fliers have their kingdom.*1
She ran a finger westward toward Fars and beyond it into the ter-
rible Arban Desert, and on to Agupt. "This is where I flew. By
night, when I left my girlhood. We all must fly, and I flew here. A
hundred times I thought I would die. Here, here in the desert, sand
in my throat as I flew, sand beating against my wings—I was
forced down, I lay naked on the hot sand for days, and another
Flier saw me, he came down to me and pitied me, and lifted me

Nightwings 203
up, and when I was aloft my strength returned, and we flew on to-
ward Agupt. And he died over the sea, his life stopped though he
was young and strong, and he fell down into the sea, and I flew
down to be with him, and the water was hot even at night. I
drifted, and morning came, and I saw the living stones growing
like trees in the water, and the fish of many colors, and they came
to him and pecked at his flesh as he floated with his wings out-
spread on the water, and I left him, I thrust him down to rest there,
and I rose, and I flew on to Agupt, alone, frightened, and there I
met you, Watcher." Timidly she smiled to me. "Show us the place
where you were young, Watcher."
Painfully, for I was suddenly stiff at the knees, I hobbled to the
far side of the^globe. Avluela followed me; Gormon hung back, as
though not interested at all. I pointed to the scattered islands ris-
ing in two long strips from Earth Ocean—the remnants of the Lost
Continents.
"Here," I said, indicating my native island in the west. "I was
born here."
"So far away!" Avluela cried.
"And so long ago," I said. "In the middle of the Second Cycle,
it sometimes seems to me."
"No! That is not possible!" But she looked at me as though it
might just be true that I was thousands of years old.
I smiled and touched her satiny cheek. "It only seems that way
to me," I said.
"When did you leave your home?"
"When I was twice your age," I said. "I came first to here—" I
indicated the eastern group of islands. "I spent a dozen years as a
Watcher on Palash. Then the Will moved me to cross Earth
Ocean to Afreek. I came. I lived awhile in the hot countries. I
went on to Agupt. I met a certain small Flier." Falling silent, I
looked a long while at the islands that had been my home, and
within my mind my image changed from the gaunt and eroded
thing I now had become, and I saw myself young and well-fleshed,
climbing the green mountains and swimming in the chill sea, doing
my Watching at the rim of a white beach hammered by surf.
While I brooded Avluela turned away from me to Gormon and
said, "Now you. Show us where you came from, Changeling!"
Gormon shrugged. "The place does not appear to be on this
globe."
"But that's impossible!"

204 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"Is it?" he asked.
She pressed him, but he evaded her, and we passed through a
side exit and into the streets of Roum.
I was growing tired, but Avluela hungered for this city and
wished to devour it all in an afternoon, and so we went on through
a maze of interlocking streets, through a zone of sparkling man-
sions of Masters and Merchants, and through a foul den of Servi-
tors and Vendors that extended into subterranean catacombs, and
to a place where Clowns and Musicians resorted, and to another
where the guild of Somnambulists offered its doubtful wares. A
bloated female Somnambulist begged us to come inside and buy
the truth that comes with trances, and Avluela urged us to go, but
Gormon shook his head and I smiled, and we moved on. Now we
were at the edge of a park close to the city's core. Here the citi-
zens of Roum promenaded with an energy rarely seen in hot
Agupt, and we joined the parade.
"Look there!" Avluela said. "How bright it is!"
She pointed toward the shining arc of a dimensional sphere
enclosing some relic of the ancient city; shading my eyes, I could
make out a weathered stone wall within, and a knot of people.
Gormon said, "It is the Mouth of Truth."
"What is that?" Avluela asked.
"Come. See."
A line progressed into the sphere. We joined it and soon were
at the lip of the interior, peering at the timeless region just across
the threshold. Why this relic and so few others had been accorded
such special protection I did not know, and I asked Gormon,
whose knowledge was so unaccountably as profound as any Re-
memberer's, and he replied, "Because this is the realm of cer-
tainty, where what one says is absolutely congruent with what ac-
tually is the case."
"I don't understand," said Avluela.
"It is impossible to lie in this place," Gormon told her. "Can
you imagine any relic more worthy of protection?" He stepped
across the entry duct, blurring as he did so, and I followed him
quickly within. Avluela hesitated. It was a long moment before
she entered; pausing a moment on the very threshold, she seemed
buffeted by the wind that blew along the line of demarcation be-
tween the outer world and the pocket universe in which we stood.
An inner compartment held the Mouth of Truth itself. The line
extended toward it, and a solemn Indexer was controlling the flow

Nightwings 205
of entry to the tabernacle. It was a while before we three were
permitted to go in. We found ourselves before the ferocious head
of a monster in high relief, affixed to an ancient wall pockmarked
by time. The monster's jaws gaped; the open mouth was a dark
and sinister hole. Gormon nodded, inspecting it, as though he
seemed pleased to find it exactly as he had thought it would be.
"What do we do?" Avluela asked.
Gormon said, "Watcher, put your right hand into the Mouth of
Truth,"
Frowning, I complied.
"Now," said Gormon, "one of us asks a question. You must
answer it. If you speak anything but the truth, the mouth will
close and sever your hand."
"No!" Avluela cried.
I stared uneasily at the stone jaws rimming my wrist. A
Watcher without both his hands is a man without a craft; in Sec-
ond Cycle days one might have obtained a prosthesis more artful
than one's original hand, but the Second Cycle had long ago been
concluded, and such niceties were not to be purchased on Earth
nowadays.
"How is such a thing possible?" I asked.
"The Will is unusually strong in these precincts," Gormon re-
plied. "It distinguishes sternly between truth and untruth. To the
rear of this wall sleeps a trio of Somnambulists through whom the
Will speaks, and they control the Mouth. Do you fear the Will,
Watcher?"
"I fear my own tongue."
"Be brave. Never has a lie been told before this wall. Never has
a hand been lost."
"Go ahead, then," I said. "Who will ask me a question?"
"I," said Gormon. "Tell me, Watcher: all pretense aside, would
you say that a life spent in Watching has been a life spent wisely?"
I was silent a long moment, rotating my thoughts, eyeing the
jaws.
At length I said, "To devote oneself to vigilance on behalf of
one's fellow man is perhaps the noblest purpose one can serve."
"Careful!" Gormon cried in alarm.
"I am not finished," I said.
"Go on."
"But to devote oneself to vigilance when the enemy is an imagi-
nary one is idle, and to congratulate oneself for looking long and

206 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
well for a foe that is not coming is foolish and sinful. My life has
been a waste."
The jaws of the Mouth of Truth did not quiver.
I removed my hand. I stared at it as though it had newly
sprouted from my wrist. I felt suddenly several cycles old. Avlu-
ela, her eyes wide, her hands to her lips, seemed shocked by what
I had said. My own words appeared to hang congealed in the air
before the hideous idol.
"Spoken honestly," said Gormon, "although without much
mercy for yourself. You judge yourself too harshly, Watcher."
"I spoke to save my hand," I said. "Would you have had me
lie?"
He smiled. To Avluela the Changeling said, "Now it's your
turn."
Visibly frightened, the little Flier approached the Mouth. Her
dainty hand trembled as she inserted it between the slabs of cold
stone. I fought back an urge to rush toward her and pull her free
of that devilish grimacing head.
"Who will question her?" I asked.
"I," said Gormon.
Avluela's wings stirred faintly beneath her garments. Her face
grew pale; her nostrils flickered; her upper lip slid over the lower
one. She stood slouched against the wall and stared in horror at
the termination of her arm. Outside the chamber vague faces
peered at us; lips moved in what no doubt were expressions of im-
patience over our lengthy visit to the Mouth; but we heard noth-
ing. The atmosphere around us was warm and clammy, with a
musty tang like that which would come from a well that was
driven through the structure of Time.
Gormon said slowly, "This night past you allowed your body to
be possessed by the Prince of Roum. Before that, you granted
yourself to the Changeling Gormon, although such liaisons are
forbidden by custom and law. Much prior to that you were the
mate of a Flier, now deceased. You may have had other men, but
I know nothing of them, and for the purposes of my question they
are not relevant. Tell me this, Avluela: which of the three gave
you the most intense physical pleasure, which of the three aroused
your deepest emotions, and which of the three would you choose
as a mate, if you were choosing a mate?"
I wanted to protest that the Changeling had asked her three
questions, not one, and so had taken unfair advantage. But I had

Nightwings 207
no chance to speak, because Avluela replied unfalteringly, hand
wedged deep into the Mouth of Truth, "The Prince of Roum gave
me greater pleasure of the body than I had ever known before, but
he is cold and cruel, and I despise him. My dead Flier I loved
more deeply than any person before or since, but he was weak,
and I would not have wanted a weakling as a mate. You, Gormon,
seem almost a stranger to me even now, and I feel that I know
neither your body nor your soul, and yet, though the gulf between
us is so wide, it is you with whom I would spend my days to
come."
She drew her hand from the Mouth of Truth.
"Well spoken!" said Gormon, though the accuracy of her words
had clearly wounded as well as pleased him. "Suddenly you find
eloquence, eh, when the circumstances demand it. And now the
turn is mine to risk my hand."
He neared the Mouth. I said, "You have asked the first two
questions. Do you wish to finish the job and ask the third as
well?"
"Hardly," he said. He made a negligent gesture with his free
hand. "Put your heads together and agree on a joint question."
Avluela and I conferred. With uncharacteristic forwardness she
proposed a question; and since it was the one I would have asked,
I accepted it and told her to ask it.
She said, "When we stood before the globe of the world, Gor-
mon, I asked you to show me the place where you were born, and
you said you were unable to find it on the map. That seemed most
strange. Tell me now: are you what you say you are, a Changeling
who wanders the world?"
He replied, "I am not."
In a sense he had satisfied the question as Avluela had phrased
it; but it went without saying that his reply was inadequate, and he
kept his hand in the Mouth of Truth as he continued, "I did not
show my birthplace to you on the globe because I was born no-
where on this globe, but on a world of a star I must not name. I
am no Changeling in your meaning of the word, though by some
definitions I am, for my body is somewhat disguised, and on my
own world I wear a different flesh. I have lived here ten years."
"What was your purpose in coming to Earth?" I asked.
"I am obliged only to answer one question," said Gormon.
Then he smiled. "But I give you an answer anyway: I was sent to
Earth in the capacity of a military observer, to prepare the way

208 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
for the invasion for which you have Watched so long and in which
you have ceased to believe, and which will be upon you in a mat-
ter now of some hours."
"Lies!" I bellowed. "Lies!"
Gormon laughed. And drew his hand from the Mouth of Truth,
intact, unharmed.
6
Numb with confusion, I fled with my cart of instruments from
that gleaming sphere and emerged into a street suddenly cold and
dark. Night had come with winter's swiftness; it was almost the
ninth hour, and almost the time for me to Watch once more.
Gormon's mockery thundered in my brain. He had arranged ev-
erything: he had maneuvered us in to the Mouth of Truth; he had
wrung a confession of lost faith from me and a confession of a
different sort from Avluela; he had mercilessly volunteered infor-
mation he need not have revealed, spoken words calculated to
split me to the core.
Was the Mouth of Truth a fraud? Could Gormon lie and
emerge unscathed?
Never since I first took up my tasks had I Watched at anything
but my appointed hours. This was a time of crumbling realities; I
could not wait for the ninth hour to come round; crouching in the
windy street, I opened my cart, readied my equipment, and sank
like a diver into Watchfulness.
My amplified consciousness roared toward the stars.
Godlike I roamed infinity. I felt the rush of the solar wind, but I
was no Flier to be hurled to destruction by that pressure, and I
soared past it, beyond the reach of those angry particles of light,
into the blackness at the edge of the sun's dominion. Down upon
me there beat a different pressure.
Starships coming near.
Not the tourist lines bringing sightseers to gape at our dimin-
ished world. Not the registered mercantile transport vessels, nor
the scoopships that collect the interstellar vapors, nor the resort
craft on their hyperbolic orbits.
These were military craft, dark, alien, menacing. I could not tell
their number; I knew only that they sped Earthward at many
lights, nudging a cone of deflected energies before them; and it

Nightwings 209
was that cone that I had sensed, that I had felt also the night be-
fore, booming into my mind through my instruments, engulfing me
like a cube of crystal through which stress patterns play and shine.
All my life I had watched for this.
I had been trained to sense it. I had prayed that I never would
sense it, and then in my emptiness I had prayed that I would sense
it, and then I had ceased to believe in it. And then by grace of the
Changeling Gormon, I had sensed it after all, Watching ahead of
my hour, crouching in a cold Roumish street just outside the
Mouth of Truth.
In his training, a Watcher is instructed to break from his
Watchfulness as«soon as his observations are confirmed by a care-
ful check, so that he can sound the alarm. Obediently I made my
check by shifting from one channel to another to another, trian-
gulating and still picking up that foreboding sensation of titanic
force rushing upon Earth at unimaginable speed.
Either I was deceived, or the invasion was come. But I could
not shake from my trance to give the alarm.
Lingeringly, lovingly, I drank in the sensory data for what
seemed like hours. I fondled my equipment; I drained from it the
total affirmation of faith that my readings gave me. Dimly I
warned myself that I was wasting vital time, that it was my duty to
leave this lewd caressing of destiny to summon the Defenders.
And at last I burst free of Watchfulness and returned to the
world I was guarding.
Avluela was beside me; she was dazed, terrified, her knuckles to
her teeth, her eyes blank.
"Watcher! Watcher, do you hear me? What's happening?
What's going to happen?"
"The invasion," I said. "How long was I under?"
"About half a minute. I don't know. Your eyes were closed. I
thought you were dead."
"Gormon was speaking the truth! The invasion is almost here.
Where is he? Where did he go?"
"He vanished as we came away from that place with the
Mouth," Avluela whispered. "Watcher, I'm frightened. I feel ev-
erything collapsing. I have to fly—I can't stay down here now!"
"Wait," I said, clutching at her and missing her arm. "Don't go
now. First I have to give the alarm, and then—"
But she was already stripping off her clothing. Bare to the

210 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
waist, her pale body gleamed in the evening light, while about us
people were rushing to and fro in ignorance of all that was about
to occur. I wanted to keep Avluela beside me, but I could delay
no longer in giving the alarm, and I turned away from her, back to
my cart.
As though caught up in a dream born of overripe longings I
reached for the node that I had never used, the one that would
send forth a planetwide alert to the Defenders.
Had the alarm already been given? Had some other Watcher
sensed what I had sensed, and, less paralyzed by bewilderment
and doubt, performed a Watcher's final task?
No. No. For then I would be hearing the sirens' shriek rever-
berating from the orbiting loudspeakers above the city.
I touched the node. From the corner of my eye I saw Avluela,
free of her encumbrances now, kneeling to say her words, filling
her tender wings with strength. In a moment she would be in the
air, beyond my grasp.
With a single swift tug I activated the alarm.
In that instant I became aware of a burly figure striding toward
us. Gormon, I thought; and as I rose from my equipment I reached
out to him; I wanted to seize him and hold him fast. But he who
approached was not Gormon but some officious dough-faced Ser-
vitor who said to Avluela, "Go easy, Flier, let your wings drop.
The Prince of Roum sends me to bring you to his presence."
He grappled with her. Her little breasts heaved; her eyes flashed
anger at him.
"Let go of me! I'm going to fly!"
"The Prince of Roum summons you," the Servitor said, enclos-
ing her in his heavy arms.
"The Prince of Roum will have other distractions tonight," I
said. "He'll have no need of her."
As I spoke, the sirens began to sing from the skies.
The Servitor released her. His mouth worked noiselessly for an
instant; he made one of the protective gestures of the Will; he
looked skyward and grunted, "The alarm! Who gave the alarm?
You, old Watcher?"
Figures rushed about insanely in the streets.
Avluela, freed, sped past me—on foot, her wings but half-furled
—and was swallowed up in the surging throng. Over the terrifying
sound of the sirens came booming messages from the public an-
nunciators, giving instructions for defense and safety. A lanky

Nightwings 211
man with the mark of the guild of Defenders upon his cheek
rushed up to me, shouted words too incoherent to be understood,
and sped on down the street. The world seemed to have gone
mad.
Only I remained calm. I looked to the skies, half-expecting to
see the invaders' black ships already hovering above the towers of
Roum. But I saw nothing except the hovering nightlights and the
other objects one might expect overhead.
"Gormon?" I called. "Avluela?"
I was alone.
A strange emptiness swept over me. I had given the alarm; the
invaders were Qn their way; I had lost my occupation. There was
no need of Watchers now. Almost lovingly I touched the worn
cart that had been my companion for so many years. I ran my
fingers over its stained and pitted instruments; and then I looked
away, abandoning it, and went down the dark streets cartless,
burdenless, a man whose life had found and lost meaning in the
same instant. And about me raged chaos.
7
It was understood that when the moment of Earth's final battle
arrived, all guilds would be mobilized, the Watchers alone ex-
empted. We who had manned the perimeter of defense for so long
had no part in the strategy of combat; we were discharged by the
giving of a true alarm. Now it was the time of the guild of De-
fenders to show its capabilities. They had planned for half a cycle
what they would do in time of war. What plans would they call
forth now? What deeds would they direct?
My only concern was to return to the royal hostelry and wait
out the crisis. It was hopeless to think of finding Avluela, and I
pummeled myself savagely for having let her slip away, naked
and without a protector, in that confused moment. Where would
she go? Who would shield her?
A fellow Watcher, pulling his cart madly along, nearly collided
with me. "Careful!" I snapped. He looked up, breathless, stunned.
"Is it true?" he asked. "The alarm?"
"Can't you hear?"
"But is it real?"
I pointed to his cart. "You know how to find that out."

212 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"They say the man who gave the alarm was drunk, an old fool
who was turned away from the inn yesterday."
"It could be so," I admitted.
"But if the alarm is real-!"
Smiling, I said, "If it is, now we all may rest. Good day to you,
Watcher."
"Your cart! Where's your cart?" he shouted at me.
But I had moved past him, toward the mighty carven stone pil-
lar of some relic of Imperial Roum.
Ancient images were carved on that pillar: battles and victories,
foreign monarchs marched in the chains of disgrace through the
streets of Roum, triumphant eagles celebrating imperial grandeur.
In my strange new calmness I stood awhile before the column of
stone and admired its elegant engravings. Toward me rushed a
frenzied figure whom I recognized as the Rememberer Basil; I
hailed him, saying, "How timely you come! Do me the kindness of
explaining these images, Rememberer. They fascinate me, and my
curiosity is aroused."
"Are you insane? Can't you hear the alarm?"
"I gave the alarm, Rememberer."
"Flee, then! Invaders come! We must fight!"
"Not I, Basil. Now my time is over. Tell me of these images.
These beaten kings, these broken emperors. Surely a man of your
years will not be doing battle."
"All are mobilized now!"
"All but Watchers," I said. "Take a moment. Yearning for the
past is born in me. Gormon has vanished; be my guide to these
lost cycles."
The Rememberer shook his head wildly, circled around me, and
tried to get away. Hoping to seize his skinny arm and pin him to
the spot, I made a lunge at him; but he eluded me and I caught
only his dark shawl, which pulled free and came loose in my
hands. Then he was gone, his spindly limbs pumping madly as he
fled down the street and left my view. I shrugged and examined
the shawl I had so unexpectedly acquired. It was shot through
with glimmering threads of metal arranged in intricate patterns
that teased the eye: it seemed to me that each strand disappeared
into the weave of the fabric, only to reappear at some improbable
point, like the lineage of dynasties unexpectedly revived in distant
cities. The workmanship was superb. Idly I draped the shawl
about my shoulders.

Nightwings 213
I walked on.
My legs, which had been on the verge of failing me earlier in
the day, now served me well. With renewed youthfulness I made
my way through the chaotic city, finding no difficulties in choosing
my route. I headed for the river, then crossed it and, on the Tver's
far side, sought the palace of the Prince. The night had deepened,
for most lights were extinguished under the mobilization orders;
and from time to time a dull boom signaled the explosion of a
screening bomb overhead, liberating clouds of murk that shielded
the city from most forms of long-range scrutiny. There were fewer
pedestrians in the streets. The sirens still cried out. Atop the
buildings the defensive installations were going into action; I
heard the bleeping sounds of repellors warming up, and I saw long
spidery arms of amplification booms swinging from tower to tower
as they linked for maximum output. I had no doubt now that the
invasion actually was coming. My own instruments might have
been fouled by inner confusion, but they would not have pro-
ceeded thus far with the mobilization if the initial report had not
been confirmed by the findings of hundreds of other members of
my guild.
As I neared the palace a pair of breathless Rememberers sped
toward me, their shawls flapping behind them. They called to me
in words I did not comprehend—some code of their guild, I real-
ized, recollecting that I wore Basil's shawl. I could not reply, and
they rushed upon me, still gabbling; and switching to the language
of ordinary men they said, "What is the matter with you? To your
post! We must record! We must comment! We must observe!"
"You mistake me," I said mildly. "I keep this shawl only for
your brother Basil, who left it in my care. I have no post to guard
at this time."
"A Watcher," they cried in unison, and cursed me separately,
and ran on. I laughed and went to the palace.
Its gates stood open. The neuters who had guarded the outer
portal were gone, as were the two Indexers who had stood just
within the door. The beggars that had thronged the vast plaza had
jostled their way into the building itself to seek shelter; this had
awakened the anger of the licensed hereditary mendicants whose
customary stations were in that part of the building, and they had
fallen upon the inflowing refugees with fury and unexpected
strength. I saw cripples lashing out with their crutches held as
clubs; I saw blind men landing blows with suspicious accuracy;

214 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
meek penitents were wielding a variety of weapons ranging from
stilettos to sonic pistols, Holding myself aloof from this shameless
spectacle, I penetrated to the inner recesses of the palace and
peered into chapels where I saw Pilgrims beseeching the blessings
of the Will, and Communicants desperately seeking spiritual guid-
ance as to the outcome of the coming conflict.
Abruptly I heard the blare of trumpets and cries of, "Make
way! Make way!"
A file of sturdy Servitors marched into the palace, striding to-
ward the Prince's chambers in the apse. Several of them held a
struggling, kicking, frantic figure with half-unfolded wings: Avlu-
ela! I called out to her, but my voice died in the din, nor could I
reach her. The Servitors shoved me aside. The procession
vanished into the princely chambers. I caught a final glimpse of
the little Flier, pale and small in the grip of her captors, and then
she was gone once more.
I seized a bumbling neuter who had been moving uncertainly in
the wake of the Servitors.
"That Flier! Why was she brought here?"
"Ha—he—they—"
"Tell me!"
"The Prince—his woman—in his chariot—he—he—they—the in-
vaders—"
I pushed the flabby creature aside and rushed toward the apse.
A brazen wall ten times my own height confronted me. I pounded
on it. "Avluela!" I shouted hoarsely. "Av . . . lu ... ela ... !"
I was neither thrust away nor admitted. I was ignored. The
bedlam at the western doors of the palace had extended itself now
to the nave and aisles, and as the ragged beggars boiled toward me
I executed a quick turn and found myself passing through one of
the side doors of the palace.
Suspended and passive, I stood in the courtyard that led to the
royal hostelry. A strange electricity crackled in the air. I assumed
it was an emanation from one of Roum's defense installations,
some kind of beam designed to screen the city from attack. But an
instant later I realized that it presaged the actual arrival of the in-
vaders.
Starships blazed in the heavens.
When I had perceived them in my Watching they had appeared
black against the infinite blackness, but now they burned with the
radiance of suns. A stream of bright, hard, jewel-like globes be-

Nightwings 215
decked the sky; they were ranged side by side, stretching from east
to west in a continuous band, filling all the celestial arch, and as
they erupted simultaneously into being it seemed to me that I
heard the crash and throb of an invisible symphony heralding the
arrival of the conquerors of Earth.
I do not know how far above me the starships were, nor how
many of them hovered there, nor any of the details of their design.
I know only that in sudden massive majesty they were there, and
that if I had been a Defender my soul would have withered in-
stantly at the sight.
Across the heavens shot light of many hues. The battle had
been joined. I could not comprehend the actions of our warriors,
and I was equally baffled by the maneuvers of those who had
come to take possession of our history-crusted but time-
diminished planet. To my shame I felt not only out of the struggle
but above the struggle, as though this were no quarrel of mine. I
wanted Avluela beside me, and she was somewhere within the
depths of the palace of the Prince of Roum. Even Gormon would
have been a comfort now, Gormon the Changeling, Gormon the
spy, Gormon the monstrous betrayer of our world.
Gigantic amplified voices bellowed, "Make way for the Prince
of Roum! The Prince of Roum leads the Defenders in the battle
for the fatherworld!"
From the palace emerged a shining vehicle the shape of a tear-
drop, in whose bright-metaled roof a transparent sheet had been
mounted so that all the populace could see and take heart in the
presence of the ruler. At the controls of the vehicle sat the Prince
of Roum, proudly erect, his cruel, youthful features fixed in harsh
determination; and beside him, robed like an empress, I beheld
the slight figure of the Flier Avluela. She seemed in a trance.
The royal chariot soared upward and was lost in the darkness.
It seemed to me that a second vehicle appeared and followed its
path, and that the Prince's reappeared, and that the two flew in
tight circles, apparently locked in combat. Clouds of blue sparks
wrapped both chariots now; and then they swung high and far and
were lost to me behind one of the hills of Roum.
Was the battle now raging all over the planet? Was Perris in
jeopardy, and holy Jorslem, and even the sleepy isles of the Lost
Continents? Did starships hover everywere? I did not know. I per-
ceived events in only one small segment of the sky over Roum,
and even there my awareness of what was taking place was dim,

216 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
uncertain, and ill-informed. There were momentary flashes of light
in which I saw battalions of Fliers streaming across the sky; and
then darkness returned as though a velvet shroud had been hurled
over the city. I saw the great machines of our defense firing in
fitful bursts from the tops of our towers; and yet I saw the star-
ships untouched, unharmed, unmoved above. The courtyard in
which I stood was deserted, but in the distance I heard voices, full
of fear and foreboding, shouting in tinny tones that might have
been the screeching of birds. Occasionally there came a booming
sound that rocked all the city. Once a platoon of Somnambulists
was driven past where I was; in the plaza fronting the palace I ob-
served what appeared to be an array of Clowns unfolding some
sort of sparkling netting of a military look; by one flash of light-
ning I was able to see a trio of Rememberers making copious
notes of all that elapsed as they soared aloft on the gravity plate.
It seemed—I was not sure—that the vehicle of the Prince of Roum
returned, speeding across the sky with its pursuer clinging close.
"Avluela," I whispered, as the twin dots of fights left my sight.
Were the starships disgorging troops? Did colossal pylons of
force spiral down from those orbiting brightnesses to touch the
surface of the Earth? Why had the Prince seized Avluela? Where
was Gormon? What were our Defenders doing? Why were the
enemy ships not blasted from the sky?
Rooted to the ancient cobbles of the courtyard, I observed the
cosmic battle in total lack of understanding throughout the long
night.
Dawn came. Strands of pale light looped from tower to tower. I
touched fingers to my eyes, realizing that I must have slept while
standing. Perhaps I should apply for membership in the guild of
Somnambulists, I told myself lightly. I put my hands to the Re-
memberer's shawl about my shoulders and wondered how I man-
aged to acquire it, and the answer came.
I looked toward the sky.
The alien starships were gone. I saw only the ordinary morning
sky, gray with pinkness breaking through. I felt the jolt of compul-
sion and looked about for my cart, and reminded myself that I
need do no more Watching, and I felt more empty than one would
ordinarily feel at such an hour.
Was the battle over?
Had the enemy been vanquished?

Nightwings 217
Were the ships of the invaders blasted from the sky and lying in
charred ruin outside Roum?
All was silent. I heard no more celestial symphonies. Then out
of the eerie stillness there came a new sound, a rumbling noise as
of wheeled vehicles passing through the streets of the city. And the
invisible Musicians played one final note, deep and resonant,
which trailed away jaggedly as though every string had been bro-
ken at once.
Over the speakers used for public announcements came quiet
words.
"Roum is fallen. Roum is fallen."
8
The royal hostelry was untended. Neuters and members of the
servant guilds all had fled. Defenders, Masters, and Dominators
must have perished honorably in combat. Basil the Rememberer
was nowhere about; likewise none of his brethren. I went to my
room, cleansed and refreshed and fed myself, gathered my few
possessions, and bade farewell to the luxuries I had known so
briefly. I regretted that I had had such a short time to visit Roum;
but at least Gormon had been a most excellent guide, and I had
seen a great deal.
Now I proposed to move on.
It did not seem prudent to remain in a conquered city. My
room's thinking cap did not respond to my queries, and so I did
not know what the extent of the defeat was, here or in other re-
gions, but it was evident to me that Roum at least had passed
from human control, and I wished to depart quickly. I weighed
the thought of going to Jorslem, as that tall pilgrim had
suggested upon my entry into Roum; but then I reflected and
chose a westward route, toward Perris, which not only was closer
but held the headquarters of the Rememberers. My own occupa-
tion had been destroyed; but on this first morning of Earth's con-
quest I felt a sudden powerful and strange yearning to offer myself
humbly to the Rememberers and seek with them knowledge of our
more glittering yesterdays.
At midday I left the hostelry. I walked first to the palace, which
still stood open. The beggars lay strewn about, some drugged,
some sleeping, most dead; from the crude manner of their death I

218 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
saw that they must have slain one another in their panic and
frenzy. A despondent-looking Indexer squatted beside the three
skulls of the interrogation fixture in the chapel. As I entered he
said, "No use. The brains do not reply."
"How goes it with the Prince of Roum?"
"Dead. The invaders shot him from the sky."
"A young Flier rode beside him. What do you know of her?"
"Nothing. Dead, I suppose."
"And the city?"
"Fallen. Invaders are everywhere."
"Killing?"
"Not even looting," the Indexer said. "They are most gentle.
They have collected us."
"In Roum alone, or everywhere?"
The man shrugged. He began to rock rhythmically back and
forth. I let him be, and walked deeper into the palace. To my
surprise, the imperial chambers of the Prince were unsealed. I
went within; I was awed by the sumptuous luxury of the hangings,
the draperies, the lights, the furnishings. I passed from room to
room, coming at last to the royal bed, whose coverlet was the
flesh of a colossal bivalve of the planet of another star, and as the
shell yawned for me I touched the infinitely soft fabric under
which the Prince of Roum had lain, and I recalled that Avluela
too had lain here, and if I had been a younger man I would have
wept.
I left the palace and slowly crossed the plaza to begin my jour-
ney toward Perris.
As I departed I had my first glimpse of our conquerors. A vehi-
cle of alien design drew up at the plaza's rim and perhaps a dozen
figures emerged. They might almost have been human. They were
tall and broad, deep-chested, as Gormon had been, and only the
extreme length of their arms marked them instantly as alien. Their
skins were of strange texture, and if I had been closer I suspect I
would have seen eyes and Hps and nostrils that were not of a
human design. Taking no notice of me, they crossed the plaza,
walking in a curiously loose-jointed loping way that reminded me
irresistibly of Gormon's stride, and entered the palace. They
seemed neither swaggering nor belligerent.
Sightseers. Majestic Roum once more exerted its magnetism
upon strangers.
Leaving our new masters to their amusement, I walked off, to-

Nightwings 219
ward the outskirts of the city. The bleakness of eternal winter
crept into my soul. I wondered: did I feel sorrow that Roum had
fallen? Or did I mourn the loss of Avluela? Or was it only that I
now had missed three successive Watchings, and like an addict I
was experiencing the pangs of withdrawal?
It was all of these that pained me, I decided. But mostly the
last.
No one was abroad in the city as I made for the gates. Fear of
the new masters kept the Roumish in hiding, I supposed. From
time to time one of the alien vehicles hummed past, but I was un-
molested. I came to the city's western gate late in the afternoon. It
was open, revealing to me a gently rising hill on whose breast
rose trees with dark green crowns. I passed through and saw, a
short distance beyond the gate, the figure of a Pilgrim who was
shuffling slowly away from the city.
I overtook him easily.
His faltering, uncertain walk seemed strange to me, for not even
his thick brown robes could hide the strength and youth of his
body; he stood erect, his shoulders square and his back straight,
and yet he walked with the hesitating, trembling step of an old
man. When I drew abreast of him and peered under his hood I un-
derstood, for affixed to the bronze mask all Pilgrims wear was a
reverberator, such as is used by blind men to warn them of obsta-
cles and hazards. He became aware of me and said, "I am a sight-
less Pilgrim. I pray you do not molest me."
It was not a Pilgrim's voice. It was a strong and harsh and im-
perious voice.
I replied, "I molest no one. I am a Watcher who has lost his oc-
cupation this night past."
"Many occupations were lost this night past, Watcher."
"Surely not a Pilgrim's."
"No," he said. "Not a Pilgrim's."
"Where are you bound?"
"Away from Roum."
"No particular destination?"
"No," the Pilgrim said. "None. I will wander."
"Perhaps we should wander together," I said, for it is ac-
counted good luck to travel with a Pilgrim, and, shorn of my Flier
and my Changeling, I would otherwise have traveled alone. "My
destination is Perris. Will you come?"
"There as well as anywhere else," he said bitterly. "Yes. We

220 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
will go to Perris together. But what business does a Watcher have
there?"
"A Watcher has no business anywhere. I go to Perris to offer
myself in service to the Rememberers."
"Ah," he said. "I was of that guild too, but it was only hon-
orary."
"With Earth fallen, I wish to learn more of Earth in its pride."
"Is all Earth fallen, then, and not only Roum?"
"I think it is so," I said.
"Ah," replied the Pilgrim. "Ah!"
He fell silent and we went onward. I gave him my arm, and
now he shuffled no longer, but moved with a young man's brisk
stride. From time to time he uttered what might have been a sigh
or a smothered sob. When I asked him details of his Pilgrimage,
he answered obliquely or not at all. When we were an hour's jour-
ney outside Roum, and already amid forests, he said suddenly,
"This mask gives me pain. Will you help me adjust it?"
To my amazement he began to remove it. I gasped, for it is for-
bidden for a Pilgrim to reveal his face. Had he forgotten that I
was not sightless too?
As the mask came away he said, "You will not welcome this
sight."
The bronze grillwork slipped down from his forehead, and I
saw first eyes that had been newly blinded, gaping holes where
no surgeon's knife, but possibly thrusting fingers, had penetrated,
and then the sharp regal nose, and finally the quirked, taut lips of
the Prince of Roum.
"Your Majesty!" I cried.
Trails of dried blood ran down his cheeks. About the raw
sockets themselves were smears of ointment. He felt little pain, I
suppose, for he had killed it with those green smears, but the pain
that burst through me was real and potent.
"Majesty no longer," he said. "Help me with the mask!" His
hands trembled as he held it forth. "These flanges must be wid-
ened. They press cruelly at my cheeks. Here—here—"
Quickly I made the adjustments, so that I would not have to see
his ruined face for long.
He replaced the mask. "I am a Pilgrim now," he said quietly.
"Roum is without its Prince. Betray me if you wish, Watcher; oth-
erwise help me to Perris; and if ever I regain my power you will
be well rewarded."
"I am no betrayer," I told him.

Nightwings 221
In silence we continued. I had no way of making small talk with
such a man. It would be a somber journey for us to Perris; but I
was committed now to be his guide. I thought of Gormon and how
well he had kept his vows. I thought too of Avluela, and a hun-
dred times the words leaped to my tongue to ask the fallen Prince
how his consort the Flier had fared in the night of defeat, and I
did not ask.
Twilight gathered, but the sun still gleamed golden-red before
us in the west. And suddenly I halted and made a hoarse sound of
surprise deep in my throat, as a shadow passed overhead.
High above me Avluela soared. Her skin was stained by the
colors of the sunset, and her wings were spread to their fullest, ra-
diant with every hue of the spectrum. She was already at least the
height of a hundred men above the ground, and still climbing, and
to her I must have been only a speck among the trees.
"What is it?" the Prince asked. "What do you see?"
"Nothing."
"Tell me what you see!"
I could not deceive him. "I see a Flier, your Majesty. A slim
girl far aloft."
"Then the night must have come."
"No," I said. "The sun is still above the horizon."
"How can that be? She can have only nightwings. The sun
would hurl her to the ground."
I hesitated. I could not bring myself to explain how it was that
Avluela flew by day, though she had only nightwings. I could not
tell the Prince of Roum that beside her, wingless, flew the invader
Gormon, effortlessly moving through the air, his arm about her
thin shoulders, steadying her, supporting her, helping her resist the
pressure of the solar wind. I could not tell him that his nemesis
flew with the last of his consorts above his head.
"Well?" he demanded. "How does she fly by day?"
"I do not know," I said. "It is a mystery to me. There are many
things nowadays I can no longer understand."
The Prince appeared to accept that. "Yes, Watcher. Many things
none of us can understand."
He fell once more into silence. I yearned to call out to Avluela,
but I knew she could not and would not hear me, and so I walked
on toward the sunset, toward Perris, leading the blind Prince. And
over us Avluela and Gormon sped onward, limned sharply against
the day's last glow, until they climbed so high they were lost to my
sight.

Part II
AMONG THE REMEMBERERS
To journey with a fallen Prince is no easy thing. His eyes were
gone, but not his pride; blinding had taught him no humility. He
wore the robes and mask of a Pilgrim, but there was no piety in
his soul and little grace. Behind his mask he still knew himself to
be the Prince of Roum.
I was all his court now, as we walked the road to Perris in early
springtime. I led him along the right roads; I amused him at his
command with stories of my wanderings; I nursed him through
moods of sulky bitterness. In return I got very little except the as-
surance that I would eat regularly. No one denies food to a Pil-
grim, and in each village on our way we stopped in inns, where he
was fed and I, as his companion, also was given meals. Once,
early in our travels, he erred and haughtily told an innkeeper,
"See that you feed my servant as well!" The blinded Prince could
not see that look of shocked disbelief—for what would a Pilgrim
be doing with a servant?—but I smiled at the innkeeper, and
winked, and tapped my forehead, and the man understood and
served us both without discussion. Afterward I explained the error
to the Prince, and thereafter he spoke of me as his companion.
Yet I knew that to him I was nothing but a servant.
The weather was fair. Eyrop was growing warm as the year
turned. Slender willows and poplars were greening beside the
road, though much of the way out of Roum was planted with lav-
ish star-trees imported during the gaudy days of the Second Cycle,
and their blue-bladed leaves had resisted our puny Eyropan win-
ter. The birds, too, were coming back from their season across the
sea in Afreek. They sparkled overhead, singing, discussing among
themselves the change of masters in the world. "They mock me,"
said the Prince one dawn. "They sing to me and defy me to see
their brightness!"
Oh, he was bitter, and with good reason. He, who had had so
much and lost all, had a good deal to lament. For me, the defeat

Nightwings 223
of Earth meant only an end to habits. Otherwise all was the same:
no longer need I keep my Watch, but I still wandered the face of
the world, alone even when, as now, I had a companion.
I wondered if the Prince knew why he had been blinded. I won-
dered if, in the moment of his triumph, Gormon had explained to
the Prince that it was as elemental a matter as jealousy over a
woman that had cost him his eyes.
"You took Avluela," Gormon might have said. "You saw a
little Flier, and you thought she'd amuse you. And you said, here,
girl, come to my bed. Not thinking of her as a person. Not
thinking she might prefer others. Thinking only as a Prince of
Roum might think—imperiously. Here, Prince!"
—and the quick, forked thrust of long-tipped fingers—
But I dared not ask. That much awe remained in me for this
fallen monarch. To penetrate his privacy, to strike up a conver-
sation with him about his mishaps as though he were an ordinary
companion of the road—no, I could not. I spoke when I was
spoken to. I offered conversation upon command. Otherwise I
kept my silence, like a good commoner in the presence of royalty.
Each day we had our reminders that the Prince of Roum was
royalty no longer.
Overhead flew the invaders, sometimes in floaters or other char-
iots, sometimes under their own power. Traffic was heavy. They
were taking inventory of their world. Their shadows passed over
us, tiny eclipses, and I looked up to see our new masters and
oddly felt no anger at them, only relief that Earth's long vigil was
over. For the Prince it was different. He always seemed to know
when some invader passed above, and he clenched his fists, and
scowled, and whispered black curses. Did his optic nerves still
somehow record the movements of shadows? Or were his remain-
ing senses so sharpened by the loss of one that he could detect the
imperceptible humming of a floater and sniff the skins of the soar-
ing invaders? I did not ask. I asked so little.
Sometimes at night, when he thought I slept, he sobbed, I pitied
him then. He was so young to lose what he had, after all. I learned
in those dark hours that even the sobs of a Prince are not those of
ordinary men. He sobbed defiantly, belligerently, angrily. But yet
he sobbed.
Much of the time he seemed stoic, resigned to his losses. He put
one foot before the other and walked on briskly beside me, every
step taking him farther from his great city of Roum, nearer to

224 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
Perris. At other times, though, it seemed I could look through the
bronze grillwork of his mask to see the curdled soul within. His
pent-up rage took petty outlets. He mocked me for my age, for my
low rank, for the emptiness of my life's purpose now that the inva-
sion for which I had Watched had come. He toyed with me.
"Tell me your name, Watcher!"
"It is forbidden, Majesty."
"Old laws are now repealed. Come on, man, we have months to
travel together. Can I go on calling you Watcher all that time?"
"It is the custom of my guild."
"The custom of mine," he said, "is to give orders and have
them obeyed. Your name!"
"Not even the guild of Dominators can have a Watcher's name
without due cause and a guildmaster's writ."
He spat. "What a jackal you are, to defy me when I'm like this!
If we were in my palace now, you'd never dare!"
"In your palace, Majesty, you would not make this unjust de-
mand on me before your court. Dominators have obligations too.
One of them is to respect the ways of lesser guilds."
"He lectures me," said the Prince. Irritably he threw himself
down beside the road. Stretching against the grassy slope, he
leaned back, touched one of the star-trees, snapped off a row of
blades, clenched them in his hand so that they must have pricked
his palm painfully. I stood beside him. A heavy land-vehicle rum-
bled by, the first we had seen on that empty road this morning.
Within it were invaders. Some of them waved to us. After a long
while the Prince said in a lighter, almost wheedling tone, "My
name is Enric. Now tell me yours."
"I beg you to let me be, Majesty."
"But you have my name! It is just as forbidden for me to give
mine as you yours!"
"I did not ask yours," I said firmly.
In the end I did not give him my name. It was a small enough
victory, to refuse such information to a powerless Prince, but in a
thousand little ways he made me pay for it. He nagged, chivvied,
teased, cursed, and berated me. He spoke with contempt of my
guild. He demanded menial services of me. I lubricated his metal
mask; I sponged ointment into his ruined eyes; I did other things
too humiliating to recall. And so we stumbled along the highway
to Perris, the empty old man and the emptied young one, full of

Nightwings 225
hatred for one another, and yet bound by the needs and the duties
of wayfarers.
It was a difficult time. I had to cope with his changing moods as
he soared to cosmic rapture over his plans for redeeming con-
quered Earth, and as he sank to abysses upon his realization that
the conquest was final. I had to protect him from his own rashness
in the villages, where he sometimes behaved as though he were
still Prince of Roum, ordering folk about, slapping them even, in a
way that was unbecoming to a holy man. Worse yet, I had to
minister to his lusts, buying him women who came to him in dark-
ness, unaware that they were dealing with one who claimed to be a
Pilgrim. As a Pilgrim he was a fraud, for he did not carry the
starstone with* which Pilgrims make communion with the Will.
Somehow I got him past all of these crises, even the time when we
encountered on the road another Pilgrim, a genuine one. This was
a formidable and disputatious old man full of theological quibbles.
"Come and talk with me of the immanence of the Will," he said to
the Prince, and the Prince, whose patience was frayed that after-
noon, replied obscenely. I kicked the princely shin in a surrep-
titious way, and to the shocked Pilgrim I said, "Our friend is un-
well today. Last night he held communion with the Will and
received a revelation that unsettled his mind. I pray you, let us go
on, and give him no talk of holiness until he is himself once
more."
With such improvisations I managed our journey.
As the weather warmed, the Prince's attitude mellowed. Per-
haps he was growing reconciled to his catastrophe, or possibly, in
the prison of his lightless skull, he was teaching himself new tac-
tics for meeting his changed existence. He talked almost idly of
himself, his downfall, his humiliation. He spoke of the power that
had been his in terms that said unmistakably that he had no illu-
sions about ever recapturing it. He talked of his wealth, his women,
his jewels, his strange machines, Ms Changelings and Musicians
and Servitors, the Masters and even fellow Dominators who had
knelt to him. I will not say that at any time I liked him, but at
least at these times I recognized a suffering human being behind
his impassive mask.
He even recognized in me a human being. I know it cost him
much.
He said, "The trouble with power, Watcher, is that it cuts you
off from people. People become things. Take yourself. To me,

226 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
you were nothing but a machine that walked around Watching for
invaders. I suppose you had dreams, ambitions, angers, all the
rest, but I saw you as a dried-up old man without any independent
existence outside of your guild function. Now I see much more
by seeing nothing."
"What do you see?"
"You were young once, Watcher. You had a town you loved. A
family. A girl, even. You chose, or had chosen for you, a guild,
you went into apprenticeship, you struggled, your head ached you,
your belly griped you, there were many dark moments when you
wondered what it was all about, what it was for. And you saw us
ride by, Masters, Dominators, and it was like comets going past.
Yet here we are together, cast up by the tides on the road to
Perris. And which of us is happier now?"
"I am beyond happiness or sorrow," I said.
"Is that the truth? Is that the truth? Or is it a line you hide
behind? Tell me, Watcher: I know your guild forbids you to
marry, but have you ever loved?"
"Sometimes."
"And are you beyond that now?"
"I am old," I said evasively.
"But you could love. You could love. You're released from your
guild vows now, eh? You could take a bride."
I laughed. "Who'd have me?"
"Don't speak that way. You're not that old. You have
strengths. You've seen the world, you understand it. Why, in
Perris you could find yourself some wench who—" He paused.
"Were you ever tempted, while you still were under your vows?"
Just then a Flier passed overhead. She was a woman of middle
years, struggling a little in the sky, for some daylight remained
to press on her wings. I felt a pang, and I wanted to tell the
Prince: yes, yes, I was tempted, there was a little Flier not long
ago, a girl, a child, Avluela; and in my way I loved her, though I
never touched her; and I love her still.
I said nothing to Prince Enric.
I looked, though, at that Flier, freer than I because she had
wings, and in the warmth of that spring evening I felt the chill of
desolation enfolding me.
"Is it far to Perris?" the Prince asked.
"We will walk, and one day we will get there."
"And then?"

Nightwings 227
"For me an apprenticeship in the guild of Rememberers, and a
new life. For you?"
"I hope to find friends there," he said.
We walked on, long hours each day. There were those who
went by and offered us rides, but we refused, for at the check-
points the invaders would be seeking such wandering members of
the nobility as the Prince. We walked a tunnel miles long under
sky-storming mountains sheathed in ice, and we entered a flat
land of farming peasants, and we paused by awakening rivers to
cool our toes. Golden summer burst upon us. We moved through
the world but were not of it; we listened to no news of the con-
quest, although it was obvious that the invaders had taken full
possession. In small vehicles they hovered everywhere, seeing our
world that now was theirs.
I did the bidding of the Prince in all ways, including the un-
pleasant ones. I attempted to make his life less bleak. I gave him a
sensation of being still a ruler—albeit of only one useless old
Watcher. I taught him, too, how best to masquerade as a Pilgrim.
From what little I knew I gave him postures, phrases, prayers. It
was obvious that he had spent little time in contact with the Will
while he reigned. Now he professed faith, but it was insincere, part
of his camouflage.
In a town called Dijon, he said, "Here I will purchase eyes."
Not true eyes. The secret of making such replacements perished
in the Second Cycle. Out among the more fortunate stars any mir-
acle is available for a price, but our Earth is a neglected world in
a backwater of the universe. The Prince might have gone out there
in the days before conquest to purchase new sight, but now the
best that was available to him was a way of distinguishing light
from dark. Even that would give him a rudiment of sight; at pres-
ent he had no other guidance than the reverberator that warned
him of obstacles in his path. How did he know, though, that in
Dijon he would find a craftsman with the necessary skills? And
with what would he meet the cost?
He said, "The man here is a brother of one of my Scribes. He is
of the guild of Artificers, and I often bought his work in Roum.
He'll have eyes for me."
"And the cost?"
"I am not entirely without resources."
We stopped in a field of gnarled cork-trees, and the Prince
undid his robes. Indicating a place in the fleshy part of his thigh,

228 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
he said, "I carry a reserve here for emergencies. Give me your
blade!" I handed it to him, and he seized the handle and pressed
the stud that brought forth the cool, keen beam of light. With his
left hand he felt his thigh, surveying for the exact place; then,
stretching the flesh between two fingers, he made a surgically pre-
cise cut two inches long. He did not bleed, nor was there a sign
that he felt pain. I watched in bewilderment as he slipped his
fingers into the cut, spread its edges, and seemed to grope as if in
a sack. He tossed my blade back to me.
Treasures tumbled from his thigh.
"Watch that nothing is lost," he ordered me.
To the grass there fell seven sparkling jewels of alien origin, a
small and artful celestial globe, five golden coins of Imperial
Roum of cycles past, a ring set with a glowing dab of quasi-life, a
flask of some unknown perfume, a group of miniature musical in-
struments done in precious woods and metals, eight statuettes of
regal-looking men, and more. I scooped these wonders into a daz-
zling heap.
"An overpocket," the Prince said coolly, "which a skilled
Surgeon implanted in my flesh. I anticipated a time of crisis in
which I might need to leave the palace hurriedly. Into it I stuffed
what I could; there is much more where these came from. Tell me,
tell me what I have taken out!"
I gave him the full inventory. He listened tensely to the end,
and I knew that he had kept count of all that had poured forth,
and was testing my honesty. When I was done, he nodded,
pleased. "Take the globe," he said, "and the ring, and the two
brightest jewels. Hide them in your pouch. The rest goes back
within." He spread the lips of the incision, and one by one I
dropped the glories inside, where they joined who knew what
splendid things lying in another dimension, the outlet from which
was embedded in the prince. He might have half the contents of
the palace tucked away in his thigh. At the end he pressed the cut
together, and it healed without a trace of a mark as I watched. He
robed himself.
In town we quickly located the shop of Bordo the Artificer. He
was a squat man with a speckled face, a grizzled beard, a tic in
one eye, and a flat coarse nose, but his fingers were as delicate as
a woman's. His shop was a dark place with dusty wooden shelves
and small windows; it could have been a building ten thousand
years old. A few elegant items were on display. Most were not. He

Nightwings 229
looked at us guardedly, obviously baffled that a Watcher and a
Pilgrim should come to him.
At the Prince's prodding I said, "My friend needs eyes."
"I make a device, yes. But it is expensive, and it takes many
months to prepare. Beyond the means of any Pilgrim."
I laid one jewel on the weathered counter. "We have means."
Shaken, Bordo snatched up the jewel, turned it this way and
that, saw the alien fires glowing at its heart.
"If you come back when the leaves are falling—"
"You have no eyes in stock?" I asked.
He smiled. "I get few calls for such things. We keep a small in-
ventory."
I put down the celestial globe. Bordo recognized it as the work
of a Master, and his jaw sagged. He put it in one palm and tugged
at his beard with the other hand. I let him look at it long enough
to fall in love with it, and then I took it back and said, "Autumn
is too long to wait. We will have to go elsewhere. Perris, perhaps."
I caught the Prince's elbow, and we shuffled toward the door.
"Stop!" Bordo cried. "At least let me check! Perhaps I have a
pair somewhere—" And he began to rummage furiously in over-
pockets mounted in the rear wall.
He had eyes in stock, of course, and I haggled a bit on the
price, and we settled for the globe, the ring, and one jewel. The
Prince was silent throughout the transaction. I insisted on immedi-
ate installation and Bordo, nodding excitedly, shut his shop,
slipped on a thinking cap, and summoned a sallow-faced Surgeon.
Shortly the preliminaries of the operation were under way. The
Prince lay on a pallet in a sealed and sterile room. He removed his
reverberator and then his mask; and as those sharp features came
into view, Bordo—who had been to the court of Roum—grunted in
amazement and began to say something. My foot descended heav-
ily on his. Bordo swallowed his words; and the Surgeon, unaware,
began tranquilly to swab the ruined sockets.
The eyes were pearl-gray spheres, smaller than real eyes and
broken by transverse slits. What mechanism was within I do not
know, but from their rear projected tiny golden connections to
fasten to the nerves. The Prince slept through the early part of
the task, while I stood guard and Bordo assisted the Surgeon.
Then it was necessary to awaken him. His face convulsed in pain,
but it was so quickly mastered that Bordo muttered a prayer at
this display of determination.

230 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"Some light here," said the Surgeon.
Bordo nudged a drifting globe closer. The Prince said, "Yes,
yes, I see the difference."
"We must test. We must adjust," the Surgeon said.
Bordo went outside. I followed. The man was trembling, and
his face was green with fear.
"Will you kill us now?" he asked.
"Of course not."
"I recognized—"
"You recognized a poor Pilgrim," I said, "who has suffered a
terrible misfortune while on his journey. No more. Nothing else."
I examined Bordo's stock awhile. Then the Surgeon and his pa-
tient emerged. The Prince now bore the pearly spheres in his
sockets, with a meniscus of false flesh about them to insure a tight
fit. He looked more machine than man, with those dead things be-
neath his brows, and as he moved his head the slits widened, nar-
rowed, widened again, silently, stealthily. "Look," he said, and
walked across the room, indicating objects, even naming them. I
knew that he saw as though through a thick veil, but at least he
saw, in a fashion. He masked himself again and by nightfall we
were gone from Dijon.
The Prince seemed almost buoyant. But what he had in his
skull was a poor substitute for what Gormon had ripped from
him, and soon enough he knew it. That night, as we slept on stale
cots in a Pilgrim's hostelry, the Prince cried out in wordless sounds
of fury, and by the shifting light of the true moon and the two
false ones I saw his arms rise, his fingers curl, his nails strike at an
imagined enemy, and strike again, and again.
2
It was summer's end when we finally reached Perris. We came
into the city from the south, walking a broad, resilient highway
bordered by ancient trees, amid a fine shower of rain. Gusts of
wind blew shriveled leaves about us. That night of terror on which
we both had fled conquered Roum now seemed almost a dream;
we were toughened by a spring and summer of walking, and the
gray towers of Perris seemed to hold out promise of new begin-
nings. I suspected that we deceived ourselves, for what did the
world hold for a shattered Prince who saw only shadows, and a
Watcher long past his proper years?

Nightwings 231
This was a darker city than Roum. Even in late winter, Roum
had had clear skies and bright sunlight. Perris seemed perpetually
clouded over, buildings and environment both somber. Even the
city walls were ash-gray, and they had no sheen. The gate stood
wide. Beside it there lounged a small, sullen man in the garb of
the guild of Sentinels, who made no move to challenge us as we
approached. I looked at him questioningly. He shook his head.
"Go in, Watcher."
"Without a check?"
"You haven't heard? All cities were declared free six nights
ago. Order of the invaders. Gates are never closed now. Half the
Sentinels have no work."
"I thought the invaders were searching for enemies," I said.
"The former nobility."
"They have their checkpoints elsewhere, and no Sentinels are
used. The city is free. Go in. Go in."
As we went in, I said, "Then why are you here?"
"It was my post for forty years," the Sentinel said. "Where
should I go?"
I made the sign that told him I shared his sorrow, and the
Prince and I entered Perris.
"Five times I came to Perris by the southern gate," said the
Prince. "Always by chariot, with my Changelings walking before
me and making music in their throats. We proceeded to the river,
past the ancient buildings and monuments, on to the palace of the
Comt of Perris. And by night we danced on gravity plates high
above the city, and there were ballets of Fliers, and from the
Tower of Perris there was performed an aurora for us. And the
wine, the red wine of Perris, the women in their saucy gowns, the
red-tipped breasts, the sweet thighs! We bathed in wine, Watcher."
He pointed vaguely. "Is that the Tower of Perris?"
"I think it is the ruin of this city's weather machine," I said.
"A weather machine would be a vertical column. What I see
rises from a wide base to a slender summit, as does the Tower of
Perris."
"What I see," I said gently, "is a vertical column, at least thirty
men high, ending in a rough break. The Tower would not be this
close to the southern gate, would it?"
"No," said the Prince, and muttered a foulness. "The weather
machine it is, then. These eyes of Bordo's don't see so clearly for

232 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
me, eh? I deceive myself, Watcher. I deceive myself. Find a think-
ing cap and see if the Comt has fled."
I stared a moment longer at the truncated pillar of the weather
machine, that fantastic device which had brought such grief upon
the world in the second Cycle. I tried to penetrate its sleek, almost
oily marble sides, to see the coiling intestines of mysterious de-
vices that had been capable of sinking whole continents, that long
ago had transformed my homeland in the west from a moun-
tainous country to a chain of islands. Then I turned away, donned
a public cap, asked for the Comt, got the answer I expected, and
demanded to know the locations of places where we might find
lodging.
The Prince said, "Well?"
"The Comt of Perris was slain during the conquest along with
all his sons. His dynasty is extinguished, his title is abolished, his
palace has been transformed into a museum by the invaders. The
rest of the Perrisian nobility is dead or has taken flight. I'll find a
place for you at the lodge of Pilgrims."
"No. Take me with you to the Rememberers."
"Is that the guild you seek now?"
He gestured impatiently. "No, fool! But how can I stay alone in
a strange city, with all my friends gone? What would I say to true
Pilgrims in their hostelry? I'll stay with you. The Rememberers
can hardly turn away a blind Pilgrim."
He gave me no choice. And so he accompanied me to the Hall
of Rememberers.
We had to cross half the city, and it took us nearly the whole
day. Perris seemed to me to be in disarray. The coming of the in-
vaders had upset the structure of our society, liberating from their
tasks great blocks of people, in some cases whole guilds. I saw
dozens of my fellow Watchers in the streets, some still dragging
about with them their cases of instruments, others, like me, freed
of that burden and scarcely knowing what to do with their hands.
My guildmates looked glum and hollow; many of them were dull-
eyed with carousing, now that all discipline was shattered. Then
there were Sentinels, aimless and dispirited because they had noth-
ing to guard, and Defenders, cowed and dazed at the ending of de-
fense. I saw no Masters and of course no Dominators, but many
unemployed Clowns, Musicians, Scribes, and other court func-
tionaries drifted randomly. Also there were hordes of dull neuters,
their nearly mindless bodies slumped from unfamiliar disuse. Only

Nightwings 233
Vendors and Somnambulists seemed to be carrying on business as
usual.
The invaders were very much in evidence. In twos and threes
they strolled on every street, long-limbed beings whose hands dan-
gled nearly to their knees; their eyelids were heavy, their nostrils
were hidden in filtration pouches, their lips were full and, when
not apart, joined almost seamlessly. Most of them were dressed in
identical robes of a deep, rich green, perhaps a uniform of military
occupation; a few carried weapons of an oddly primitive kind,
great heavy things slung across their backs, probably more for dis-
play than for self-defense. They seemed generally relaxed as they
moved among us—genial conquerors, self-confident and proud,
fearing no molestation from the defeated populace. Yet the fact
that they never walked alone argued that they felt an inner
wariness. I could not find it in me to resent their presence, nor
even the implied arrogance of their possessive glances at the an-
cient monuments of Perris; yet the Prince of Roum, to whom all
figures were merely upright bars of dark gray against a field of
light gray, instinctively sensed their nearness to him and reacted
with quick hostile intakes of breath.
Also there were many more outworld visitors than usual, star-
beings of a hundred kinds, some able to breathe our air, others
going about in hermetic globes or little pyramid-shaped breathing-
boxes or contour suits. It was nothing new to see such strangers
on Earth, of course, but the sheer quantity of them was as-
tonishing. They were everywhere, prowling into the houses of
Earth's old religions, buying shining models of the Tower of Perris
from Vendors at street corners, clambering precariously into the
upper levels of the walkways, peering into occupied dwellings,
snapping images, exchanging currency with furtive hucksters, flirt-
ing with Fliers and Somnambulists, risking their lives at our res-
taurants, moving in shepherded groups from sight to sight. It was
as though our invaders had passed the word through the galaxies:
SEE OLD EARTH NOW. UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.
At least our beggars were flourishing. The outworld ones fared
poorly at the hands of the alien almsgivers, but those who were
Earthborn did well, except for the Changelings, who could not be
recognized as native stock. I saw several of these mutants, dis-
gruntled at being refused, turn on other beggars who had had bet-
ter luck and beat them to the ground, while image-snappers re-
corded the scene for the delight of galactic stay-at-homes.

234 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
We came in time to the Hall of Rememberers.
It was an imposing building, as well it might be, housing as it
did all of our planet's past. It rose to an enormous height on the
southern bank of the Senn, just opposite the equally massive pal-
ace of the Comt. But the dwelling of the deposed Comt was an
ancient building, truly ancient, of the First Cycle even, a long,
involuted structure of gray stone with a green metal roof in the
traditional Perrisian style, while the Hall of Rememberers was a
shaft of polished whiteness, its surface unbroken by windows,
about which there coiled from summit to base a golden helix of
burnished metal that bore inscribed on it the history of mankind.
The upper coils of the helix were blank. At a distance I could read
nothing, and I wondered whether the Rememberers had taken the
trouble to inscribe upon their building the tale of Earth's final de-
feat. Later I learned that they had not—that the story, in fact, ter-
minated at the end of the Second Cycle, leaving untold much for
which little pleasure was felt.
Night was falling now. And Perris, which had looked so dreary
in the clouded and drizzly day, came to beauty like a dowager re-
turning from Jorslem with her youth and voluptuousness restored.
The city's lights cast a soft but dazzling radiance that magically il-
luminated the old gray buildings, turning angles hazy, hiding an-
tiquity's grime, blurring ugliness into poetry. The Comt's palace
was transformed from a heavy thing of sprawling bulk into an airy
fable. The Tower of Perris, spotlighted against the dusk, loomed
above us to the east like a giant gaunt spider, but a spider of grace
and charm. The whiteness of the Hall of Rememberers now was
intolerably beautiful, and the helical coil of history no longer
seemed to wind to the summit, but plunged directly into one's
heart. The Fliers of Perris were abroad at this hour, taking their
ease above us in a graceful ballet, their filmy wings spread wide to
catch the light from below, their slender bodies trailing at an angle
to the horizon. How they soared, these genetically altered children
of Earth, these fortunate members of a guild that demands only
that its members find pleasure in life! They shed beauty upon the
groundlings like little moons. They were joined in their airborne
dance by invaders, flying in some method unknown to me, their
lengthy limbs drawn close to their bodies. I noticed that the Fliers
showed no distaste for those who had come to share their sport,
but rather appeared to welcome the outworlders, allowing them
places in the dance.

Nightwings 235
Higher, on the backdrop of the sky itself, whirled the two false
moons, blank and burnished, skimming from west to east; and
blobs of disciplined light swirled in mid-atmosphere in what I sup-
posed was a customary Perrisian diversion; and speakers floating
beneath the clouds showered us with sparkling music. I heard the
laughter of girls from somewhere; I scented bubbling wine. If this
is Perris conquered, I wondered, what must Perris free have been
like?
"Are we at the Hall of Rememberers?" asked Prince Enric tes-
tily.
"This is it, yes," I replied. "A tower of white."
"I know what it looks like, idiot! But now—I see less well after
dark—that building, there?"
"You point to the palace of the Comt, Majesty."
"There, then."
"Yes."
"Why have we not gone in?"
"I am seeing Perris," I said. "I have never known such beauty.
Roum is attractive too, in a different way. Roum is an emperor;
Perris is a courtesan."
"You talk poetry, you shriveled old man!"
"I feel my age dropping away. I could dance in the streets now.
This city sings to me."
"Go in. Go in. We are here to see the Rememberers. Let it sing
to you later."
I sighed and guided him toward the entrance to the great hall.
We passed up a walkway of some black glossy stone, while beams
of light played down on us, scanning us and recording us. A mon-
strous ebon door, five men wide and ten men high, proved to be
only a projected illusion, for as we neared it I sensed the depth of
it, saw its vaulted interior, and knew it for a deception. I felt a
vague warmth and tasted a strange perfume as we passed through
it.
Within was a mammoth antechamber nearly as awesome as the
grand inner space of the palace of the Prince of Roum. All was
white, the stone glowing with an inner radiance that bathed every-
thing in brilliance. To right and left, heavy doorways led to inner
wings. Although night had come, many individuals were clustered
about access banks mounted on the rear wall of the antechamber,
where screens and caps gave them contact with the master files of
the guild of Rememberers. I noticed with interest that many of

236 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
those who had come here with questions about mankind's past
were invaders.
Our footsteps crackled on the tiled floor as we crossed it.
I saw no actual Rememberers, and so I went to an access bank,
put on a thinking cap, and notified the embalmed brain to which it
was connected that I sought the Rememberer Basil, he whom
I had met briefly in Roum.
"What is your business with him?"
"I bring with me his shawl, which he left in my care when he
fled Roum."
"The Rememberer Basil has returned to Roum to complete his
research, by permission of the conqueror. I will send to you an-
other member of the guild to receive the shawl."
We did not have long to wait. We stood together near the rear
of the antechamber, and I contemplated the spectacle of the in-
vaders who had so much to learn, and in moments there came
to us a thick-set, dour-faced man some years younger than myself,
but yet not young, who wore about his broad shoulders the cere-
monial shawl of his guild.
"I am the Rememberer Elegro," he announced portentously.
"I bring you Basil's shawl."
"Come. Follow."
He had emerged from an imperceptible place in the wall where
a sliding block turned on pivots. Now he slid it once more and
rapidly went down a passageway. I called out to him that my com-
panion was blind and could not match his pace, and the Remem-
berer Elegro halted, looking visibly impatient. His downcurving
mouth twitched, and he buried his short fingers in the deep black
curls of his beard. When we had caught up with him he moved on
less swiftly. We pursued an infinity of passageways and ended in
Elegro's domicile, somewhere high in the tower.
The room was dark but amply furnished with screens, caps,
scribing equipment, voice-boxes, and other aids to scholarship.
The walls were hung with a purple-black fabric, evidently alive,
for its marginal folds rippled in pulsating rhythms. Three drifting
globes gave less than ample light.
"The shawl," he said.
I produced it from my pouch. It had amused me to wear it for a
while in those first confused days of the conquest—after all, Basil
had left it in my hands when he fled down the street, and I had not
meant to wrest it from him, but he obviously had cared little for

Nightwings 237
its loss—but shortly I had put it away, since it bred confusion for a
man in Watcher's garb to wear a Rememberer's shawl. Elegro
took it from me curtly and unfolded it, scrutinizing it as though
looking for lice.
"How did you get this?"
"Basil and I encountered one another in the street during the
actual moment of the invasion. He was highly agitated. I at-
tempted to restrain him and he ran past me, leaving me still grasp-
ing his shawl."
"He told a different story."
"I regret it if I have compromised him," I said.
"At any rate, you have returned his shawl. I'll communicate the
news to Roum tonight. Are you expecting a reward for delivering
it?"
"Yes."
Displeased, Elegro said, "Which is?"
"To be allowed to come among the Rememberers as an appren-
tice."
He looked startled. "You have a guild!"
"To be a Watcher in these days is to be guildless. For what
should I watch? I am released from my vows."
"Perhaps. But you are old to be trying a new guild."
"Not too old."
"Ours is a difficult one."
"I am willing to work hard. I desire to learn. In my old age cu-
riosity is born in me."
"Become a Pilgrim like your friend here. See the world."
"I have seen the world. Now I wish to join the Rememberers
and learn of the past."
"You can dial an information below. Our access banks are
open to you, Watcher."
"It is not the same. Enroll me."
"Apprentice yourself to the Indexers," Elegro suggested. "The
work is similar, but not so demanding."
"I claim apprenticeship here."
Elegro sighed heavily. He steepled his fingers, bowed his head,
quirked his lips. This was plainly unique to him. While he pon-
dered, an inner door opened and a female Rememberer entered
the room, carrying a small turquoise music-sphere cradled in both
her hands. She took four paces and halted, obviously surprised that
Elegro was entertaining visitors.

238 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
She made a nod of apology and said, "I will return later."
"Stay," said the Rememberer. To myself and the Prince he said,
"My wife. The Rememberer Olmayne." To his wife he said,
"These are travelers newly come from Roum. They have delivered
Basil's shawl. The Watcher now asks apprenticeship in our guild.
What do you advise?"
The Rememberer Olmayne's white brow furrowed. She put
down her music-sphere hi a dark crystal vase; the sphere was
unintentionally activated as she did so, and it offered us a dozen
shimmering notes before she switched it off. Then she contem-
plated us, and I her. She was notably younger than her husband,
who was of middle years, while she seemed to be hardly past first
bloom. Yet there was a strength about her that argued for greater
maturity. Perhaps, I thought, she had been to Jorslem to renew her
youth; but in thai case it was odd that her husband had not done
the same, unless he prized his look of age. She was surely attrac-
tive. Her face was broad, with a high forehead, pronounced cheek-
bones, a wide, sensual mouth, a jutting chin. Her hair was lustrous
black, contrasting most vividly with the strange pallor of her skin.
Such white skin is a rarity among us, though now I know that it
was more common in ancient times, when the breed was different.
Avluela, my lovely little Flier, had displayed that same combina-
tion of black and white, but there the resemblance ended, for
Avluela was all fragility, and the Rememberer Olmayne was
strength itself. Below her long slender neck her body blossomed
into well-set shoulders, high breasts, firm legs. Her posture was
regal.
She studied us at length, until I could scarcely meet the level
gaze of her widely spaced dark eyes. Ultimately she said, "Does
the Watcher regard himself as qualified to become one of us?"
The question appeared aimed at anyone in the chamber who
cared to reply. I hesitated; Elegro did likewise; and at length it
was the Prince of Roum who replied in his voice of command,
"The Watcher is qualified to enter your guild."
"And who are you?" Olmayne demanded.
Instantly the Prince adopted a more accommodating tone. "A
miserable blind Pilgrim, milady, who has wandered here on foot
from Roum, in this man's company. If I am any judge, you could
do worse than admit him as an apprentice."
Elegro said, "And yourself? What plans have you?"
"I wish only refuge here," said the Prince. "I am tired of roam-

Nightwings 239
ing and there is much thinking I must do. Perhaps you could allow
me to carry out small tasks here. I would not want to be separated
from my companion."
To me Olmayne said, "We will confer on your case. If there is
approval, you will be given the tests. I will be your sponsor."
"Olmayne!" blurted Elegro in unmistakable amazement.
She smiled serenely at us all.
A family quarrel appeared on the verge; but it was averted, and
the Rememberers offered us hospitality, juices, sharper bever-
ages, a night's lodging. We dined apart from them in one section
of their suite, while other Rememberers were summoned to con-
sider my irregular application. The Prince seemed in strange agita-
tion; he bolted down his food, spilled a flask of wine, fumbled
with his eating utensils, put his fingers again and again to his gray
metallic eyeballs as though trying to scratch an itch upon the lobes
of his brain.
At length he said in a low, urgent voice, "Describe her to me!"
I did so, in detail, coloring and shading my words to draw him
the most vivid picture I could.
"She is beautiful, you say?"
"I believe so. You know that at my age one must work from
abstract notions, not from the flow of the glands."
"Her voice arouses me," said the Prince. "She has power. She
is queenly. She must be beautiful; there'd be no justice if her body
failed to match the voice."
"She is," I said heavily, "another man's wife, and the giver of
hospitality."
I remembered a day in Roum when the Prince's palanquin had
come forth from the palace, and the Prince had spied Avluela, and
ordered her to him, drawing her through the curtain to make use
of her. A Dominator may command lesser folk that way; but a
Pilgrim may not, and I feared Prince Enric's schemes now. He
dabbed at his eyes again. His facial muscles worked.
"Promise me you'll not start trouble with her," I said.
The corner of his mouth jerked in what must have been the be-
ginning of an angry retort, quickly stifled. With effort he said,
"You misjudge me, old man. I'll abide by the laws of hospitality
here. Be a good man and get me more wine, eh?"
I thumbed the serving niche and obtained a second flask. It was
strong red wine, not the golden stuff of Roum. I poured; we
drank; the flask was swiftly empty. I grasped it along its lines of

240 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
polarity and gave it the proper twist, and it popped and was gone
like a bubble. Moments later the Rememberer Olmayne entered.
She had changed her garments; earlier she had worn an afternoon
gown of dull hue and coarse fabric, but now she was garbed in a
sheer scarlet robe fastened between her breasts. It revealed to me
the planes and shadows of her body, and it surprised me to see
that she had chosen to retain a navel. It broke the smooth down-
ward sweep of her belly in an effect so carefully calculated to
arouse that it nearly incited even me.
She said complacently, "Your application has been approved
under my sponsorship. The tests will be administered tonight. If
you succeed, you will be pledged to our division." Her eyes twin-
kled in sudden mischief. "My husband, you should know, is most
displeased. But my husband's displeasure is not a thing to be
feared. Come with me, both of you."
She stretched forth her hands, taking mine, taking the Prince's.
Her fingers were cool. I throbbed with an inner fever and mar-
veled at this sign of new youth that arose within me—not even by
virtue of the waters of the house of renewal in sacred Jorslem.
"Come," said Olmayne, and led us to the place of test.
3
And so I passed into the guild of Rememberers.
The tests were perfunctory. Olmayne brought us to a circular
room somewhere near the summit of the great tower. Its curving
walls were inlaid with rare woods of many hues, and shining
benches rose from the floor, and in the center of all was a helix
the height of a man, inscribed with letters too small to be read.
Half a dozen Rememberers lounged about, plainly there only by
Olmayne's whim, and not in the slightest interested in this old and
shabby Watcher whom she had so unaccountably sponsored.
A thinking cap was offered me. A scratchy voice asked me a
dozen questions through the cap, probing for my typical re-
sponses, querying me on biographical details. I gave my guild
identification so that they could contact the local guildmaster,
check my bona fides, and obtain my release. Ordinarily one could
not win release from a Watcher's vows, but these were not ordi-
nary times, and I knew my guild was shattered.
Within an hour all was done. Olmayne herself placed the shawl
over my shoulders.

Nightwings 241
"You'll be given sleeping quarters near our suite," she said.
"You'll have to surrender your Watcher garb, though your friend
may remain in Pilgrim's clothes. Your training will begin after a
probationary period. Meanwhile you have full access to any of our
memory tanks. You realize, of course, that it will be ten years or
more before you can win full admission to the guild."
"I realize that," I said.
"Your name now will be Tomis," Olmayne told me. "Not yet
the Rememberer Tomis, but Tomis of the Rememberers. There is
a difference. Your past name no longer matters."
The Prince and I were conducted to the small room we would
share. It was a# humble enough place, but yet it had facilities for
washing, outlets for thinking caps and other information devices,
and a food vent. Prince Enric went about the room, touching
things, learning the geography. Cabinets, beds, chairs, storage
units, and other furniture popped in and out of the walls as he
blundered onto the controls. Eventually he was satisfied; not blun-
dering now, he activated a bed, and a sheaf of brightness glided
from a slot. He stretched out.
"Tell me something, Tomis of the Rememberers."
"Yes?"
"To satisfy curiosity that eats at me. What was your name in
previous life?"
"It does not matter now."
"No vow binds you to secrecy. Will you thwart me still?"
"Old habit binds me," I said. "For twice your lifetime I was
conditioned never to speak my name except lawfully."
"Speak it now."
"Wuellig," I said.
It was strangely liberating to commit that act. My former name
seemed to hover in the air before my lips; to dart about the room
like a jewelbird released from its captivity; to soar, to turn
sharply, to strike a wall and shiver to pieces with a light, tinkling
sound. I trembled, "Wuellig," I said again. "My name was
Wuellig."
"Wuellig no more."
"Tomis of the Rememberers."
And we both laughed until it hurt, and the blinded Prince
swung himself to his feet and slapped his hand against mine in
high good fellowship, and we shouted my name and his and mine
again and again, like small boys who suddenly have learned the

242 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
words of power and have discovered at last how little power those
words really have.
Thus I took up my new life among the Rememberers.
For some time to come I did not leave the Hall of Remem-
berers at all. My days and nights were completely occupied, and I
remained a stranger to Perris without. The Prince, too, though his
time was not as fully taken up, stayed in the building almost al-
ways, going out only when boredom or fury overtook him. Occa-
sionally the Rememberer Olmayne went with him, or he with her,
so that he would not be alone in his darkness; but I know that on
occasion he left the building by himself, defiantly intending to
show that, even sightless, he could cope with the challenges of the
city.
My waking hours were divided among these activities:
+ Preliminary orientations.
+ Menial duties of an apprentice.
+ Private researches.
Not unexpectedly, I found myself much older than the other ap-
prentices then in residence. Most were youngsters, the children of
Rememberers themselves; they looked upon me in bafflement, un-
able to comprehend having such an ancient for a schoolmate.
There were a few fairly mature apprentices, those who had found
a vocation for Remembering midway in life, but none approaching
my age. Hence I had little social contact with my fellows in
training.
For a part of each day we learned the techniques by which the
Rememberers recapture Earth's past. I was shown wide-eyed
through the laboratories where analysis of field specimens is per-
formed; I saw the detectors which, by pinpointing the decay of a
few atoms, give an age to an artifact; I watched as beams of
many-colored light lancing from a ringed outlet turned a sliver of
wood to ash and caused it to give up its secrets; I saw the very im-
ages of past events peeled from inanimate substance. We leave our
imprint where we go: the particles of light rebound from our
faces, and the photonic flux nails them to the environment. From
which the Rememberers strip them, categorize them, fix them. I
entered a room where a phantasmagoria of faces drifted on a
greasy blue mist: vanished kings and guildmasters, lost dukes, he-
roes of ancient days. I beheld cold-eyed technicians prodding his-
tory from handfuls of charred matter. I saw damp lumps of trash

Nightwings 243
give up tales of revolutions and assassinations, of cultural change,
of the discarding of mores.
Then I was instructed superficially in the techniques of the field.
Through cunning simulation I was shown Rememberers at work
with vacuum cores digging through the mounds of the great ruined
cities of Afreek and Ais. I participated vicariously in the undersea
quest for the remnants of the civilizations of the Lost Continents;
teams of Rememberers entered translucent, teardrop-shaped vehi-
cles like blobs of green gelatin and sped into the depths of Earth
Ocean, down and down to the slime-crusted prairies of the for-
mer land and with lancing beams of violet force, they drilled
through muck and girders to find buried truths. I watched the
gatherers of shards, the diggers of shadows, the collectors of mo-
lecular films. One of the best of the orientation experiences they
provided was a sequence in which some truly heroic Remem-
berers excavated a weather machine in lower Afreek, baring the
base of the titanic thing, lifting it on power pulls from the soil, an
extraction so mighty that the earth itself seemed to shriek when it
was done. High aloft they floated the ponderous relic of Second
Cycle folly, while shawled experts prodded in its root-place to
learn how the column had been erected in the first instance. My
eyes throbbed at the spectacle.
I emerged from these sessions with an overwhelming awe for
this guild I had chosen. Individual Rememberers whom I had
known had struck me generally as pompous, disdainful, haughty,
or merely aloof; I did not find them charming. Yet is the whole
greater than the sum of its parts, and I saw such men as Basil and
Elegro, so vacant, so absent from ordinary human concerns, so
disinterested, as parts of a colossal effort to win back from eter-
nity our brilliant yesterdays. This research into lost times was
magnificent, the only proper substitute for mankind's former activ-
ities; having lost our present and our future, we had of necessity to
bend all our endeavors to the past, which no one could take from
us if only we were vigilant enough.
For many days I absorbed the details of this effort, every stage
of the work from the collection of specks of dust in the field
through their treatment and analysis in the laboratory to the
highest endeavor of all, synthesis and interpretation, which was
carried out by senior Rememberers on the highest level of this
building. I was given but a glimpse of those sages: withered and
dry, old enough to be grandfathers to me, white heads bent for-

244 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
ward, thin lips droning comments and interpretations, quibbles
and corrections. Some of them, I was told in a hushed whisper,
had been renewed at Jorslem two and three times apiece, and now
were beyond renewal and in their final great age.
Next we were introduced to the memory tanks where the Re-
memberers store their findings, and from which are dispensed in-
formations for the benefit of the curious.
As a Watcher I had had little curiosity and less interest in visit-
ing memory tanks. Certainly I had never seen anything like this,
for the tanks of the Rememberers were no mere three-brain or
five-brain storage units, but mammoth installations with a hundred
brains or more hooked in series. The room to which they took us
—one of dozens beneath the building, I learned—was an oblong
chamber, deep but not high, in which brain-cases were arrayed in
rows of nine that faded into shadowed depths. Perspective played
odd tricks; I was not sure if there were ten rows or fifty, and the
sight of those bleached domes was overpoweringly immense.
"Are these the brains of former Rememberers?" I asked.
The guide replied, "Some of them are. But there's no necessity
to use only Rememberers. Any normal human brain will do; even
a Servitor has more storage capacity than you'd believe. We have
no need for redundancy in our circuits, and so we can use the full
resources of each brain."
I tried to peer through the heavy block of sleekness that pro-
tected the memory tanks from harm. I said, "What is recorded in
this particular room?"
"The names of dwellers in Afreek in Second Cycle times, and
as much personal data about each as we have so far recovered.
Also, since these cells are not yet fully charged, we have tempo-
rarily stored in them certain geographical details concerning the
Lost Continents, and information pertaining to the creation of
Land Bridge."
"Can such information be easily transferred from temporary
storage to permanent?" I asked.
"Easily, yes. Everything is electromagnetic here. Our facts are
aggregates of charges; we shift them from brain to brain by revers-
ing polarities."
"What if there were an electrical failure?" I demanded. "You
say you have no redundancy here. Is there no possibility of losing
data through some accident?"
"None," said the guide smoothly. "We have a series of fallback

Nightwings 245
devices to insure continuity of power. And by using organic tissue
for our storage cells, we have the best assurance of safety of all:
for the brains themselves will retain their data in the event of a
power interruption. It would be taxing but not impossible to re-
capture their contents."
"During the invasion," I said, "were any difficulties experi-
enced?"
"We are under the protection of the invaders, who regard our
work as vital to their own interests."
Not long afterward, at a general convocation of the Remem-
berers, we apprentices were permitted to look on from a balcony
of the guildhall; below us, in full majesty, were the guild members,
shawls in place, Elegro and Olmayne among them. On a dais that
bore the helical symbol was Chancellor Kenishal of the Remem-
berers, an austere and commanding figure, and beside him was an
even more conspicuous personage who was of the species that
had conquered Earth. Kenishal spoke briefly. The resonance of his
voice did not entirely conceal the hollowness of his words; like all
administrators everywhere, he gushed platitudes, praising himself
by implication as he congratulated his guild for its notable work.
Then he introduced the invader.
The alien stretched forth his arms until they seemed to touch
the walls of the auditorium.
"I am Manrule Seven," he said quietly. "I am Procurator of
Perris, with particular responsibility for the guild of Rememberers.
My purpose here today is to confirm the decree of the provisional
occupational government. You Rememberers are to go totally un-
hampered in your work. You are to have free access to all sites on
this planet or on any other world that may have bearing on your
mastery of the past of this planet. All files are to remain open to
you, except those pertaining to the organization of the conquest it-
self. Chancellor Kenishal has informed me that the conquest lies
outside the scope of your present research in any case, so no
hardship will be worked. We of the occupying government are
aware of the value of the work of your guild. The history of this
planet is of great significance, and we wish your efforts con-
tinued."
"To make Earth a better tourist attraction," said the Prince of
Roum bitterly at my side.
Manrule Seven went on, "The Chancellor has requested me to
inform you of one administrative change that will necessarily fol-

246 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
low from the occupied status of your planet. In the past, all dis-
putes among you were settled by the courts of your own guild,
with Chancellor Kenishal having the highest right of appeal. For
the sake of efficient administration it now becomes mandatory for
us to impose our jurisdiction over that of the guild. Therefore the
Chancellor will transfer to us those litigations which he feels no
longer fall into his sphere of authority."
The Rememberers gasped. There was a sudden shifting of pos-
tures and exchanging of glances on the floor below.
"The Chancellor's abdicating!" blurted an apprentice near me.
"What choice does he have, fool?" another whispered harshly.
The meeting broke up in some confusion. Rememberers flooded
into the hallways, gesticulating, debating, expostulating. One ven-
erable wearer of the shawl was so shaken that he crouched down
and began to make the series of stabilizer responses, heedless of
the throng. The tide swept over us apprentices, forcing us back. I
attempted to protect the Prince, fearing that he would be thrown
to the floor and trampled; but we were swept apart and I lost
sight of him for minutes. When I saw him again he stood with the
Rememberer Olmayne. Her face was flushed, her eyes were bright;
she was speaking rapidly, and the Prince was listening. His hand
clung to her elbow as if for support.
4
After the conclusion of the early period of orientations, I was
given trivial tasks. Chiefly I was asked to do things that in an
earlier time would have been performed wholly by machine: for
example, to monitor the feed lines that oozed nutrients into the
brain-boxes of the memory tanks. For several hours each day I
walked through the narrow corridor of the inspection panels,
searching for clogged lines. It had been so devised that when a
line became blocked, a stress pattern was created the length of the
clear tubing that contained it, and beams of a special polarized
light illuminated that pattern for benefit of the inspector. I did my
humble task, now and again finding a blockage, and I did other
little jobs as befitted my status of apprenticeship.
However, I also had the opportunity to pursue my own investi-
gations into the events of my planet's past.
Sometimes one does not learn the value of things until they are

Nightwings 247
lost. For a lifetime I served as a Watcher, striving to give early
warning of a promised invasion of Earth, while caring little who
might wish to invade us, or why. For a lifetime I realized dimly
that Earth had known grander days than those of the Third Cycle
into which I had been born, and yet I sought no knowledge of
what those days had been like and of the reasons for our present
diminished condition. Only when the starships of the invaders
blossomed in the sky did I feel a sudden hunger to know of that
lost past. Now, as the most elderly of apprentices, I, Tomis of the
Rememberers, rummaged through the archives of vanished time.
Any citizen has the right to go to a public thinking cap and req-
uisition an information from the Rememberers on any given sub-
ject. Nothing is concealed. But the Rememberers volunteer no aid;
you must know how to ask, which means you must know what to
ask. Item by item you must seek your facts. It is useful for those
who must know, say, the long-term patterns of climate in Agupt,
or the symptoms of the crystallization disease, or the limitations in
the charter of one of the guilds; but it is no help at all to the man
who wishes knowledge of the larger questions. One would need to
requisition a thousand informations merely to make a beginning.
The expense would be great; few would bother.
As an apprentice Rememberer I had full access to all data.
More important, I had access to the indexes. The Indexers are a
guild subsidiary to the Rememberers, a donkey-guild of drudges
who record and classify that which they often do not understand;
the end product of their toil serves the greater guild, but the in-
dexes are not open to all. Without them one scarcely is able to
cope with the problems of research.
I will not summarize the stages by which I came by my knowl-
edge—the hours spent shuffling through interwoven corridors, the
rebuffs, the bewilderments, the throbbing of the brain. As a fool-
ish novice I was at the mercy of pranksters, and many a fellow
apprentice, even a guild member or two, led me astray for the
sheer wicked joy of it. But I learned which routes to follow, how
to set up sequences of questions, how to follow a path of refer-
ences higher and higher until the truth bursts dazzlingly upon one.
With presistence rather than with great intellect I wrung from the
files of the Rememberers a coherent tale of the downfall of man.
This:
There was a time in ages past when life on Earth was brutal
and primitive. We call this time the First Cycle. I do not speak of

248 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
the period before civilization, that time of grunting and hairiness,
of caves and stone tools. We consider the First Cycle to have com-
menced when man first learned to record information and to con-
trol environment. This occurred in Agupt and Sumir. By our way
of reckoning the First Cycle commenced some 40,000 years ago—
however, we are uncertain of its true length in its own terms, since
the span of the year was altered at the end of the Second Cycle,
and we have been unable thus far to determine how long, in previ-
ous eras, it took for our world to circle its sun. Somewhat longer
than at present, perhaps.
The First Cycle was the time of Imperial Roum and of the first
flowering of Jorslem. Eyrop remained savage long after Ais and
parts of Afreek were civilized. In the west, two great continents
occupied much of Earth Ocean, and these too were held by sav-
ages.
It is understood that in this cycle mankind had no contact with
other worlds or stars. Such solitude is difficult to comprehend; but
yet so it occurred. Mankind had no way of creating light except
through fire; he could not cure his ills; life was not susceptible to
renewal. It was a time without comforts, a gray time, harsh in its
simplicity. Death came early; one barely had time to scatter a few
sons about, and one was carried off. One lived with fear, but
mostly not fear of real things.
The soul recoils from such an era. But yet it is true that in the
First Cycle magnificent cities were founded—Roum, Perris, Atin,
Jorslem—and splendid deeds were accomplished. One stands in
awe of those ancestors, foul-smelling (no doubt), illiterate, with-
out machines, and still capable of coming to terms with their uni-
verse and to some extent of mastering it.
War and grief were constant throughout the First Cycle. De-
struction and creation were nearly simultaneous. Flames ate man's
most glorious cities. Chaos threatened always to engulf order.
How could men have endured such conditions for thousands of
years?
Towards the close of the First Cycle much of the primitivism
was outgrown. At last sources of power were accessible to man;
there was the beginning of true transportation; communication
over distances became possible; many inventions transformed the
world in a short time. Methods of making war kept pace with the
technological growth in other directions; but total catastrophe was
averted, although several times it appeared to have arrived. It was

Nightwings 249
during this final phase of the cycle that the Lost Continents were
colonized, also Stralya, and that first contact was made with the
adjoining planets of our solar system.
The transition from First Cycle to Second is arbitrarily fixed at
the point when man first encountered intelligent beings from dis-
tant worlds. This, the Rememberers now believe, took place less
than fifty generations after the First Cycle folk had mastered elec-
tronic and nuclear energy. Thus we may rightly say that the early
people of Earth stumbled headlong from savagery to galactic con-
tact—or, perhaps, that they crossed that gap in a few quick strides.
This too is cause for pride. For if the First Cycle was great de-
spite its handicaps, the Second Cycle knew of no handicaps and
achieved miracles.
In this epoch mankind spread out to the stars, and the stars
came to mankind. Earth was a market for goods of all worlds.
Wonders were commonplace. One might hope to live for hundreds
of years; eyes, hearts, lungs, kidneys were replaced as easily as
shoes; the air was pure, no man went hungry, war was forgotten.
Machines of every sort served man. But the machines were not
enough, and so the Second Cycle folk bred men who were ma-
chines, or machines who were men: creatures that were genetically
human, but were born artificially, and were treated with drugs that
prevented the permanent storing of memories. These creatures,
analogous to our neuters, were capable of performing an efficient
day's work, but were unable to build up that permanent body of
experiences, memories, expectations, and abilities that is the mark
of a human soul. Millions of such not-quite-humans handled the
duller tasks of the day, freeing others for lives of glistening
fulfillment. After the creation of the subhumans came the creation
of the superanimals who, through biochemical manipulation of the
brain, were able to carry out tasks once beyond the capacity of
their species: dogs, cats, mice, and cattle were enrolled in the
labor force, while certain high primates received functions for-
merly reserved for humans. Through this exploitation of the envi-
ronment to the fullest, man created a paradise on Earth.
The spirit of man soared to the loftiest peak it had known.
Poets, scholars, and scientists made splendid contributions. Shin-
ing cities sprawled across the land. The population was enormous,
and even so, there was ample room for all, with no shortage of re-
sources. One could indulge one's whims to any extent; there was
much experimentation with genetic surgery and with mutagenetic

250 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
and teratogenetic drugs, so that the human species adopted many
new forms. There was, however, nothing yet like the variant forms
of our cycle.
Across the sky in stately procession moved space stations serv-
ing every imaginable need. It was at this time that the two new
moons were built, although the Rememberers have not yet deter-
mined whether their purpose was functional or esthetic. The
auroras that now appear each night in the sky may have been in-
stalled at this time, although some factions of Rememberers argue
that the presence of temperate-zone auroras began with the geo-
physical upheavals that heralded the close of the cycle.
It was, at any rate, the finest of times to be alive.
"See Earth and die," was the watchword of the outworlders. No
one making the galactic grand tour dared pass up this planet of
miracles. We welcomed the strangers, accepted their compliments
and their money, made them comfortable in the ways they pre-
ferred, and proudly displayed our greatnesses.
The Prince of Roum can testify that it is the fate of the mighty
eventually to be humbled, and also that the higher one reaches for
splendor, the more catastrophic one's downfall is apt to be. After
some thousands of years of glories beyond my capacity to compre-
hend, the fortunate ones of the Second Cycle overreached them-
selves and committed two misdeeds, one born of foolish arro-
gance, the other born of excessive confidence. Earth is paying yet
for those overreachings.
The effects of the first were slow to be felt. It was a function of
Earth's attitude toward the other species of the galaxy, which had
shifted during the Second Cycle from awe to matter-of-fact ac-
ceptance to contempt. At the beginning of the cycle, brash and
naive Earth had erupted into a galaxy already peopled by ad-
vanced races that long had been in contact with one another. This
could well have produced a soul-crushing trauma, but instead it
generated an aggressive urge to excel and surpass. And so it hap-
pened that Earthmen quickly came to look upon most of the
galactics as equals, and then, as progress continued on Earth, as
inferiors. This bred the easy habit of contempt for the backward.
Thus it was proposed to establish "study compounds" on Earth
for specimens of inferior races. These compounds would repro-
duce the natural habitat of the races and would be accessible to
scholars wishing to observe the life-processes of these races. How-
ever, the expense of collecting and maintaining the specimens was

Nightwings 251
such that it quickly became necessary to open the compounds to
the public at large, for purposes of amusement. These supposedly
scientific compounds were, in fact, zoos for other intelligent
species.
At the outset only the truly alien beings were collected, those so
remote from human biological or psychological norms that there
was little danger of regarding them as "people." A many-limbed
thing that dwells in a tank of methane under high pressure does
not strike a sympathetic response from those likely to object to the
captivity of intelligent creatures. If that methane-dweller happens
to have a complex civilization of a sort uniquely fitted to its envi-
ronment, it pan be argued that it is all the more important to du-
plicate that environment on Earth so that one can study so strange
a civilization. Therefore the early compounds contained only the
bizarre. The collectors were limited, also, to taking creatures who
had not attained the stage of galactic travel themselves. It would
not have been good form to kidnap life-forms whose relatives
were among the interstellar tourists on whom our world's econ-
omy had come so heavily to depend.
The success of the first compounds led to the demand for the
formation of others. Less critical standards were imposed; not
merely the utterly alien and grotesque were collected, but sam-
plings of any sort of galactic life not in a position to register
diplomatic protests. And, as the audacity of our ancestors in-
creased, so did the restrictions on collection loosen, until there
were samplings from a thousand worlds on Earth, including some
whose civilizations were older and more intricate than our own.
The archives of the Rememberers show that the expansion of
our compounds stirred some agitation in many parts of the uni-
verse. We were denounced as marauders, kidnapers, and pirates;
committees were formed to criticize our wanton disregard for the
rights of sentient beings; Earthmen traveling to other planets were
occasionally beset by mobs of hostile life-forms demanding that
we free the prisoners of the compounds at once. However, these
protesters were only a minority—most galactics kept an uncom-
fortable silence about our compounds. They regretted the bar-
barity of them, and nevertheless made a point of touring them
when they visited Earth. Where else, after all, could one see hun-
dreds of life-forms, culled from every part of the universe, in a
few days? Our compounds were a major attraction, one of the
wonders of the cosmos. By silent conspiracy our neighbors in the

252 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
galaxy winked at the amorality of the basic concept in order to
share the pleasure of inspecting the prisoners.
There is in the archives of the Rememberers a memory-tank
entry of a visit to a compound area. It is one of the oldest visual
records possessed by the guild, and I obtained a look at it only
with great difficulty and upon the direct intercession of the Re-
memberer Olmayne. Despite the use of a double filter in the cap,
one sees the scene only blurredly; but yet it is clear enough. Be-
hind a curved shield of a transparent material are fifty or more
beings of an unnamed world. Their bodies are pyramidal, with
dark blue surfaces and pink visual areas at each vertex; they walk
upon short, thick legs; they have one pair of grasping limbs on
each face. Though it is risky to attempt to interpret the inner feel-
ings of extraterrestrial beings, one can clearly sense a mood of
utter despair in these creatures. Through the murky green gases of
their environment they move slowly, numbly, without animation.
Several have joined tips in what must be communication. One ap-
pears newly dead. Two are bowed to the ground like tumbled
toys, but their limbs move in what perhaps is prayer. It is a dismal
scene. Later, I discovered other such records in neglected corners
of the building. They taught me much.
For more than a thousand Second Cycle years the growth of
these compounds continued unchecked, until it came to seem logi-
cal and natural to all except the victims that Earth should practice
these cruelties in the name of science. Then, upon a distant world
not previously visited by Earthmen, there were discovered certain
beings of a primitive kind, comparable perhaps to Earthmen in
early First Cycle days. These beings were roughly humanoid in
form, undeniably intelligent, and fiercely savage. At the loss of
several Earthborn lives, a collecting team acquired a breeding
colony of these people and transported them to Earth to be placed
in a compound.
This was the first of the Second Cycle's two fatal errors.
At the time of the kidnaping, the beings of this other world—
which is never named in the records, but known only by the code
designation H362—were in no position to protest or to take puni-
tive steps. But shortly they were visited by emissaries from certain
other worlds aligned politically against Earth. Under the guidance
of these emissaries, the beings of H362 requested the return of
their people. Earth refused, citing the long precedent of inter-
stellar condonement of the compounds. Lengthy diplomatic repre-

Nightwings 253
sentations followed, in the course of which Earth simply
reaffirmed its right to have acted in such a fashion.
The people of H362 responded with threats. "One day," they
said, "we will cause you to regret this. We will invade and con-
quer your planet, set free all the inhabitants of the compounds,
and turn Earth itself into a gigantic compound for its own people."
Under the circumstances this appeared quite amusing.
Little more was heard of the outraged inhabitants of H362 over
the next few millennia. They were progressing rapidly, in their dis-
tant part of the universe, but since by all calculations it would
take them a cosmic period to pose any menace to Earth, they
were ignored. How could one fear spear-wielding savages?
Earth addressed itself to a new challenge: full control of the
planetary climate.
Weather modification had been practiced on a small scale since
late First Cycle. Clouds holding potential rain could be induced to
release it; fogs could be dispelled; hail could be made less destruc-
tive. Certain steps were taken toward reducing the polar ice packs
and toward making deserts more fruitful. However, these meas-
ures were strictly local and, with few exceptions, had no lasting
effects on environment.
The Second Cycle endeavor involved the erection of enormous
columns at more than one hundred locations around the globe.
We do not know the heights of these columns, since none has sur-
vived intact and the specifications are lost, but it is thought that
they equaled or exceeded the highest buildings previously con-
structed, and perhaps attained altitudes of two miles or more.
Within these columns was equipment which was designed, among
other things, to effect displacements of the poles of Earth's mag-
netic field.
As we understand the aim of the weather machines, it was to
modify the planet's geography according to a carefully conceived
plan arising from the division of what we call Earth Ocean into a
number of large bodies. Although interconnected, these suboceans
were considered to have individual existences, since along most of
their boundary region they were cut off from the rest of Earth
Ocean by land masses. In the north polar region, for example, the
joining of Ais to the northern Lost Continent (known as Usa-
amrik) in the west and the proximity of Usa-amrik to Eyrop in the
east left only narrow straits through which the polar waters could

254 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
mingle with those of the warmer oceans flanking the Lost Conti-
nents.
Manipulation of magnetic forces produced a libration of Earth
on its orbit, calculated to break up the north polar ice pack and
permit the cold water trapped by this pack to come in contact with
warmer water from elsewhere. By removing the northern ice pack
and thus exposing the northern ocean to evaporation, precipitation
would be greatly increased there. To prevent this precipitation
from falling in the north as snow, additional manipulations were
to be induced to change the pattern of the prevailing westerly
winds which carried precipitation over temperate areas. A natural
conduit was to be established that would bring the precipitation of
the polar region to areas in lower latitudes lacking in proper mois-
ture.
There was much more to the plan than this. Our knowledge of
the details is hazy. We are aware of schemes to shift ocean cur-
rents by causing land subsidence or emergence, of proposals to
deflect solar heat from the tropics to the poles, and of other rear-
rangements. The details are unimportant. What is significant to us
are the consequences of this grandiose plan.
After a period of preparation lasting centuries and after absorb-
ing more effort and wealth than any other project in human his-
tory, the weather machines were put into operation.
The result was devastation.
The disastrous experiment in planetary alteration resulted in a
shifting of the geographical poles, a lengthy period of glacial con-
ditions throughout most of the northern hemisphere, the unex-
pected submergence of Usa-amrik and Sud-amrik, its neighbor,
the creation of Land Bridge joining Afreek and Eyrop, and the
near destruction of human civilization. These upheavals did not
take place with great speed. Evidently the project went smoothly
for the first several centuries; the polar ice thawed, and the corre-
sponding rise in sea levels was dealt with by constructing fusion
evaporators—small suns, in effect—at selected oceanic points. Only
slowly did it become clear that the weather machines were bring-
ing about architectonic changes in the crust of Earth. These,
unlike the climatic changes, proved irreversible.
It was a time of furious storms followed by unending droughts;
of the loss of hundreds of millions of lives; of the disruption of all
communications; of panicky mass migrations out of the doomed
continents. Chaos triumphed. The splendid civilization of the Sec-

Nightwings 255
ond Cycle was shattered. The compounds of alien life were de-
stroyed.
For the sake of saving what remained of its population, several
of the most powerful galactic races took command of our planet.
They established energy pylons to stabilize Earth's axial wobble;
they dismantled those weather machines that had not been de-
stroyed by the planetary convulsions; they fed the hungry, clothed
the naked, and offered reconstruction loans. For us it was a Time
of Sweeping, when all the structures and conventions of society
were expunged. No longer masters in our own world, we accepted
the charity of strangers and crept pitifully about.
Yet, because we were still the same race we had been, we
recovered to some extent. We had squandered our planet's capital
and so could never again be anything but bankrupts and paupers,
but in a humbler way we entered into our Third Cycle. Certain
scientific techniques of earlier days still remained to us. Others
were devised, working generally on different principles. Our guilds
were formed to give order to society: Dominators, Master, Mer-
chants, and the rest. The Rememberers strove to salvage what
could be pulled from the wreck of the past.
Our debts to our rescuers were enormous. As bankrupts, we
had no way of repaying those debts; we hoped instead for a quit-
claim, a statement of absolution. Negotiations to that effect were
already under way when an unexpected intervention occurred.
The inhabitants of H362 approached the committee of Earth's
receivers and offered to reimburse them for their expenses—in re-
turn for an assignment of all rights and claims in Earth to H362.
It was done.
H362 now regarded itself the owner by treaty of our world. It
served notice to the universe at large that it reserved the right to
take possession at any future date. As well it might, since at that
time H362 was still incapable of interstellar travel. Thereafter,
though, H362 was deemed legal possessor of the assets of Earth,
as purchaser in bankruptcy.
No one failed to realize that this was H362's way of fulfilling its
threat to "turn Earth itself into a gigantic compound," as revenge
for the injury inflicted by our collecting team long before.
On Earth, Third Cycle society constituted itself along the lines
it now holds, with its rigid stratification of guilds. The threat of
H362 was taken seriously, for ours was a chastened world that
sneered at no menace, however slight; and a guild of Watchers

256 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
was devised to scan the skies for attackers. Defenders and all the
rest followed. In some small ways we demonstrated our old flair
for imagination, particularly in the Years of Magic, when a fanci-
ful impulse created the self-perpetuating mutant guild of Fliers, a
parallel guild of Swimmers, of whom little is heard nowadays, and
several other varieties, including a troublesome and unpredictable
guild of Changelings whose genetic characteristics were highly er-
ratic.
The Watchers watched. The Dominators ruled. The Fliers
soared. Life went on, year after year, in Eyrop and in Ais, in
Stralya, in Afreek, in the scattered islands that were the only rem-
nants of the Lost Continents of Usa-amrik and Sud-amrik. The
vow of H362 receded into mythology, but yet we remained vigi-
lant. And far across the cosmos our enemies gathered strength, at-
taining some measure of the power that had been ours in our Sec-
ond Cycle. They never forgot the day when their kinsmen had
been held captive in our compounds.
In a night of terror they came to us. Now they are our masters,
and their vow is fulfilled, their claim asserted.
All this, and much more, I learned as I burrowed in the accu-
mulated knowledge of the guild of Rememberers.
5
Meanwhile the former Prince of Roum was wantonly abusing
the hospitality of our co-sponsorer, the Rememberer Elegro. I
should have been aware of what was going on, for I knew the
Prince and his ways better than any other man in Perris. But I was
too busy in the archives, learning of the past. While I explored the
details of the Second Cycle's protoplasm files and regeneration
nodules, its time-wind blowers and its photonic-flux fixers, Prince
Enric was seducing the Rememberer Olmayne.
Like most seductions, I imagine that this was no great contest
of wills. Olmayne was a woman of sensuality, whose attitude to-
ward her husband was affectionate but patronizing. She regarded
Elegro openly as ineffectual, a bumbler; and Elegro, whose
haughtiness and stern mien did not conceal his underlying weak-
ness of purpose, seemed to merit her disdain. What kind of mar-
riage they had was not my business to observe, but clearly she was
the stronger, and just as clearly he could not meet her needs.

Nightwings 257
Then, too, why had Olmayne agreed to sponsor us into her
guild?
Surely not out of any desire for a tattered old Watcher. It must
have been the wish to know more of the strange and oddly com-
manding blind Pilgrim who was that Watcher's companion. From
the very first, then, Olmayne must have been drawn to Prince
Enric; and he, naturally, would need little encouragement to ac-
cept the gift she offered.
Possibly they were lovers almost from the moment of our ar-
rival in the Hall of Rememberers.
I went my way, and Elegro went his, and Olmayne and Prince
Enric went theirs, and summer gave way to autumn and autumn to
winter. I excavated the records with passionate impatience. Never
before had I known such involvement, such intensity of curiosity.
Without benefit of a visit to Jorslem I felt renewed. I saw the
Prince infrequently, and our meetings were generally silent; it was
not my place to question him about his doings, and he felt no wish
to volunteer information to me.
Occasionally I thought of my former life, and of my travels
from place to place, and of the Flier Avluela who was now, I sup-
posed, the consort of one of our conquerors. How did the false
Changeling Gormon style himself, now that he had emerged from
his disguise and owned himself to be one of those from H362?
Earthking Nine? Oceanlord Five? Overman Three? Wherever he
was, he must feel satisfaction, I thought, at the total success of the
conquest of Earth.
Toward winter's end I learned of the affair between the Re-
memberer Olmayne and Prince Enric of Roum. I picked up whis-
pered gossip in the apprentice quarters first; then I noticed the
smiles on the faces of other Rememberers when Elegro and Ol-
mayne were about; lastly, I observed the behavior of the Prince
and Olmayne toward one another. It was obvious. Those touch-
ings of hand to hand, those sly exchanges of catchwords and pri-
vate phrases—what else could they mean?
Among the Rememberers the marriage vow is regarded sol-
emnly. As with the Fliers, mating is for life, and one is not sup-
posed to betray one's partner as Olmayne was doing. When one is
married to a fellow Rememberer—a custom in the guild, but not
universal—the union is all the more sacred.
What revenge would Elegro take when in time he learned the
truth?

258 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
It happened that I was present when the situation at last crys-
tallized into conflict. It was a night in earliest spring. I had worked
long and hard in the deepest pits of the memory tanks, prying
forth data that no one had bothered with since it had first been
stored; and, with my head aswim with images of chaos, I walked
through the glow of the Perris night, seeking fresh air. I strolled
along the Senn and was accosted by an agent for a Somnambulist,
who offered to sell me insight into the world of dreams. I came
upon a lone Pilgrim at his devotions before a temple of flesh, I
watched a pair of young Fliers in passage overhead, and shed a
self-pitying tear or two. I was halted by a starborn tourist in
breathing mask and jeweled tunic; he put his cratered red face
close to mine and vented hallucinations in my nostrils. At length I
returned to the Hall of Rememberers and went to the suite of my
sponsors to pay my respects before retiring.
Olmayne and Elegro were there. So, too, was Prince Enric. Ol-
mayne admitted me with a quick gesture of one fingertip, but took
no further notice of me, nor did the others. Elegro was tensely
pacing the floor, stomping about so vehemently that the delicate
life-forms of the carpet folded and unfolded their petals in wild
agitation. "A Pilgrim!" Elegro cried. "If it had been some trash of
a Vendor, it would only be humiliating. But a Pilgrim? That
makes it monstrous!"
Prince Enric stood with arms folded, body motionless. It was
impossible to detect the expression beneath his mask of Pilgrim-
age, but he appeared wholly calm.
Elegro said, "Will you deny that you have been tampering with
the sanctity of my pairing?"
"I deny nothing. I assert nothing."
"And you?" Elegro demanded, whirling on his lady. "Speak
truth, Olmayne! For once, speak truth! What of the stories they
tell of you and this Pilgrim?"
"I have heard no stories," said Olmayne sweetly.
"That he shares your bed! That you taste potions together!
That you travel to ecstasy together!"
Olmayne's smile did not waver. Her broad face was tranquil.
To me she looked more beautiful than ever.
Elegro tugged in anguish at the strands of his shawl. His dour,
bearded face darkened in wrath and exasperation. His hand
slipped within his tunic and emerged with the tiny glossy bead of a

Nightwings 259
vision capsule, which he thrust forth toward the guilty pair on the
palm of his hand.
"Why should I waste breath?" he asked. "Everything is here.
The full record in the photonic flux. You have been under surveil-
lance. Did either of you think anything could be hidden here, of
all places? You, Olmayne, a Rememberer, how could you think
so?"
Olmayne examined the capsule from a distance, as though it
were a primed implosion bomb. With distaste she said, "How like
you to spy on us, Elegro. Did it give you great pleasure to watch
us in our joy?"
"Beast!" he cried.
Pocketing the capsule, he advanced toward the motionless
Prince. Elegro's face now was contorted with righteous wrath.
Standing an arm's length from the Prince he declared icily, "You
will be punished to the fullest for this impiety. You will be
stripped of your Pilgrim's robes and delivered up to the fate re-
served for monsters. The Will shall consume your soul!"
Prince Enric replied, "Curb your tongue."
"Curb my tongue? Who are you to speak that way? A Pilgrim
who lusts for the wife of his host—who doubly violates holiness—
who drips lies and sanctimony at the same moment?" Elegro
frothed. His iciness was gone. Now he ranted in nearly incoherent
frenzy, displaying his interior weakness by his lack of self-control.
We three stood frozen, astounded by his torrent of words, and at
last the stasis broke when the Rememberer, carried away by the
tide of his own indignation, seized the Prince by the shoulders and
began violently to shake him.
"Filth," Enric bellowed, "you may not put your hands to me!"
With a double thrust of his fists against Elegro's chest he hurled
the Rememberer reeling backward across the room. Elegro
crashed into a suspension cradle and sent a flank of watery arti-
facts tumbling; three flasks of scintillating fluids shivered and
spilled their contents; the carpet set up a shrill cry of pained pro-
test. Gasping, stunned, Elegro pressed a hand to his breast and
looked to us for assistance.
"Physical assault—" Elegro wheezed. "A shameful crime!"
"The first assault was your doing," Olmayne reminded her hus-
band.
Pointing trembling fingers, Elegro muttered, "For this there can
be no forgiveness, Pilgrim!"

260 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
"Call me Pilgrim no longer," Enric said. His hands went to the
grillwork of his mask. Olmayne cried out, trying to prevent him;
but in his anger the Prince knew no check. He hurled the mask to
the floor and stood with his harsh face terribly exposed, the cruel
features hawk-lean, the gray mechanical spheres in his eyesockets
masking the depths of his fury. "I am the Prince of Roum," he an-
nounced in a voice of thunder. "Down and abase! Down and
abase! Quick, Rememberer, the three prostrations and the five
abasements!"
Elegro appeared to crumble. He peered in disbelief; then he
sagged, and in a kind of reflex of amazement he performed a ritual
obeisance before his wife's seducer. It was the first time since the
fall of Roum that the Prince had asserted his former status, and
the pleasure of it was so evident on his ravaged face that even the
blank eyeballs appeared to glow in regal pride.
"Out," the Prince ordered. "Leave us."
Elegro fled.
I remained, astounded, staggered. The Prince nodded cour-
teously to me. "Would you pardon us, old friend, and grant us
some moments of privacy?"
6
A weak man can be put to rout by a surprise attack, but after-
ward he pauses, reconsiders, and hatches schemes. So was it with
the Rememberer Elegro. Driven from his own suite by the
unmasking of the Prince of Roum, he grew calm and crafty once
he was out of that terrifying presence. Later that same night, as I
settled into my sleeping cradle and debated aiding slumber with a
drug, Elegro summoned me to his research cell on a lower level of
the building.
There he sat amid the paraphernalia of his guild: reels and
spools, data-flakes, capsules, caps, a quartet of series-linked
skulls, a row of output screens, a small ornamental helix, all the
symbology of the gatherers of information. In his hands he
grasped a tension-draining crystal from one of the Cloud-worlds;
its milky interior was rapidly tingeing with sepia as it pulled anxie-
ties from his spirit. He pretended a look of stern authority, as if
forgetting that I had seen him exposed in his spinelessness.
He said, "Were you aware of this man's identity when you
came with him to Perris?"

Nightwings 261
"Yes."
"You said nothing about it."
"I was never asked."
"Do you know what a risk you have exposed all of us to, by
causing us unknowingly to harbor a Dominator?"
"We are Earthmen," I said. "Do we not still acknowledge the
authority of the Dominators?"
"Not since the conquest. By decree of the invaders all former
governments are dissolved and their leaders subject to arrest."
"But surely we should resist such an order!"
The Rememberer Elegro regarded me quizzically. "Is it a Re-
memberer's, function to meddle in politics? Tomis, we obey the
government in power, whichever it may be and however it may
have taken control. We conduct no resistance activities here."
"I see."
"Therefore we must rid ourselves at once of this dangerous fu-
gitive. Tomis, I instruct you to go at once to occupation head-
quarters and inform Manrule Seven that we have captured the
Prince of Roum and hold him here for pickup."
should go?" I blurted. "Why send an old man as a messenger
in the night? An ordinary thinking-cap transmission would be
enough!"
"Too risky. Strangers may intercept cap communications. It
would not go well for our guild if this were spread about. This has
to be a personal communication."
"But to choose an unimportant apprentice to carry it—it seems
strange."
"There are only two of us who know," said Elegro. "I will not
go. Therefore you must."
"With no introduction to Manrule Seven I will never be ad-
mitted."
"Inform his aides that you have information leading to the ap-
prehension of the Prince of Roum. You'll be heard."
"Am I to mention your name?"
"If necessary. You may say that the Prince is being held pris-
oner in my quarters with the cooperation of my wife."
I nearly laughed at that. But I held a straight face before this
cowardly Rememberer, who did not even dare to go himself to
denounce the man who had cuckolded him.
"Ultimately," I said, "the Prince will become aware of what we

262 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
have done. Is it right of you to ask me to betray a man who was
my companion for so many months?"
"It is not a matter of betrayal. It is a matter of obligations to
the government."
"I feel no obligation to this government. My loyalties are to the
guild of Dominators. Which is why I gave assistance to the Prince
of Roum in his moment of peril."
"For that," said Elegro, "your own life could be forfeit to our
conquerors. Your only expiation is to admit your error and coop-
erate in bringing about his arrest. Go. Now."
In a long and tolerant life I have never despised anyone so
vehemently as I did the Rememberer Elegro at that moment.
Yet I saw that I was faced with few choices, none of them pal-
atable. Elegro wished his undoer punished, but lacked the courage
to report him himself; therefore I must give over to the conquering
authorities one whom I had sheltered and assisted, and for whom
I felt a responsibility. If I refused, Elegro would perhaps hand me
to the invaders for punishment myself, as an accessory to the
Prince's escape from Roum; or he might take vengeance against
me within the machinery of the guild of Rememberers. If I obliged
Elegro, though, I would have a stain on my conscience forever,
and in the event of a restoration of the power of the Dominators I
would have much to answer for.
As I weighed the possibilities, I triply cursed the Rememberer
Elegro's faithless wife and her invertebrate husband.
I hesitated a bit. Elegro offered more persuasion, threatening to
arraign me before the guild on such charges as unlawfully gaining
access to secret files and improperly introducing into guild pre-
cincts a proscribed fugitive. He threatened to cut me off forever
from the information pool. He spoke vaguely of vengeance.
In the end I told him I would go to the invaders' headquarters
and do his bidding. I had by then conceived a betrayal that would
—I hoped—cancel the betrayal Elegro was enforcing on me.
Dawn was near when I left the building. The air was mild and
sweet; a low mist hung over the streets of Perris, giving them a
gentle shimmer. No moons were in sight. In the deserted streets I
felt uneasy, although I told myself that no one would care to do
harm to an aged Rememberer; but I was armed only with a small
blade, and I feared bandits.
My route lay on one of the pedestrian ramps. I panted a bit at
the steep incline, but when I had attained the proper level I was

Nightwings 263
more secure, since here there were patrol nodes at frequent inter-
vals, and here, too, were some other late-night strollers. I passed a
spectral figure garbed in white satin through which alien features
peered: a revenant, a ghostly inhabitant of a planet of the Bull,
where reincarnation is the custom and no man goes about installed
in his own original body. I passed three female beings of a Swan
planet who giggled at me and asked if I had seen males of their
species, since the time of conjugation was upon them. I passed a
pair of Changelings who eyed me speculatively, decided I had
nothing on me worth robbing, and moved on, their piebald dewlaps
jiggling and their radiant skins flashing like beacons.
At last I came to the squat octagonal building occupied by the
Procurator of Perris.
It was indifferently guarded. The invaders appeared confident
that we were incapable of mounting a counterassault against them,
and quite likely they were right; a planet which can be conquered
between darkness and dawn is not going to launch a plausible re-
sistance afterwards. Around the building rose the pale glow of a
protective scanner. There was a tingle of ozone in the air. In the
wide plaza across the way, Merchants were setting up their market
for the morning; I saw barrels of spices being unloaded by brawny
Servitors, and dark sausages carried by files of neuters. I stepped
through the scanner beam and an invader emerged to challenge
me.
I explained that I carried urgent news for Manrule Seven, and
in short order, with amazingly little consultation of intermediaries,
I was ushered into the Procurator's presence.
The invader had furnished his office simply but in good style. It
was decked entirely with Earthmade objects: a drapery of Afreek
weave, two alabaster pots from ancient Agupt, a marble statuette
that might have been early Roumish, and a dark Talyan vase in
which a few wilting deathflowers languished. When I entered, he
seemed preoccupied with several message-cubes; as I had heard,
the invaders did most of their work in the dark hours, and it did
not surprise me to find him so busy now. After a moment he
looked up and said, "What is it, old man? What's this about a fu-
gitive Dominator?"
"The Prince of Roum," I said. "I know of his location."
At once his cold eyes sparkled with interest. He ran his many-
fingered hands across his desk, on which were mounted the em-

264 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
blems of several of our guilds, Transporters and Rememberers
and Defenders and Clowns, among others. "Go on," he said.
"The Prince is in this city. He is in a specific place and has no
way of escaping from it."
"And you are here to inform me of his location?"
"No," I said. "I'm here to buy his liberty."
Manrule Seven seemed perplexed. "There are times when you
humans baffle me. You say you've captured this runaway Domina-
tor, and I assume that you want to sell him to us, but you say you
want to buy him. Why bother coming to us? Is this a joke?"
"Will you permit an explanation?"
He brooded into the mirrored top of his desk while I told him
in a compressed way of my journey from Roum with the blinded
Prince, of our arrival at the Hall of Rememberers, of Prince
Enric's seduction of Olmayne, and of Elegro's petty, fuming desire
for vengeance. I made it clear that I had come to the invaders only
under duress and that it was not my intention to betray the Prince
into their hands. Then I said, "I realize that all Dominators are
forfeit to you. Yet this one has already paid a high price for his
freedom. I ask you to notify the Rememberers that the Prince of
Roum is under amnesty, and to permit him to continue on as a
Pilgrim to Jorslem. In that way Elegro will lose power over him."
"What is it that you offer us," asked Manrule Seven, "in return
for this amnesty for your Prince?"
"I have done research in the memory tanks of the Remem-
berers."
"And?"
"I have found that for which you people have been seeking."
Manrule Seven studied me with care. "How would you have
any idea of what we seek?"
"There is in the deepest part of the Hall of Rememberers," I
said quietly, "an image recording of the compound in which your
kidnaped ancestors lived while they were prisoners on Earth. It
shows their sufferings in poignant detail. It is a superb justification
for the conquest of Earth by H362."
"Impossible! There's no such document!"
From the intensity of the invader's reaction, I knew that I had
stung him in the vulnerable place.
He went on, "We've searched your files thoroughly. There's
only one recording of compound life, and it doesn't show our peo-

Nightwings 265
pie. It shows a nonhumanoid pyramid-shaped race, probably from
one of the Anchor worlds."
"I have seen that one," I told him. "There are others. I spent
many hours searching for them, out of hunger to know of our past
injustices."
"The indexes-"
"—are sometimes incomplete. I found this recording only by ac-
cident. The Rememberers themselves have no idea it's there. I'll
lead you to it—if you agree to leave the Prince of Roum un-
molested."
The Procurator was silent a moment. At length he said, "You
puzzle me. I.am unable to make out if you are a scoundrel or a
man of the highest virtue."
"I know where true loyalty lies."
"To betray the secrets of your guild, though—"
"I am no Rememberer, only an apprentice, formerly a Watcher.
I would not have you harm the Prince at the wish of a cuckolded
fool. The Prince is in his hands; only you can obtain his release
now. And so I must offer you this document."
"Which the Rememberers have carefully deleted from their in-
dexes, so it will not fall into our hands."
"Which the Rememberers have carelessly misplaced and for-
gotten."
"I doubt it," said Manrule Seven. "They are not careless folk.
They hid that recording; and by giving it to us, are you not betray-
ing all your world? Making yourself a collaborator with the hated
enemy?"
I shrugged. "I am interested in having the Prince of Roum
made free. Other means and ends are of no concern to me. The
location of the document is yours in exchange for the grant of am-
nesty."
The invader displayed what might have been his equivalent of a
smile. "It is not in our best interests to allow members of the for-
mer guild of Dominators to remain at large. Your position is pre-
carious, do you see? I could extract the document's location from
you by force—and still have the Prince as well."
"So you could," I agreed. "I take that risk. I assume a certain
basic honor among people who came to avenge an ancient crime. I
am in your power, and the whereabouts of the document is in my
mind, yours for the picking."
Now he laughed in an unmistakable show of good humor.

266 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
"Wait one moment," he said. He spoke a few words of his own
language into an amber communication device, and shortly a sec-
ond member of his species entered the office. I recognized him in-
stantly, although he was shorn of some of the flamboyant disguise
he had worn when he traveled with me as Gormon, the supposed
Changeling. He offered the ambivalent smile of his kind and said,
"I greet you, Watcher."
"And I greet you, Gormon."
"My name now is Victorious Thirteen."
"I now am called Tomis of the Rememberers," I said.
Manrule Seven remarked, "When did you two become such fast
friends?"
"In the time of the conquest," said Victorious Thirteen. "While
performing my duties as an advance scout, I encountered this man
in Talya and journeyed with him to Roum. But we were compan-
ions, in truth, and not friends."
I trembled. "Where is the Flier Avluela?"
"In Pars, I believe," he said offhandedly. "She spoke of return-
ing to Hind, to the place of her people."
"You loved her only a short while, then?"
"We were more companions than lovers," said the invader. "It
was a passing thing for us."
"For you, maybe," I said.
"For us."
"And for this passing thing you stole a man's eyes?"
He who had been Gormon shrugged. "I did that to teach a
proud creature a lesson in pride."
"You said at the time that your motive was jealousy," I re-
minded him. "You claimed to act out of love."
Victorious Thirteen appeared to lose interest in me. To
Manrule Seven he said, "Why is this man here? Why have you
summoned me?"
"The Prince of Roum is in Perris," said Manrule Seven.
Victorious Thirteen registered sudden surprise.
Manrule Seven went on, "He is a prisoner of the Rememberers.
This man offers a strange bargain. You know the Prince better
than any of us; I ask your advice."
The Procurator sketched the outlines of the situation. He who
had been Gormon listened thoughtfully, saying nothing. At the
end, Manrule Seven said, "The problem is this: shall we give am-
nesty to a proscribed Dominator?"

Nightwings 267
"He is blind," said Victorious Thirteen. "His power is gone.
His followers are scattered. His spirit may be unbroken, but he
presents no danger to us. I say accept the bargain."
"There are administrative risks in exempting a Dominator from
arrest," Manrule Seven pointed out. "Nevertheless, I agree. We
undertake the deal." To me he said, "Tell us the location of the
document we desire."
"Arrange the liberation of the Prince of Roum first," I said
calmly.
Both invaders displayed amusement. "Fair enough," said
Manrule Seven. "But look: how can we be certain that you'll keep
your word? Anything might happen to you in the next hour while
we're freeing the Prince."
"A suggestion," put in Victorious Thirteen. "This is not so
much a matter of mutual mistrust as it is one of timing. Tomis,
why not record the document's location on a six-hour delay cube?
We'll prime the cube so that it will release its information only if
within that six hours the Prince of Roum himself, and no one else,
commands it to do so. If we haven't found and freed the Prince in
that time, the cube will destruct. If we do release the Prince, the
cube will give us the information, even if—ah—something should
have happened to you in the interval."
"You cover all contingencies," I said.
"Are we agreed?" Manrule Seven asked.
"We are agreed," I said.
They brought me a cube and placed me under a privacy screen
while I inscribed on its glossy surface the rack number and se-
quence equations of the document I had discovered. Moments
passed; the cube everted itself and the information vanished into
its opaque depths. I offered it to them.
Thus did I betray my Earthborn heritage and perform a service
for our conquerors, out of loyalty to a blinded wife-stealing
Prince.
7
Dawn had come by this time. I did not accompany the invaders
to the Hall of Rememberers; it was no business of mine to oversee
the intricate events that must ensue, and I preferred to be else-
where. A fine drizzle was falling as I turned down the gray streets

268 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
that bordered the dark Senn. The timeless river, its surface stip-
pled by the drops, swept unwearyingly against stone arches of
First Cycle antiquity, bridges spanning uncountable millennia, sur-
vivors from an era when the only problems of mankind were of
his own making. Morning engulfed the city. Through an old and
ineradicable reflex I searched for my instruments so that I could
do my Watching, and had to remind myself that that was far
behind me now. The Watchers were disbanded, the enemy had
come, and old Wuellig, now Tomis of the Rememberers, had sold
himself to mankind's foes.
In the shadow of a twin-steepled religious house of the ancient
Christers I let myself be enticed into the booth of a Somnambulist.
This guild is not one with which I have often had dealings; in my
way I am wary of charlatans, and charlatans are abundant in our
time. The Somnambulist, in a state of trance, claims to see what
has been, what is, and what will be. I know something of trances
myself, for as a Watcher I entered such a state four times each
day; but a Watcher with pride in his craft must necessarily despise
the tawdry ethics of those who use second sight for gain, as Som-
nambulists do.
However, while among the Rememberers I had learned, to my
surprise, that Somnambulists frequently were consulted to aid in
unearthing some site of ancient times, and that they had served
the Rememberers well. Though still skeptical, I was willing to be
instructed. And, at the moment, I needed a shelter from the storm
that was breaking over the Hall of Rememberers.
A dainty, mincing figure garbed in black greeted me with a
mocking bow as I entered the low-roofed booth.
"I am Samit of the Somnambulists," he said in a high, whining
voice. "I offer you welcome and good tidings. Behold my compan-
ion, the Somnambulist Murta."
The Somnambulist Murta was a robust woman in lacy robes.
Her face was heavy with flesh, deep rings of darkness surrounded
her eyes, a trace of mustache lined her upper lip. Somnambulists
work their trade in teams, one to do the huckstering, one to per-
form; most teams were man and wife, as was this. My mind re-
belled at the thought of the embrace of the flesh-mountain Murta
and the miniature-man Samit, but it was no concern of mine. I
took my seat as Samit indicated. On a table nearby I saw some
food tablets of several colors; I had interrupted this family's
breakfast. Murta, deep in trance, wandered the room with ponder-

Nightwings 269
ous strides, now and again grazing some article of furniture in a
gentle way. Some Somnambulists, it is said, waken only two or
three hours of the twenty, simply to take meals and relieve bodily
needs; there are some who ostensibly live in continuous trance and
are fed and cared for by acolytes.
I scarcely listened as Samit of the Somnambulists delivered his
sales-talk in rapid, feverish bursts of ritualized word-clusters. It
was pitched to the ignorant; Somnambulists do much of their trade
with Servitors and Clowns and other menials. At length, seemingly
sensing my impatience, he cut short his extolling of the Som-
nambulist Murta's abilities and asked me what it was I wished to
know.
"Surely the Somnambulist already is aware of that," I said.
"You wish a general analysis?"
"I want to know of the fate of those about me. I wish particu-
larly for the Somnambulist's concentration to center on events
now occurring in the Hall of Rememberers."
Samit tapped long fingernails against the smooth table and shot
a glaring look at the cowlike Murta. "Are you in contact with the
truth?" he asked her.
Her reply was a long feathery sigh wrenched from the core of
all the quivering meat of her.
"What do you see?" he asked her.
She began to mutter thickly. Somnambulists speak in a language
not otherwise used by mankind; it is a harsh thing of edgy sounds,
which some claim is descended from an ancient tongue of Agupt.
I know nothing of that. To me it sounded incoherent, fragmentary,
impossible to hold meaning. Samit listened a while, then nodded
in satisfaction and extended his palm to me.
"There is a great deal," he said.
We discussed the fee, bargained briefly, came to a settlement.
"Go on," I told him. "Interpret the truth."
Cautiously he began, "There are outworlders involved in this,
and also several members of the guild of Rememberers." I was si-
lent, giving him no encouragement. "They are drawn together in a
difficult quarrel. A man without eyes is at the heart of it."
I sat upright with a jolt.
Samit smiled in cool triumph. "The man without eyes has fallen
from greatness. He is Earth, shall we say, broken by conquerors?
Now he is near the end of his time. He seeks to restore his former
condition, but he knows it is impossible. He has caused a Remem-

270 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
berer to violate an oath. To their guildhall have come several of
the conquerors to—to chastise him? No. No. To free him from
captivity. Shall I continue?"
"Quickly!"
"You have received all that you have paid for."
I scowled. This was extortion; but yet the Somnambulist had
clearly seen the truth. I had learned nothing here that I did not al-
ready know, but that was sufficient to tell me I might learn more. I
added to my fee.
Samit closed his fist on my coins and conferred once more with
Murta. She spoke at length, in some agitation, whirling several
times, colliding violently with a musty divan.
Samit said, "The man without eyes has come between a man
and his wife. The outraged husband seeks punishment; the out-
worlders will thwart that. The outworlders seek hidden truths;
they will find them, with a traitor's help. The man without eyes
seeks freedom and power; he will find peace. The stained wife
seeks amusement; she will find hardship."
"And I?" I said into an obstinate and expensive silence. "You
say nothing of me!"
"You will leave Perris soon, in the same manner as you entered
it. You will not leave alone. You will not leave in your present
guild."
"What will be my destination?"
"You know that as well as we do, so why waste your money to
tell you?"
He fell silent again.
"Tell me what will befall me as I journey to Jorslem," I said.
"You could not afford such information. Futures become
costly. I advise you to settle for what you now know."
"I have some questions about what has already been said."
"We do not clarify at any price."
He grinned. I felt the force of his contempt. The Somnambulist
Murta, still bumbling about the room, groaned and belched. The
powers with whom she was in contact appeared to impart new in-
formation to her; she whimpered, shivered, made a blurred chuck-
ling sound. Samit spoke to her in their language. She replied at
length. He peered at me. "At no cost," he said, "a final informa-
tion. Your life is in no danger, but your spirit is. It would be well
if you made your peace with the Will as quickly as possible.

Nightwings 271
Recover your moral orientation. Remember your true loyalties.
Atone for well-intentioned sins. I can say no more."
Indeed, Murta stirred and seemed to wake. Great slabs of flesh
jiggled in her face and body as the convulsion of leaving the trance
came over her. Her eyes opened, but I saw only whites, a terrible
sight. Her thick lips twitched to reveal crumbling teeth. Samit
beckoned me out with quick brushing gestures of his tiny hands. I
fled into a dark, rain-drenched morning.
Hurriedly I returned to the Hall of Rememberers, arriving there
out of breath, with a red spike of pain behind my breastbone. I
paused a while outside the superb building to recover my strength.
Floaters passed overhead, leaving the guildhall from an upper
level. My courage nearly failed me. But in the end I entered the
hall and ascended to the level of the suite of Elegro and Olmayne.
A knot of agitated Rememberers filled the hall. A buzz of whis-
pered comment drifted toward me. I pressed forward; and a man
whom I recognized as high in the councils of the guild held up a
hand and said, "What business do you have here, apprentice?"
"I am Tomis, who was sponsored by the Rememberer Ol-
mayne. My chamber is close to here."
"Tomis!" a voice cried.
I was seized and thrust ahead into the familiar suite, now a
scene of devastation.
A dozen Rememberers stood about, fingering their shawls in
distress. I recognized among them the taut and elegant figure of
Chancellor Kenishal, his gray eyes now dull with despair. Beneath
a coverlet to the left of the entrance lay a crumpled figure in the
robes of a Pilgrim: the Prince of Roum, dead in his own pooled
blood. His gleaming mask, now stained, lay beside him. At the op-
posite side of the room, slumped against an ornate credenza con-
taining Second Cycle artifacts of great beauty, was the Remem-
berer Elegro, seemingly asleep, looking furious and surprised both
at once. His throat was transfixed by a single slender dart. To the
rear, with burly Rememberers flanking her, stood the Rememberer
Olmayne looking wild and disheveled. Her scarlet robe was torn
in front and revealed high white breasts; her black hair tumbled in
disorder; her satiny skin glistened with perspiration. She appeared
lost in a dream, far from these present surroundings.
"What has happened here?" I asked.
"Murder twice over," said Chancellor Kenishal in a broken
voice. He advanced toward me: a tall, haggard man, white-haired,

272 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
an uncontrollable tic working in the lid of one eye. "When did you
last see these people alive, apprentice?"
"In the night."
"How did you come to be here?"
"A visit, no more."
"Was there a disturbance?"
"A quarrel between the Rememberer Elegro and the Pilgrim,
yes," I admitted.
"Over what?" asked the Chancellor thinly.
I looked uneasily at Olmayne, but she saw nothing and heard
less.
"Over her," I said.
I heard snickerings from the other Rememberers. They nudged
each other, nodded, even smiled; I had confirmed the scandal. The
Chancellor grew more solemn.
He indicated the body of the Prince.
"This was your companion when you entered Perris," he said.
"Did you know of his true identity?"
I moistened my lips. "I had suspicions."
"That he was-"
"The fugitive Prince of Roum," I said. I did not dare attempt
subterfuges now; my status was precarious.
More nods, more nudges. Chancellor Kenishal said, "This man
was subject to arrest. It was not your place to conceal your knowl-
edge of his identity."
I remained mute.
The Chancellor went on, "You have been absent from this hall
for some hours. Tell us of your activities after leaving the suite of
Elegro and Olmayne."
"I called upon the Procurator Manrule Seven," I said.
Sensation.
"For what purpose?"
"To inform the Procurator," I said, "that the Prince of Roum
had been apprehended and was now in the suite of a Rememberer.
I did this at the instruction of the Rememberer Elegro. After
delivering my information I walked the streets several hours for
no particular end, and returned here to find—to find—"
"To find everything in chaos," said Chancellor Kenishal. "The
Procurator was here at dawn. He visited this suite; both Elegro
and the Prince must still have been alive at that time. Then he
went into our archives and removed—and removed—material of

Nightwings 273
the highest sensitivity—the highest sensitivity-removed—material
not believed to be accessible to-the highest sensitivity—" The
Chancellor faltered. Like some intricate machine smitten with in-
stant rust, he slowed his motions, emitted rasping sounds, ap-
peared to be on the verge of systematic breakdown. Several high
Rememberers rushed to his aid; one thrust a drug against his arm.
In moments the Chancellor appeared to recover. "These murders
occurred after the Procurator departed from the building," he
said. "The Rememberer Olmayne has been unable to give us in-
formation concerning them. Perhaps you, apprentice, know some-
thing of value."
"I was not present. Two Somnambulists near the Senn will tes-
tify that I was with them at the time the crimes were committed."
Someone guffawed at my mention of Somnambulists. Let them;
I was not seeking to retrieve dignity at a time like this. I knew that
I was in peril.
The Chancellor said slowly, "You will go to your chamber, ap-
prentice, and you will remain there to await full interrogation. Af-
terwards you will leave the building and be gone from Perris
within twenty hours. By virtue of my authority I declare you ex-
pelled from the guild of Rememberers."
Forewarned as I had been by Samit, I was nevertheless stunned.
"Expelled,P Why?"
"We can no longer trust you. Too many mysteries surround
you. You bring us a Prince and conceal your suspicions; you are
present at murderous quarrels; you visit a Procurator in the mid-
dle of the night. You may even have helped to bring about the ca-
lamitous loss suffered by our archive this morning. We have no
desire for men of enigmas here. We sever our relationship with
you." The Chancellor waved his hand in a grand sweep. "To your
chamber now, to await interrogation, and then go!"
I was rushed from the room. As the entrance pit closed behind
me, I looked back and saw the Chancellor, his face ashen, topple
into the arms of his associates, while in the same instant the Re-
memberer Olmayne broke from her freeze and fell to the floor,
screaming.
8
Alone in my chamber, I spent a long while gathering together
my possessions, though I owned little. The morning was well

274 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
along before a Rememberer whom I did not know came to me; he
carried interrogation equipment. I eyed it uneasily, thinking that
all would be up with me if the Rememberers found proof that it
was I who had betrayed the location of that compound record to
the invaders. Already they suspected me of it; the Chancellor had
hesitated to make the accusation only because it must have
seemed odd to him that an apprentice such as myself would have
cared to make a private search of the guild archive.
Fortune rode with me. My interrogator was concerned only
with the details of the slaying; and once he had determined that I
knew nothing on that subject, he let me be, warning me to depart
from the hall within the allotted time. I told him I would do so.
But first I needed rest. I had had none that night; and so I
drank a three-hour draught and settled into soothing sleep. When
I awakened a figure stood beside me: the Rememberer Olmayne.
She appeared to have aged greatly since the previous evening.
She was dressed in a single chaste tunic of a somber color, and she
wore neither ornament nor decoration. Her features were rigidly
set. I mastered my surprise at finding her there, and sat up, mum-
bling an apology for my delay in acknowledging her presence.
"Be at ease," she said gently. "Have I broken your sleep?"
"I had my full hours."
"I have had none. But there will be time for sleep later. We
owe each other explanations, Tomis."
"Yes." I rose uncertainly. "Are you well? I saw you earlier,
and you seemed lost in trance."
"They have given me medicines," she replied.
"Tell me what you can tell me about last night."
Her eyelids slid momentarily closed. "You were there when
Elegro challenged us and was cast out by the Prince. Some hours
later, Elegro returned. With him were the Procurator of Perris and
several other invaders. Elegro appeared to be in a mood of great
jubilation. The Procurator produced a cube and commanded the
Prince to put his hand to it. The Prince balked, but Manrule
Seven persuaded him finally to cooperate. When he had touched
the cube, the Procurator and Elegro departed, leaving the Prince
and myself together again, neither of us comprehending what had
happened. Guards were posted to prevent the Prince from leaving.
Not long afterward the Procurator and Elegro returned. Now Ele-
gro seemed subdued and even confused, while the Procurator was
clearly exhilarated. In our room the Procurator announced that

Nightwings 275
amnesty had been granted to the former Prince of Roum, and that
no man was to harm him. Thereupon all of the invaders de-
parted."
"Proceed."
Olmayne spoke as though a Somnambulist. "Elegro did not ap-
pear to comprehend what had occurred. He cried out that treason
had been done; he screamed that he had been betrayed. An angry
scene followed. Elegro was womanish in his fury; the Prince grew
more haughty; each ordered the other to leave the suite. The quar-
rel became so violent that the carpet itself began to die. The petals
drooped; the little mouths gaped. The climax came swiftly. Elegro
seized a we&pon and threatened to use it if the Prince did not
leave at once. The Prince misjudged Elegro's temper, thought he
was bluffing, and came forward as if to throw Elegro out. Elegro
slew the Prince. An instant later I grasped a dart from our rack of
artifacts and hurled it into Elegro's throat. The dart bore poison;
he died at once. I summoned others, and I remember no more."
"A strange night," I said.
"Too strange. Tell me now, Tomis: why did the Procurator
come, and why did he not take the Prince into custody?"
I said, "The Procurator came because I asked him to, under the
orders of your late husband. The Procurator did not arrest the
Prince because the Prince's liberty had been purchased."
"At what price?"
"The price of a man's shame," I said.
"You speak a riddle."
"The truth dishonors me. I beg you not to press me for it."
"The Chancellor spoke of a document that had been taken by
the Procurator—"
"It has to do with that," I confessed, and Olmayne looked to-
ward the floor and asked no further questions.
I said ultimately, "You have committed a murder, then. What
will your punishment be?"
"The crime was committed in passion and fear," she replied.
"There will be no penalty of the civil administration. But I am ex-
pelled from my guild for my adultery and my act of violence."
"I offer my regrets."
"And I am commanded to undertake the Pilgrimage to Jorslem
to purify my soul. I must leave within the day, or my life is forfeit
to the guild."

276 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
"I too am expelled," I told her. "And I too am bound at last
for Jorslem, though of my own choosing."
"May we travel together?"
My hesitation betrayed me. I had journeyed here with a blind
Prince; I cared very little to depart with a murderous and guildless
woman. Perhaps the time had come to travel alone. Yet the Som-
nambulist had said I would have a companion.
Olmayne said smoothly, "You lack enthusiasm. Perhaps I can
create some in you." She opened her tunic. I saw mounted be-
tween the snowy hills of her breasts a gray pouch. She was tempt-
ing me not with her flesh but with an overpocket. "In this," she
said, "is all that the Prince of Roum carried in his thigh. He
showed me those treasures, and I removed them from his body as
he lay dead in my room. Also there are certain objects of my own.
I am not without resources. We will travel comfortably. Well?"
"I find it hard to refuse."
"Be ready in two hours."
"I am ready now," I said.
"Wait, then."
She left me to myself. Nearly two hours later she returned, clad
now in the mask and robes of a Pilgrim. Over her arm she held a
second set of Pilgrim's gear, which she offered to me. Yes: I was
guildless now, and it was an unsafe way to travel. I would go,
then, as a Pilgrim to Jorslem. I donned the unfamiliar gear. We
gathered our possessions.
"I have notified the guild of Pilgrims," she declared as we left
the Hall of Rememberers. "We are fully registered. Later today
we may hope to receive our starstones. How does the mask feel,
Tomis?"
"Snug."
"As it should be."
Our route out of Perris took us across the great plaza before the
ancient gray holy building of the old creed. A crowd had gathered;
I saw invaders at the center of the group. Beggars made the
profitable orbit about it. They ignored us, for no one begs from a
Pilgrim; but I collared one rascal with a gouged face and said,
"What ceremony is taking place here?"
"Funeral of the Prince of Roum," he said. "By order of the
Procurator. State funeral with all the trimmings. They're making a
real festival out of it."

Nightwings 277
"Why hold such an event in Perris?" I asked. "How did the
Prince die?"
"Look, ask somebody else. I got work to do."
He wriggled free and scrambled on to work the crowd.
"Shall we attend the funeral?" I asked Olmayne.
"Best not to."
"As you wish."
We moved toward the massive stone bridge that spanned the
Senn. Behind us, a brilliant blue glow arose as the pyre of the
dead Prince was kindled. That pyre lit the way for us as we made
our slow way through the night, eastward to Jorslem.

Part III
THE ROAD TO JORSLEM
Our world was now truly theirs. All the way across Eyrop I
could see that the invaders had taken everything, and we belonged
to them as beasts in a barnyard belong to the farmer.
They were everywhere, like fleshy weeds taking root after a
strange storm. They walked with cool confidence, as if telling us
by the sleekness of their movements that the Will had withdrawn
favor from us and conferred it upon them. They were not cruel to
us, and yet they drained us of vitality by their mere presence
among us. Our sun, our moons, our museums of ancient relics,
our ruins of former cycles, our cities, our palaces, our future, our
present, and our past had all undergone a transfer of title. Our
lives now lacked meaning.
At night the blaze of the stars mocked us. All the universe
looked down on our shame.
The cold wind of winter told us that for our sins our freedom
had been lost. The bright heat of summer told us that for our
pride we had been humbled.
Through a changed world we moved, stripped of our past
selves. I, who had roved the stars each day now had lost that
pleasure. Now, bound for Jorslem, I found cool comfort in the
hope that as a Pilgrim I might gain redemption and renewal in
that holy city. Olmayne and I repeated each night the rituals of
our Pilgrimage toward that end:
"We yield to the Will."
"We yield to the Will."
"In all things great and small."
"In all things great and small."
"And ask forgiveness."
"And ask forgiveness."
"For sins actual and potential."
"For sins actual and potential."
"And pray for understanding and repose."

Nightwings 279
"And pray for understanding and repose."
"Through all our days until redemption comes."
"Through all our days until redemption comes."
Thus we spoke the words. Saying them, we clutched the cool
polished spheres of starstone, icy as frostflowers, and made com-
munion with the Will. And so we journeyed Jorslemward in this
world that no longer was owned by man.
2
It was at the Talyan approach to Land Bridge that Olmayne
first used her cruelty on me. Olmayne was cruel by first nature; I
had had ample proof of that in Perris; and yet we had been Pil-
grims together for many months, traveling from Perris eastward
over the mountains and down the length of Talya to the Bridge,
and she had kept her claws sheathed. Until this place.
The occasion was our halting by a company of invaders coming
north from Afreek. There were perhaps twenty of them, tall and
harsh-faced, proud of being masters of conquered Earth. They
rode in a gleaming covered vehicle of their own manufacture, long
and narrow, with thick sand-colored treads and small windows.
We could see the vehicle from far away, raising a cloud of dust as
it neared us.
This was a hot time of year. The sky itself was the color of
sand, and it was streaked with folded sheets of heat-radiation—
glowing and terrible energy streams of turquoise and gold.
Perhaps fifty of us stood beside the road, with the land of Talya
at our backs and the continent of Afreek before us. We were a
varied group: some Pilgrims, like Olmayne and myself, making
the trek toward the holy city of Jorslem, but also a random mix of
the rootless, men and women who floated from continent to conti-
nent for lack of other purpose. I counted in the band five former
Watchers, and also several Indexers, a Sentinel, a pair of Commu-
nicants, a Scribe, and even a few Changelings. We gathered into a
straggling assembly awarding the road by default to the invaders.
Land Bridge is not wide, and the road will not allow many to
use it at any time. Yet in normal times the flow of traffic had al-
ways gone in both directions at once. Here, today, we feared to go
forward while invaders were this close, and so we remained clus-
tered timidly, watching our conquerors approach.

280 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
One of the Changelings detached himself from the others of his
kind and moved toward me. He was small of stature for that
breed, but wide through the shoulders; his skin seemed much too
tight for his frame; his eyes were large and green-rimmed; his hair
grew in thick widely spaced pedestal-like clumps, and his nose was
barely perceptible, so that his nostrils appeared to sprout from his
upper lip. Despite this he was less grotesque than most Change-
lings appear. His expression was solemn, but had a hint of bi-
zarre playfulness lurking somewhere.
He said in a voice that was little more than a feathery whisper,
"Do you think we'll be delayed long, Pilgrims?"
In former times one did not address a Pilgrim unsolicited—
especially if one happened to be a Changeling. Such customs
meant nothing to me, but Olmayne drew back with a hiss of
distaste.
I said, "We will wait here until our masters allow us to pass. Is
there any choice?"
"None, friend, none."
At that friend, Olmayne hissed again and glowered at the little
Changeling. He turned to her, and his anger showed, for suddenly
six parallel bands of scarlet pigment blazed brightly beneath the
glossy skin of his cheeks. But his only overt response to her was a
courteous bow. He said, "I introduce myself. I am Bernalt, natu-
rally guildless, a native of Nayrub in Deeper Afreek. I do not
inquire after your names, Pilgrims. Are you bound for Jorslem?"
"Yes," I said, as Olmayne swung about to present her back.
"And you? Home to Nayrub after travels?"
"No," said Bernalt. "I go to Jorslem also."
Instantly I felt cold and hostile, my initial response to the
Changeling's suave charm fading at once. I had had a Changeling,
false though he turned out to be, as a traveling companion before;
he too had been charming, but I wanted no more like him. Edgily,
distantly, I said, "May I ask what business a Changeling might
have in Jorslem?"
He detected the chill in my tone, and his huge eyes registered
sorrow. "We too are permitted to visit the holy city, I remind you.
Even our kind. Do you fear that Changelings will once again seize
the shrine of renewal, as we did a thousand years ago before we
were cast down into guildlessness?" He laughed harshly. "I
threaten no one, Pilgrim. I am hideous of face, but not dangerous.

Nightwings 281
May the Will grant you what you seek, Pilgrim." He made a ges-
ture of respect and went back to the other Changelings.
Furious, Olmayne spun round on me.
"Why do you talk to such beastly creatures?"
"The man approached me. He was merely being friendly. We
are all cast together here, Olmayne, and—"
"Man. Man! You call a Changeling a man?"
"They are human, Olmayne."
"Just barely. Tomis, I loathe such monsters. My flesh creeps to
have them near me. If I could, I'd banish them from this world!"
"Where is the serene tolerance a Rememberer must cultivate?"
She flamed at the mockery in my voice. "We are not required to
love Changelings, Tomis. They are one of the curses laid upon our
planet—parodies of humanity, enemies of truth and beauty. I de-
spise them!"
It was not a unique attitude. But I had no time to reproach Ol-
mayne for her intolerance; the vehicle of the invaders was drawing
near. I hoped we might resume our journey once it went by. It
slowed and halted, however, and several of the invaders came out.
They walked unhurriedly toward us, their long arms dangling like
slack ropes.
"Who is the leader here?" asked one of them.
No one replied, for we were independent of one another in our
travel.
The invader said impatiently, after a moment, "No leader? No
leader? Very well, all of you, listen. The road must be cleared. A
convoy is coming through. Go back to Palerm and wait until to-
morrow."
"But I must be in Agupt by—" the Scribe began.
"Land Bridge is closed today," said the invader. "Go back to
Palerm."
His voice was calm. The invaders are never peremptory, never
overbearing. They have the poise and assurance of those who are
secure possessors.
The Scribe shivered, his jowls swinging, and said no more.
n Several of the others by the side of the road looked as if they
wished to protest. The Sentinel turned away and spat. A man who
boldly wore the mark of the shattered guild of Defenders in his
cheek clenched his fists and plainly fought back a surge of fury.
The Changelings whispered to one another. Bernalt smiled bitterly
at me and shrugged.

282 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
Go back to Palerm? Waste a day's march in this heat? For
what? For what?
The invader gestured casually, telling us to disperse.
Now it was that Olmayne was unkind to me. In a low voice she
said, "Explain to them, Tomis, that you are in the pay of the
Procurator of Perris, and they will let the two of us pass."
Her dark eyes glittered with mockery and contempt.
My shoulders sagged as if she had loaded ten years on me.
"Why did you say such a thing?" I asked.
"It's hot. I'm tired. It's idiotic of them to send us back to
Palerm."
"I agree. But I can do nothing. Why try to hurt me?"
"Does the truth hurt that much?"
"I am no collaborator, Olmayne."
She laughed. "You say that so well! But you are, Tomis, you
are! You sold them the documents."
"To save the Prince, your lover," I reminded her.
"You dealt with the invaders, though. No matter what your mo-
tive was, that fact remains."
"Stop it, Olmayne."
"Now you give me orders?"
"Olmayne-"
"Go up to them, Tomis. Tell them who you are, make them let
us go ahead."
"The convoys would run us down on the road. In any case I
have no influence with invaders. I am not the Procurator's man."
"I'll die before I go back to Palerm!"
"Die, then," I said wearily, and turned my back on her.
"Traitor! Treacherous old fool! Coward!"
I pretended to ignore her, but I felt the fire of her words. There
was no falsehood in them, only malice. I had dealt with the con-
querors, I had betrayed the guild that sheltered me, I had violated
the code that calls for sullen passivity as our only way of protest
for Earth's defeat. All true; yet it was unfair for her to reproach
me with it. I had given no thought to higher matters of patriotism
when I broke my trust; I was trying only to save a man to whom I
felt bound, a man moreover with whom she was in love. It was
loathsome of Olmayne to tax me with treason now, to torment my
conscience, merely because of a petty rage at the heat and dust of
the road.

Nightwings 283
But this woman had coldly slain her own husband. Why should
she not be malicious in trifles as well?
The invaders had their way; we abandoned the road and strag-
gled back to Palerm, a dismal, sizzling, sleepy town. That evening,
as if to console us, five Fliers passing in formation overhead took
a fancy to the town, and in the moonless night they came again
and again through the sky, three men and two women, ghostly and
slender and beautiful. I stood watching them for more than an
hour, until my soul itself seemed lifted from me and into the air to
join them. Their great shimmering wings scarcely hid the starlight;
their pale angular bodies moved in graceful arcs, arms held
pressed close to sides, legs together, backs gently curved. The
sight of these five stirred my memories of Avluela and left me tin-
gling with troublesome emotions.
The Fliers made their last pass and were gone. The false moons
entered the sky soon afterward. I went into our hostelry then, and
shortly Olmayne asked admittance to my room.
She looked contrite. She carried a squat octagonal flask of green
wine, not a Talyan brew but something from an outworld, no
doubt purchased at great price.
"Will you forgive me, Tomis?" she asked. "Here. I know you
like these wines."
"I would rather not have had those words before, and not have
the wine now," I told her.
"My temper grows short in the heat. I'm sorry, Tomis. I said a
stupid and tactless thing."
I forgave her, in hope of a smoother journey thereafter, and we
drank most of the wine, and then she went to her own room
nearby to sleep. Pilgrims must live chaste lives—not that Olmayne
would ever have bedded with such a withered old fossil as I, but
the commandments of our adopted guild prevented the question
from arising.
For a long while I lay awake beneath a lash of guilt. In her im-
patience and wrath Olmayne had stung me at my vulnerable
place: I was a betrayer of mankind. I wrestled with the issue al-
most to dawn.
-What had I done?
I had revealed to our conquerors a certain document.
—Did the invaders have a moral right to the document?
It told of the shameful treatment they had had at the hands of
our ancestors.

284 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
—What, then, was wrong about giving it to them?
One does not aid one's conquerors even when they are morally
superior to one.
—Is a small treason a serious thing?
There are no small treasons.
-Perhaps the complexity of the matter should be investigated. I
did not act out of love of the enemy, but to aid a friend.
Nevertheless I collaborated with our foes.
—This obstinate self-laceration smacks of sinful pride.
But I feel my guilt. I drown in shame.
In this unprofitable way I consumed the night. When the day
brightened, I rose and looked skyward and begged the Will to help
me find redemption in the waters of the house of renewal in Jors-
lem, at the end of my Pilgrimage. Then I went to awaken Ol-
mayne.
3
Land Bridge was open on this day, and we joined the throng
that was crossing over out of Talya into Afreek. It was the second
time I had traveled Land Bridge, for the year before—it seemed so
much farther in the past—I had come the other way, out of Agupt
and bound for Roum.
There are two main routes for Pilgrims from Eyrop to Jorslem.
The northern route involves going through the Dark Lands east of
Talya, taking the ferry at Stanbool, and skirting the western coast
of the continent of Ais to Jorslem. It was the route I would have
preferred since, of all the world's great cities, old Stanbool is the
one I have never visited. But Olmayne had been there to do re-
search in the days when she was a Rememberer, and disliked the
place; and so we took the southern route—across Land Bridge into
Afreek and along the shore of the great Lake Medit, through
Agupt and the fringes of the Arban Desert and up to Jorslem.
A true Pilgrim travels only by foot. It was not an idea that had
much appeal to Olmayne, and though we walked a great deal, we
rode whenever we could. She was shameless in commandeering
transportation. On only the second day of our journey she had
gotten us a ride from a rich Merchant bound for the coast; the
man had no intention of sharing his sumptuous vehicle with any-
one, but he could not resist the sensuality of Olmayne's deep, mu-

Nightwings 285
sical voice, even though it issued from the sexless grillwork of a
Pilgrim's mask.
The Merchant traveled in style. For him the conquest of Earth
might never have happened, nor even all the long centuries of
Third Cycle decline. His self-primed landcar was four times the
length of a man and wide enough to house five people in comfort;
and it shielded its riders against the outer world as effectively as a
womb. There was no direct vision, only a series of screens reveal-
ing upon command what lay outside. The temperature never
varied from a chosen norm. Spigots supplied liqueurs and stronger
things; food tablets were available; pressure couches insulated
travelers against the irregularities of the road. For illumination,
there was slavelight keyed to the Merchant's whims. Beside the
main couch sat a thinking cap, but I never learned whether the
Merchant carried a pickled brain for his private use in the depths
of the landcar, or enjoyed some sort of remote contact with the
memory tanks of the cities through which he passed.
He was a man of pomp and bulk, clearly a savorer of his own
flesh. Deep olive of skin, with a thick pompadour of well-oiled
black hair and somber, scrutinizing eyes, he rejoiced in his solidity
and in his control of an uncertain environment. He dealt, we
learned, in foodstuffs of other worlds; he bartered our poor manu-
factures for the delicacies of the starborn ones. Now he was en
route to Marsay to examine a cargo of hallucinatory insects newly
come in from one of the Belt planets.
"You like the car?" he asked, seeing our awe. Olmayne, no
stranger to ease herself, was peering at the dense inner mantle of
diamonded brocade in obvious amazement. "It was owned by the
Comt of Perris," he went on. "Yes, I mean it, the Comt himself.
They turned his palace into a museum, you know."
"I know," Olmayne said softly.
"This was his chariot. It was supposed to be part of the mu-
seum, but I bought it off a crooked invader. You didn't know they
had crooked ones too, eh?" The Merchant's robust laughter
caused the sensitive mantle on the walls of the car to recoil in dis-
dain. "This one was the Procurator's boy friend. Yes, they've got
those, too. He was looking for a certain fancy root that grows on a
planet of the Fishes, something to give his virility a little boost,
you know, and he learned that I controlled the whole supply here,
and so we were able to work out a little deal. Of course, I had to
have the car adapted, a little. The Comt kept four neuters up front

286 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
and powered the engine right off their metabolisms, you under-
stand, running the thing on thermal differentials. Well, that's a fine
way to power a car, if you're a Comt, but it uses up a lot of
neuters through the year, and I felt I'd be overreaching my status
if I tried anything like that. It might get me into trouble with the
invaders, too. So I had the drive compartment stripped down and
replaced with a standard heavy-duty rollerwagon engine—a really
subtle job—and there you are. You're lucky to be in here. It's only
that you're Pilgrims. Ordinarily I don't let folks come inside, on
account of them feeling envy, and envious folks are dangerous to
a man who's made something out of his life. Yet the Will brought
you two to me. Heading for Jorslem, eh?"
"Yes," Olmayne said.
"Me too, but not yet! Not just yet, thank you!" He patted his
middle. "I'll be there, you can bet on it, when I feel ready for
renewal, but that's a good way off, the Will willing! You two been
Pilgriming long?"
"No," Olmayne said.
"A lot of folks went Pilgrim after the conquest, I guess. Well, I
won't blame 'em. We each adapt in our own ways to changing
times. Say, you carrying those little stones the Pilgrims carry?"
"Yes," Olmayne said.
"Mind if I see one? Always been fascinated by the things.
There was this trader from one of the Darkstar worlds—little
skinny bastard with skin like oozing tar—he offered me ten quin-
tals of the things. Said they were genuine, gave you the real com-
munion, just like the Pilgrims had. I told him no, I wasn't going to
fool with the Will. Some things you don't do, even for profit. But
afterward I wished I'd kept one as a souvenir. I never even
touched one." He stretched a hand toward Olmayne. "Can I see?"
"We may not let others handle the starstone," I said.
"I wouldn't tell anybody you let me!"
"It is forbidden."
"Look, it's private in here, the most private place on Earth,
and-"
"Please. What you ask is impossible."
His face darkened, and I thought for a moment he would halt
the car and order us out, which would have caused me no grief.
My hand slipped into my pouch to finger the frigid starstone
sphere that I had been given at the outset of my Pilgrimage. The
touch of my fingertips brought faint resonances of the com-

Nightwings 287
munion-trance to me, and I shivered in pleasure. He must not have
it, I swore. But the crisis passed without incident. The Merchant,
having tested us and found resistance, did not choose to press the
matter.
We sped onward toward Marsay.
He was not a likable man, but he had a certain gross charm,
and we were rarely offended by his words. Olmayne, who after all
was a fastidious woman and had lived most of her years in the
glossy seclusion of the Hall of Remembers, found him harder to
take than I; my intolerances have been well blunted by a lifetime
of wandering. But even Olmayne seemed to find him amusing
when he boasted of his wealth and influence, when he told of the
women who waited for him on many worlds, when he catalogued
his homes and his trophies and the guildmasters who sought his
counsel, when he bragged of his friendships with former Masters
and Dominators. He talked almost wholly of himself and rarely of
us, for which we were thankful; once he asked how it was that a
male Pilgrim and a female Pilgrim were traveling together, imply-
ing that we must be lovers; we admitted that the arrangement was
slightly irregular and went on to another theme, and I think he
remained persuaded of our unchastity. His bawdy guesses mat-
tered not at all to me nor, I believe, to Olmayne. We had more se-
rious guilts as our burdens.
Our Merchant's life seemed enviably undisrupted by the fall of
our planet: he was as rich as ever, as comfortable, as free to move
about. But even he felt occasionally irked by the presence of the
invaders, as we found out by night not far from Marsay, when we
were stopped at a checkpoint on the road.
Spy-eye scanners saw us coming, gave a signal to the spinnerets,
and a golden spiderweb spurted into being from one shoulder of
the highway to the other. The landcar's sensors detected it and in-
stantly signaled us to a halt. The screens showed a dozen pale
human figures clustered outside.
"Bandits?" Olmayne asked.
"Worse," said the Merchant. "Traitors." He scowled and
turned to his communicator horn. "What is it?" he demanded.
"Get out for inspection."
"By whose writ?"
"The Procurator of Marsay," came the reply.
It was an ugly thing to behold: human beings acting as road-
agents for the invaders. But it was inevitable that we should have

288 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
begun to drift into their civil service, since work was scarce, espe-
cially for those who had been in the defensive guilds. The Mer-
chant began the complicated process of unsealing his car. He was
stormy-faced with rage, but he was stymied, unable to pass the
checkpoint's web. "I go armed," he whispered to us. "Wait inside
and fear nothing."
He got out and engaged in a lengthy discussion, of which we
could hear nothing, with the highway guards. At length some im-
passe must have forced recourse to higher authority, for three in-
vaders abruptly appeared, waved their hired collaborators away,
and surrounded the Merchant. His demeanor changed; his face
grew oily and sly, his hands moved rapidly in eloquent gestures,
his eyes glistened. He led the three interrogators to the car,
opened it, and showed them his two passengers, ourselves. The in-
vaders appeared puzzled by the sight of Pilgrims amid such opu-
lence, but they did not ask us to step out. After some further con-
versation the Merchant rejoined us and sealed the car; the web
was dissolved; we sped onward toward Marsay.
As we gained velocity he muttered curses and said, "Do you
know how I'd handle that long-armed filth? All we need is a coor-
dinated plan. A night of knives: every ten Earthmen make them-
selves responsible for taking out one invader. We'd get them all."
"Why has no one organized such a movement?" I asked.
"It's the job of the Defenders, and half of them are dead, and
the other half's in the pay of them. It's not my place to set up a re-
sistance movement. But that's how it should be done. Guerrilla ac-
tion: sneak up behind 'em, give 'em the knife. Quick. Good old
First Cycle methods; they've never lost their value."
"More invaders would come," Olmayne said morosely.
"Treat 'em the same way!"
"They would retaliate with fire. They would destroy our
world," she said.
"These invaders pretend to be civilized, more civilized than
ourselves," the Merchant replied. "Such barbarity would give
them a bad name on a million worlds. No, they wouldn't come
with fire. They'd just get tired of having to conquer us over and
over, of losing so many men. And they'd go away, and we'd be
free again."
"Without having won redemption for our ancient sins," I said.
"What's that, old man? What's that?"
"Never mind."

Nightwings 289
"I suppose you wouldn't join in, either of you, if we struck
back at them?"
I said, "In former life I was a Watcher, and I devoted myself to
the protection of this planet against them. I am no more fond of
our masters than you are, and no less eager to see them depart.
But your plan is not only impractical: it is also morally valueless.
Mere bloody resistance would thwart the scheme the Will has
devised for us. We must earn our freedom in a nobler way. We
were not given this ordeal simply so that we might have practice in
slitting throats."
He looked at me with contempt and snorted. "I should have
remembered. I'm talking to Pilgrims. All right. Forget it all. I
wasn't serious, anyway. Maybe you like the world the way it is,
for all I know."
"I do not," I said.
He glanced at Olmayne. So did I, for I half-expected her to tell
the Merchant that I had already done my bit of collaborating with
our conquerors. But Olmayne fortunately was silent on that topic,
as she would be for some months more, until that unhappy day by
the approach to Land Bridge when, in her impatience, she taunted
me with my sole fall from grace.
We left our benefactor in Marsay, spent the night in a Pilgrim
hostelry, and set out on foot along the coast the next morning.
And so we traveled, Olmayne and I, through pleasant lands
swarming with invaders; now we walked, now we rode some peas-
ant's rollerwagon, once even we were the guests of touring con-
querors. We gave Roum a wide berth when we entered Talya, and
turned south. And so we came to Land Bridge, and met delay, and
had our frosty moment of bickering, and then were permitted to
go on across that narrow tongue of sandy ground that links the
lake-sundered continents. And so we crossed into Afreek, at last.
4
Our first night on the other side, after our long and dusty cross-
ing, we tumbled into a grimy inn near the lake's edge. It was a
square whitewashed stone building, practically windowless and ar-
ranged around a cool inner courtyard. Most of its clientele ap-
peared to be Pilgrims, but there were some members of other
guilds, chiefly Vendors and Transporters. At a room near the

290 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
turning of the building there stayed a Rememberer, whom Ol-
mayne avoided even though she did not know him; she simply did
not wish to be reminded of her former guild.
Among those who took lodging there was the Changeling Ber-
nalt. Under the new laws of the invaders, Changelings might stay
at any public inn, not merely those set aside for their special use;
yet it seemed a little strange to see him here. We passed in the cor-
ridor. Bernalt gave me a tentative smile, as though about to speak
again, but the smile died and the glow left his eyes. He appeared
to realize I was not ready to accept his friendship. Or perhaps he
merely recalled that Pilgrims, by the laws of their guild, were not
supposed to have much to do with guildless ones. That law still
stood.
Olmayne and I had a greasy meal of soups and stews. After-
ward I saw her to her room and began to wish her good night
when she said, "Wait. We'll do our communion together."
"I've been seen coming into your room," I pointed out. "There
will be whispering if I stay long."
"We'll go to yours, then!"
Olmayne peered into the hall. All clear: she seized my wrist,
and we rushed toward my chamber, across the way. Closing and
sealing the warped door, she said, "Your starstone, now!"
I took the stone from its hiding place in my robe, and she pro-
duced hers, and our hands closed upon them.
During this time of Pilgrimage I had found the starstone a great
comfort. Many seasons now had passed since I had last entered a
Watcher's trance, but I was not yet reconciled entirely to the
breaking of my old habit; the starstone provided a kind of substi-
tute for the swooping ecstasy I had known in Watching.
Starstones come from one of the outer worlds—I could not tell
you which—and may be had only by application to the guild. The
stone itself determines whether one may be a Pilgrim, for it will
burn the hand of one whom it considers unworthy to don the robe.
They say that without exception every person who has enrolled in
the guild of Pilgrims has shown uneasiness as the stone was
offered to him for the first time.
"When they gave you yours," Olmayne asked, "were you
worried?"
"Of course."
"So was I."
We waited for the stones to overwhelm us. I gripped mine

Nightwings 291
tightly. Dark, shining, more smooth than glass, it glowed in my
grasp like a pellet of ice, and I felt myself becoming attuned to the
power of the Will.
First came a heightened perception of my surroundings. Every
crack in the walls of this ancient inn seemed now a valley. The
soft wail of the wind outside rose to a keen pitch. In the dim glow
of the room's lamp I saw colors beyond the spectrum.
The quality of the experience the starstone offered was alto-
gether different from that given by my instruments of Watching.
That, too, was a transcending of self. When in a state of Watch-
fulness I was capable of leaving my Earthbound identity and soar-
ing at infinite speed over infinite range, perceiving all, and this is
as close to godhood as a man is likely to come. The starstone pro-
vided none of the highly specific data that a Watcher's trance
yielded. In the full spell I could see nothing, nor could I identify
my surroundings. I knew only that when I let myself be drawn
into the stone's effect, I was engulfed by something far larger than
myself, that I was in direct contact with the matrix of the universe.
Call it communion with the Will.
From a great distance I heard Olmayne say, "Do you believe
what some people say of these stones? That there is no commun-
ion, that it's all an electrical deception?"
"I have no theory about that," I said. "I am less interested in
causes than in effects."
Skeptics say that the starstones are nothing more than amplify-
ing loops which bounce a man's own brain-waves back into his
mind; the awesome oceanic entity with which one comes in con-
tact, these scoffers hold, is merely the thunderous recycling os-
cillation of a single shuttling electrical pulse beneath the roof of
the Pilgrim's own skull. Perhaps. Perhaps.
Olmayne extended the hand that gripped her stone. She said,
"When you were among the Rememberers, Tomis, did you study
the history of early religion? All through time, man has sought
union with the infinite. Many religions—not all!—have held forth
the hope of such a divine merging."
"And there were drugs, too," I murmured.
"Certain drugs, yes, cherished for their ability to bring the taker
momentarily to a sensation of oneness with the universe. These
starstones, Tomis, are only the latest in a long sequence of de-
vices for overcoming the greatest of human curses, that is, the
confinement of each individual soul within a single body. Our ter-

292 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
rible isolation from one another and from the Will itself is more
than most races of the universe would be able to bear. It seems
unique to humanity."
Her voice grew feathery and vague. She said much more, speak-
ing to me out of the wisdom she had learned with the Remem-
berers, but her meaning eluded me; I was always quicker to enter
communion than she, because of my training as a Watcher, and
often her final words did not register.
That night as on other nights I seized my stone and felt the chill
and closed my eyes, and heard the distant tolling of a mighty
gong, the lapping of waves on an unknown beach, the whisper of
the wind in an alien forest. And felt a summons. And yielded.
And entered the state of communion. And gave myself up to the
Will.
And slipped down through the layers of my life, through my
youth and middle years, my wanderings, my old loves, my tor-
ments, my joys, my troubled later years, my treasons, my
insufficiencies, my griefs, my imperfections.
And freed myself of myself. And shed my selfness. And
merged. And became one of thousands of Pilgrims, not merely Ol-
mayne nearby, but others trekking the mountains of Hind and the
sands of Arba, Pilgrims at their devotions in Ais and Palash and
Stralya, Pilgrims moving toward Jorslem on the journey that
some complete in months, some in years, and some never at all.
And shared with all of them the instant of submergence into the
Will. And saw in the darkness a deep purple glow on the horizon—
which grew in intensity until it became an all-encompassing red
brilliance. And went into it, though unworthy, unclean, flesh-
trapped, accepting fully the communion offered and wishing no
other state of being than this divorce from self.
And was purified.
And awakened alone.
5
I knew Afreek well. When still a young man I had settled in the
continent's dark heart for many years. Out of restlessness I had
left, finally, going as far north as Agupt, where the antique relics
of First Cycle days have survived better than anywhere else. In
those days antiquity held no interest for me, however. I did my

Nightwings 293
Watching and went about from place to place, since a Watcher
does not need to have a fixed station; and chance brought me in
contact with Avluela just as I was ready to roam again, and so I
left Agupt for Roum and then Perris.
Now I had come back with Olmayne. We kept close to the
coast and avoided the sandy inland wastes. As Pilgrims we were
immune from most of the hazards of travel: we would never go
hungry or without shelter, even in a place where no lodge for our
guild existed, and all owed us respect. Olmayne's great beauty
might have been a hazard to her, traveling as she was with no es-
cort other than a shriveled old man, but behind the mask and robe
of a Pilgrim she was safe. We unmasked only rarely, and never
where we might be seen.
I had no illusions about my importance to Olmayne. To her I
was merely part of the equipment of a journey—someone to help
her in her communions and rituals, to arrange for lodgings, to
smooth her way for her. That role suited me. She was, I knew, a
dangerous woman, given to strange whims and unpredictable fan-
cies. I wanted no entanglements with her.
She lacked a Pilgrim's purity. Even though she had passed the
test of the starstone, she had not triumphed—as a Pilgrim must-
over her own flesh. She slipped off, sometimes, for half a night or
longer, and I pictured her lying maskless in some alley gasping in
a Servitor's arms. That was her affair entirely; I never spoke of her
absences upon her return.
Within our lodgings, too, she was careless of her virtue. We
never shared a room—no Pilgrim hostelry would permit it—but we
usually had adjoining ones, and she summoned me to hers or
came to mine whenever the mood took her. Often as not she was
unclothed; she attained the height of the grotesque one night in
Agupt when I found her wearing only her mask, all her gleaming
white flesh belying the intent of the bronze grillwork that hid her
face. Only once did it seem to occur to her that I might ever have
been young enough to feel desire. She looked my scrawny,
shrunken body over and said, "How will you look, I wonder, when
you've been renewed in Jorslem? I'm trying to picture you young,
Tomis. Will you give me pleasure then?"
"I gave pleasure in my time," I said obliquely.
Olmayne disliked the heat and dryness of Agupt. We traveled
mainly by night and clung to our hostelries by day. The roads
were crowded at all hours. The press of Pilgrims towards Jorslem

294 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
was extraordinarily heavy, it appeared. Olmayne and I speculated
on how long it might take us to gain access to the waters of re-
newal at such a time.
"You've never been renewed before?" she asked.
"Never."
"Nor L They say they don't admit all who come."
"Renewal is a privilege, not a right," I said. "Many are turned
away."
"I understand also," said Olmayne, "that not all who enter the
waters are successfully renewed."
"I know little of this."
"Some grow older instead of younger. Some grow young too
fast, and perish. There are risks."
"Would you not take those risks?"
She laughed. "Only a fool would hesitate."
"You are in no need of renewal at this time," I pointed out.
"You were sent to Jorslem for the good of your soul, not that of
your body, as I recall."
"I'll tend to my soul as well, when I'm in Jorslem."
"But you talk as if the house of renewal is the only shrine you
mean to visit."
"It's the important one," she said. She rose, flexing her supple
body voluptuously. "True, I have atoning to do. But do you think
I've come all the way to Jorslem just for the sake of my spirit?"
"I have," I pointed out.
"You! You're old and withered! You'd better look after your
spirit—and your flesh as well. I wouldn't mind shedding some age,
though. I won't have them take off much. Eight, ten years, that's
all. The years I wasted with that fool Elegro. I don't need a full
renewal. You're right: I'm still in my prime." Her face clouded.
"If the city is full of Pilgrims, maybe they won't let me into the
house of renewal at all! They'll say I'm too young—tell me to
come back in forty or fifty years—Tomis, would they do that to
me?"
"It is hard for me to say."
She trembled. "They'll let you in. You're a walking corpse
already—they have to renew you! But me-Tomis, I won't let them
turn me away! If I have to pull Jorslem down stone by stone, I'll
get in somehow!"
I wondered privately if her soul were in fit condition for one
who poses as a candidate for renewal. Humility is recommended

Nightwings 295
when one becomes a Pilgrim. But I had no wish to feel Olmayne's
fury, and I kept my silence. Perhaps they would admit her to re-
newal despite her flaws. I had concerns of my own. It was vanity
that drove Olmayne; my goals were different. I had wandered long
and done much, not all of it virtuous; I needed a cleansing of my
conscience in the holy city more, perhaps, than I did a lessening of
my years.
Or was it only vanity for me to think so?
6
Several days eastward of that place, as Olmayne and I walked
through a parched countryside, village children chattering in fear
and excitement rushed upon us.
"Please, come, come!" they cried. "Pilgrims, come!"
Olmayne looked bewildered and irritated as they plucked at her
robes. "What are they saying, Tomis? I can't get through their
damnable Aguptan accents!"
"They want us to help," I said. I listened to their shouts. "In
their village," I told Olmayne, "there is an outbreak of the crystal-
lization disease. They wish us to seek the mercies of the Will upon
the sufferers."
Olmayne drew back. I imagined the disdainful wince behind
her mask. She flicked out her hands, trying to keep the children
from touching her. To me she said, "We can't go there!"
"We must."
"We're in a hurry! Jorslem's crowded; I don't want to waste
time in some dreary village."
"They need us, Olmayne."
"Are we Surgeons?"
"We are Pilgrims," I said quietly. "The benefits we gain from
that carry certain obligations. If we are entitled to the hospitality
of all we meet, we must also place our souls at the free disposal of
the humble. Come."
"I won't go!"
"How will that sound in Jorslem, when you give an accounting
of yourself, Olmayne?"
"It's a hideous disease. What if we get it?"
"Is that what troubles you? Trust in the Will! How can you ex-
pect renewal if your soul is so deficient in grace?"

296 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
"May you rot, Tomis," she said in a low voice. "When did you
become so pious? You're doing this deliberately, because of what
I said to you by Land Bridge. In a stupid moment I taunted you,
and now you're willing to expose us both to a ghastly affliction for
your revenge. Don't do it, Tomis!"
I ignored her accusation. "The children are growing agitated,
Olmayne. Will you wait here for me, or will you go on to the next
village and wait in the hostelry there?"
"Don't leave me alone in the middle of nowhere!"
"I have to go to the sick ones," I said.
In the end she accompanied me—I think not out of any sud-
denly conceived desire to be of help, but rather out of fear that
her selfish refusal might somehow be held against her in Jorslem.
We came shortly to the village, which was small and decayed, for
Agupt lies in a terrible hot sleep and changes little with the millen-
nia. The contrast with the busy cities farther to the south in
Afreek—cities that prosper on the output of luxuries from their
great Manufactories—is vast.
Shivering with heat, we followed the children to the houses of
sickness.
The crystallization disease is an unlovely gift from the stars.
Not many afflictions of outworlders affect the Earthbora; but from
the worlds of the Spear came this ailment, carried by alien tour-
ists, and the disease has settled among us. If it had come during
the glorious days of the Second Cycle we might have eradicated it
in a day; but our skills are dulled now, and no year has been with-
out its outbreak. Olmayne was plainly terrified as we entered the
first of the clay huts where the victims were kept.
There is no hope for one who has contracted this disease. One
merely hopes that the healthy will be spared; and fortunately it is
not a highly contagious disease. It works insidiously, transmitted
in an unknown way, often failing to pass from husband to wife
and leaping instead to the far side of a city, to another land en-
tirely, perhaps. The first symptom is a scaliness of the skin; itch,
flakes upon the clothing, inflammation. There follows a weakness
in the bones as the calcium is dissolved. One grows limp and rub-
bery, but this is still an early phase. Soon the outer tissues harden.
Thick, opaque membranes form on the surface of the eyes; the
nostrils may close and seal; the skin grows coarse and pebbled. In
this phase prophecy is common. The sufferer partakes of the skills
of a Somnambulist, and utters oracles. The soul may wander, sep-

Nightwings 297
arating from the body for hours at a time, although the life-
processes continue. Next, within twenty days after the onset of the
disease, the crystallization occurs. While the skeletal structure dis-
solves, the skin splits and cracks, forming shining crystals in rigid
geometrical patterns. The victim is quite beautiful at this time and
takes on the appearance of a replica of himself in precious gems.
The crystals glow with rich inner lights, violet and green and red;
their sharp facets adopt new alignments from hour to hour; the
slightest illumination in the room causes the sufferer to give off
brilliant glittering reflections that dazzle and delight the eye. All
this time the internal body is changing, as if some strange chrysalis
is forming. Miraculously the organs sustain life throughout every
transformation, although in the crystalline phase the victim is no
longer able to communicate with others and possibly is unaware
of the changes in himself. Ultimately the metamorphosis reaches
the vital organs, and the process fails. The alien infestation is una-
ble to reshape those organs without killing its host. The crisis is
swift: a brief convulsion, a final discharge of energy along the
nervous system of the crystallized one, and there is a quick arch-
ing of the body, accompanied by the delicate tinkling sounds of
shivering glass, and then all is over. On the planet to which this is
native, crystallization is not a disease but an actual metamor-
phosis, the result of thousands of years of evolution toward a sym-
biotic relationship. Unfortunately, among the Earthborn, the evo-
lutionary preparation did not take place, and the agent of change
invariably brings its subject to a fatal outcome.
Since the process is irreversible, Olmayne and I could do noth-
ing of real value here except offer consolation to these ignorant
and frightened people. I saw at once that the disease had seized
this village some time ago. There were people in all stages, from
the first rash to the ultimate crystallization. They were arranged in
the hut according to the intensity of their infestation. To my left
was a somber row of new victims, fully conscious and morbidly
scratching their arms as they contemplated the horrors that
awaited them. Along the rear wall were five pallets on which lay
villagers in the coarse-skinned and prophetic phase. To my right
were those in varying degrees of crystallization, and up front, the
diadem of the lot, was one who clearly was in his last hours of
life. His body, encrusted with false emeralds and rubies and opals,
shimmered in almost painful beauty; he scarcely moved; within
that shell of wondrous color he was lost in some dream of ecstasy,

298 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
finding at the end of his days more passion, more delight, than he
could ever have known in all his harsh peasant years.
Olmayne shied back from the door.
"It's horrible," she whispered. "I won't go in!"
"We must. We are under an obligation."
"I never wanted to be a Pilgrim!"
"You wanted atonement," I reminded her. "It must be earned."
"We'll catch the disease!"
"The Will can reach us anywhere to infect us with this, Ol-
mayne. It strikes at random. The danger is no greater for us inside
this building than it is in Perris."
"Why, then, are so many in this one village smitten?"
"This village has earned the displeasure of the Will."
"How neatly you serve up the mysticism, Tomis," she said bit-
terly. "I misjudged you. I thought you were a sensible man. This
fatalism of yours is ugly."
"I watched my world conquered," I said. "I beheld the Prince
of Roum destroyed. Calamities breed such attitudes as I now
have. Let us go in, Olmayne."
We entered, Olmayne still reluctant. Now fear assailed me, but
I concealed it. I had been almost smug in my piety while arguing
with the lovely Rememberer woman who was my companion, but
I could not deny the sudden seething of fright.
I forced myself to be tranquil.
There are redemptions and redemptions, I told myself. If this
disease is to be the source of mine, I will abide by the Will.
Perhaps Olmayne came to some such decision too, as we went
in, or maybe her own sense of the dramatic forced her into the un-
wanted role of the lady of mercy. She made the rounds with me.
We passed from pallet to pallet, heads bowed, starstones in our
hands. We said words. We smiled when the newly sick begged for
reassurance. We offered prayers. Olmayne paused before one girl
in the secondary phase, whose eyes already were filming over with
horny tissue, and knelt and touched her starstone to the girl's
scaly cheek. The girl spoke in oracles, but unhappily not in any
language we understood.
At last we came to the terminal case, he who had grown his
own superb sarcophagus. Somehow I felt purged of fear, and so
too was Olmayne, for we stood a long while before this grotesque
sight, silent, and then she whispered, "How terrible! How wonder-
ful! How beautiful!"

Nightwings 299
Three more huts similar to this one awaited us.
The villagers clustered at the doorways. As we emerged from
each building in turn, the healthy ones fell down about us, clutch-
ing at the hems of our robes, stridently demanding that we inter-
cede for them with the Will. We spoke such words as seemed ap-
propriate and not too insincere. Those within the huts received
our words blankly, as if they already realized there was no chance
for them; those outside, still untouched by the disease, clung to
every syllable. The headman of the village—only an acting head-
man; the true chief lay crystallized—thanked us again and again,
as though we had done something real. At least we had given
comfort, which is not to be despised.
When we came forth from the last of the sickhouses, we saw a
slight figure watching us from a distance: the Changeling Bernalt.
Olmayne nudged me.
"That creature has been following us, Tomis. All the way from
Land Bridge!"
"He travels to Jorslem also."
"Yes, but why should he stop here? Why in this awful place?"
"Hush, Olmayne. Be civil to him now."
"To a Changeling?"
Bernalt approached. The mutated one was clad in a soft white
robe that blunted the strangeness of his appearance. He nodded
sadly toward the village and said, "A great tragedy. The Will lies
heavy on this place."
He explained that he had arrived here several days ago and had
met a friend from his native city of Nayrub. I assumed he meant a
Changeling, but no, Bernalt's friend was a Surgeon, he said, who
had halted here to do what he could for the afflicted villagers. The
idea of a friendship between a Changeling and a Surgeon seemed a
bit odd to me, and positively contemptible to Olmayne, who did
not trouble to hide her loathing of Bernalt.
A partly crystallized figure staggered from one of the huts,
gnarled hands clutching. Bernalt went forward and gently guided
it back within. Returning to us, he said, "There are times one is
actually glad one is a Changeling. That disease does not affect us,
you know." His eyes acquired a sudden glitter. "Am I forcing my-
self on you, Pilgrims? You seem like stone behind your masks. I
mean no harm; shall I withdraw?"
"Of course not," I said, meaning the opposite. His company
disturbed me; perhaps the ordinary disdain for Changelings was a

300 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
contagion that had at last reached me. "Stay awhile. I would ask
you to travel with us to Jorslem, but you know it is forbidden for
us."
"Certainly. I quite understand." He was coolly polite, but the
seething bitterness in him was close to the surface. Most Change-
lings are such degraded bestial things that they are incapable of
knowing how detested they are by normal guilded men and
women; but Bernalt clearly was gifted with the torment of com-
prehension. He smiled, and then he pointed. "My friend is here."
Three figures approached. One was Bernalt's Surgeon, a slender
man, dark-skinned, soft-voiced, with weary eyes and sparse yellow
hair. With him were an official of the invaders and another out-
worlder from a different planet. "I had heard that two Pilgrims
were summoned to this place," said the invader. "I am grateful for
the comfort you may have brought these sufferers. I am Earth-
claim Nineteen; this district is under my administration. Will you
be my guests at dinner this night?"
I was doubtful of taking an invader's hospitality, and Olmayne's
sudden clenching of her fist over her starstone told me that she
also hesitated. Earthclaim Nineteen seemed eager for our accept-
ance. He was not as tall as most of his kind, and his malpropor-
tioned arms reached below his knees. Under the blazing Aguptan
sun his thick waxy skin acquired a high gloss, although he did not
perspire.
Into a long, tense, and awkward silence the Surgeon inserted:
"No need to hold back. In this village we all are brothers. Join us
tonight, will you?"
We did. Earthclaim Nineteen occupied a villa by the shore of
Lake Medit; in the clear light of late afternoon I thought I could
detect Land Bridge jutting forward to my left, and even Eyrop at
the far side of the lake. We were waited upon by members of the
guild of Servitors who brought us cool drinks on the patio. The in-
vader had a large staff, all Earthborn; to me it was another sign
that our conquest had become institutionalized and was wholly ac-
cepted by the bulk of the populace. Until long after dusk we
talked, lingering over drinks even as the writhing auroras danced
into view to herald the night. Bernalt the Changeling remained
apart, though, perhaps ill at ease in our presence. Olmayne too
was moody and withdrawn; a mingled depression and exaltation
had settled over her in the stricken village, and the presence of
Bernalt at the dinner party had reinforced her silence, for she had

Nightwings 301
no idea how to be polite in the presence of a Changeling. The in-
vader, our host, was charming and attentive, and tried to bring her
forth from her bleakness. I had seen charming conquerors before.
I had traveled with one who had posed as the Earthborn Change-
ling Gormon in the days just before the conquest. This one,
Earthclaim Nineteen, had been a poet on his native world in those
days. I said, "It seems unlikely that one of your inclinations would
care to be part of a military occupation."
"All experiences strengthen the art," said Earthclaim Nineteen.
"I seek to expand myself. In any case I am not a warrior but an
administrator. Is it so strange that a poet can be an administrator,
or an administrator a poet?" He laughed. "Among your many
guilds, there is no guild of Poets. Why?"
"There are Communicants," I said. "They serve your muse."
"But in a religious way. They are interpreters of the Will, not of
their own souls."
"The two are indistinguishable. The verses they make are di-
vinely inspired, but rise from the hearts of their makers," I said.
Earthclaim Nineteen looked unconvinced. "You may argue that
all poetry is at bottom religious, I suppose. But this stuff of your
Communicants is too limited in scope. It deals only with acquies-
cence to the Will."
"A paradox," said Olmayne. "The Will encompasses every-
thing, and yet you say that our Communicants' scope is limited."
"There are other themes for poetry besides immersion in the
Will, my friends. The love of person for person, the joy of defend-
ing one's home, the wonder of standing naked beneath the fiery
stars—" The invader laughed. "Can it be that Earth fell so swiftly
because its only poets were poets of acquiescence to destiny?"
"Earth fell," said the Surgeon, "because the Will required us to
atone for the sin our ancestors committed when they treated your
ancestors like beasts. The quality of our poetry had nothing to do
with it."
"The Will decreed that you would lose to us by way of punish-
ment, eh? But if the Will is omnipotent, it must have decreed the
sin of your ancestors that made the punishment necessary. Eh?
Eh? The Will playing games with itself? You see the difficulty of
believing in a divine force that determines all events? Where is the
element of choice that makes suffering meaningful? To force you
into a sin, and then to require you to endure defeat as atonement,
seems to me an empty exercise. Forgive my blasphemy."

302 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
The Surgeon said, "You misunderstand. All that has happened
on this planet is part of a process of moral instruction. The Will
does not shape every event great or small; it provides the raw ma-
terial of events, and allows us to follow such patterns as we de-
sire."
"Example?"
"The Will imbued the Earthborn with skills and knowledge.
During the First Cycle we rose from savagery in little time; in the
Second Cycle we attained greatness. In our moment of greatness
we grew swollen with pride, choosing to exceed our limitations.
We imprisoned intelligent creatures of other worlds under the pre-
tense of 'study,' when we acted really out of an arrogant desire for
amusement; and we toyed with our world's climate until oceans
joined and continents sank and our old civilization was destroyed.
Thus the Will instructed us in the boundaries of human ambition."
"I dislike that dark philosophy even more," said Earthclaim
Nineteen. "I-"
"Let me finish," said the Surgeon. "The collapse of Second
Cycle Earth was our punishment. The defeat of Third Cycle Earth
by you folk from the stars is a completion of that earlier punish-
ment, but also the beginning of a new phase. You are the instru-
ments of our redemption. By inflicting on us the final humiliation
of conquest, you bring us to the bottom of our trough; now we
renew our souls, now we begin to rise, tested by adversities."
I stared in sudden amazement at this Surgeon, who was uttering
ideas that had been stirring in me all along the road to Jorslem,
ideas of redemption both personal and planetary. I had paid little
attention to the Surgeon before.
"Permit me a statement," Bernalt said suddenly, his first words
in hours.
We looked at him. The pigmented bands in his face were
ablaze, marking his emotion.
He said, nodding to the Surgeon, "My friend, you speak of re-
demption for the Earthborn. Do you mean all Earthborn, or only
the guilded ones?"
"All Earthborn, of course," said the Surgeon mildly. "Are we
not all equally conquered?"
"We are not equal in other things, though. Can there be re-
demption for a planet that keeps millions of its people thrust into
guildlessness? I speak of my own folk, of course. We sinned long
ago when we thought we were striking out against those who had

Nightwings 303
created us as monsters. We strove to take Jorslem from you; and
for this we were punished, and our punishment has lasted for a
thousand years. We are still outcasts, are we not? Where has our
hope of redemption been? Can you guilded ones consider yourself
purified and made virtuous by your recent suffering, when you still
step on us?"
The Surgeon looked dismayed. "You speak rashly, Bernalt. I
know the Changelings have a grievance. But you know as well as I
that your time of deliverance is at hand. In the days to come no
Earthborn one will scorn you, and you will stand beside us when
we regain our freedom."
Bernalt peeked at the floor. "Forgive me, my friend. Of course,
of course, you speak the truth. I was carried away. The heat—this
splendid wine—how foolishly I spoke!"
Earthclaim Nineteen said, "Are you telling me that a resistance
movement is forming that will shortly drive us from your planet?"
"I speak only in abstract terms," said the Surgeon.
"I think your resistance movement will be purely abstract, too,"
the invader replied easily. "Forgive me, but I see little strength in
a planet that could be conquered in a single night. We expect our
occupation of Earth to be a long one and to meet little opposition.
In the months that we have been here there has been no sign of in-
creasing hostility to us. Quite the contrary: we are increasingly ac-
cepted among you."
"It is part of a process," said the Surgeon. "As a poet, you
should understand that words carry meanings of many kinds. We
do not need to overthrow our alien masters in order to be free of
them. Is that poetic enough for you?"
"Splendid," said Earthclaim Nineteen, getting to his feet. "Shall
we go to dinner now?"
6
There was no way to return to the subject. A philosophical dis-
cussion at the dinner table is difficult to sustain; and our host did
not seem comfortable with this analysis of Earth's destinies.
Swiftly he discovered that Olmayne had been a Rememberer be-
fore turning Pilgrim, and thereafter directed his words to her,
questioning her on our history and on our early poetry. Like most
invaders he had a fierce curiosity concerning our past. Olmayne

304 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
gradually came out of the silence that gripped her, and spoke at
length about her researches in Perris. She talked with great famili-
arity of our hidden past, with Earthclaim Nineteen occasionally
inserting an intelligent and informed question; meanwhile we
dined on delicacies of a number of worlds, perhaps imported by
that same fat, insensitive Merchant who had driven us from Perris
to Marsay; the villa was cool and the Servitors attentive; that mis-
erable plague-stricken peasant village half an hour's walk away
might well have been in some other galaxy, so remote was it from
our discourse now.
When we left the villa in the morning, the Surgeon asked per-
mission to join our Pilgrimage. "There is nothing further I can do
here," he explained. "At the outbreak of the disease I came up
from my home in Nayrub, and I've been here many days, more to
console than to cure, of course. Now I am called to Jorslem. How-
ever, if it violates your vows to have company on the road—"
"By all means come with us," I said.
"There will be one other companion," the Surgeon told us.
He meant the third person who had met us at the village: the
outworlder, an enigma, yet to say a word in our presence. This
being was a flattened spike-shaped creature somewhat taller than a
man and mounted on a jointed tripod of angular legs; its place of
origin was in the Golden Spiral; its skin was rough and bright red
in hue, and vertical rows of glassy oval eyes descended on three
sides from the top of its tapered head. I had never seen such a
creature before. It had come to Earth, according to the Surgeon,
on a data-gathering mission, and had already roamed much of Ais
and Stralya. Now it was touring the lands on the margin of Lake
Medit; and after seeing Jorslem it would depart for the great cities
of Eyrop. Solemn, unsettling in its perpetual watchfulness, never
blinking its many eyes nor offering a comment on what those eyes
beheld, it seemed more like some odd machine, some information-
intake for a memory tank, than a living creature. But it was harm-
less enough to let it come with us to the holy city.
The Surgeon bade farewell to his Changeling friend, who went
on alone ahead of us, and paid a final call on the crystallized vil-
lage. We stayed back, since there was no point in our going. When
he returned, his face was somber. "Four new cases," he said.
"This entire village will perish. There has never been an outbreak
of this kind before on Earth—so concentrated an epidemic."
"Something new, then?" I asked. "Will it spread everywhere?"

Nightwings 305
"Who knows? No one in the adjoining villages has caught it.
The pattern is unfamiliar: a single village wholly devastated, and
nowhere else besides. These people see it as divine retribution for
unknown sins."
"What could peasants have done," I asked, "that would bring
the wrath of the Will so harshly upon them?"
"They are asking that too," said the Surgeon.
Olmayne said, "If there are new cases, our visit yesterday was
useless. We risked ourselves and did them no good."
"Wrong," the Surgeon told her. "These cases were already in-
cubating when you arrived. We may hope that the disease will not
spread to those.who still were in full health."
He did not seem confident of that.
Olmayne examined herself from day to day for symptoms of the
disease, but none appeared. She gave the Surgeon much trouble on
that score, bothering him for opinions concerning real or fancied
blemishes of her skin, embarrassing him by removing her mask in
his presence so that he could determine that some speck on her
cheek was not the first trace of crystallization.
The Surgeon took all this in good grace, for, while the outworld
being was merely a cipher plodding alongside us, the Surgeon was
a man of depth, patience, and sophistication. He was native to
Afreek, and had been dedicated to his guild at birth by his father,
since healing was the family tradition. Traveling widely, he had
seen most of our world and had forgotten little of what he had
seen. He spoke to us of Roum and Perris, of the frostflower fields
of Stralya, of my own birthplace in the western island group of the
Lost Continents. He questioned us tactfully about our starstones
and the effects they produced—I could see he hungered to try the
stone himself, but that of course was forbidden to one who had
not declared himself a Pilgrim—and when he learned that in for-
mer life I had been a Watcher, he asked me a great deal concern-
ing the instruments by which I had scanned the heavens, wishing
to know what it was I perceived and how I imagined the percep-
tion was accomplished. I spoke to him as fully as I could on these
matters, though in truth I knew little.
Usually we kept to the green strip of fertile land bordering the
lake, but once, at the Surgeon's insistence, we detoured into the
choking desert to see something that he promised would be of in-
terest. He would not tell us what it was. We were at this point
traveling in hired rollerwagons, open on top, and sharp winds

306 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
blew gusts of sand in our faces. Sand adhered briefly to the out-
worlder's eyes, I saw; and I saw how efficiently it flushed each eye
with a flood of blue tears every few moments. The rest of us
huddled in our garments, heads down, whenever the wind arose.
"We are here," the Surgeon announced finally. "When I trav-
eled with my father I first visited this place long ago. We will go
inside—and then you, the former Rememberer, will tell us where
we are."
It was a building two stories high made of bricks of white glass.
The doors appeared sealed, but they gave at the slightest pressure.
Lights glowed into life the moment we entered.
In long aisles, lightly strewn with sand, were tables on which in-
struments were mounted. Nothing was comprehensible to me.
There were devices shaped like hands, into which one's own hands
could be inserted; conduits led from the strange metal gloves to
shining closed cabinets, and arrangements of mirrors transmitted
images from the interiors of those cabinets to giant screens over-
head. The Surgeon placed his hands in the gloves and moved his
fingers; the screens brightened, and I saw images of tiny needles
moving through shallow arcs. He went to other machines that
released dribbles of unknown fluids; he touched small buttons that
produced musical sounds; he moved freely through a laboratory of
wonders, clearly ancient, which seemed still in order and awaiting
the return of its users.
Olmayne was ecstatic. She followed the Surgeon from aisle to
aisle, handling everything.
"Well, Rememberer?" he asked finally. "What is this?"
"A Surgery," she said in lowered voice. "A Surgery of the
Years of Magic!"
"Exactly! Splendid!" He seemed in an oddly excited state. "We
could make dazzling monsters here! We could work miracles!
Fliers, Swimmers, Changelings, Twiners, Burners, Climbers—in-
vent your own guilds, shape men to your whims! This was the
place!"
Olmayne said, "These Surgeries have been described to me.
There are six of them left, are there not, one in northern Eyrop,
one on Palash, one here, one far to the south in Deeper Afreek,
one in western Ais—" She faltered.
"And one in Hind, the greatest of all!" said the Surgeon.
"Yes, of course, Hind! The home of the Fliers!"

Nightwings 307
Their awe was contagious. I said, "This was where the shapes
of men were changed? How was it done?"
The Surgeon shrugged. "The art is lost. The Years of Magic
were long ago, old man."
"Yes, yes, I know. But surely if the equipment survives, we
could guess how—"
"With these knives," said the Surgeon, "we cut into the fabric
of the unborn, editing the human seed. The Surgeon placed his
hands here—he manipulated—and within that incubator the knives
did their work. Out of this came Fliers and all the rest. The forms
bred true. Some are extinct today, but our Fliers and our Change-
lings owe their heritage to some such building as this. The Change-
lings, of course, were the Surgeons' mistakes. They should not have
been permitted to live."
"I thought that these monsters were the products of teratogenic
drugs given to them when they still were within the womb," I said.
"You tell me now that Changelings were made by Surgeons.
Which is so?"
"Both," he replied. "All Changelings today are descended from
the flaws and errors committed by the Surgeons of the Years of
Magic. Yet mothers in that unhappy group often enhance the
monstrousness of their children with drugs, so that they will be
more marketable. It is an ugly tribe not merely in looks. Small
wonder that their guild was dissolved and they were thrust outside
society. We—"
Something bright flew through the air, missing his face by less
than a hand's breadth. He dropped to the floor and shouted to us
to take cover. As I fell I saw a second missile fly toward us. The
outworld being, still observing all phenomena, studied it impas-
sively in the moment of life that remained to it. Then the weapon
struck two thirds of the way up the outworlder's body and severed
it instantly. Other missiles followed, clattering against the wall
behind us. I saw our attackers: a band of Changelings, fierce, hid-
eous. We were unarmed. They moved toward us. I readied myself
to die.
From the doorway a voice cried out: a familiar voice, using the
thick and unfamiliar words of the language Changelings speak
among themselves. Instantly the assault ceased. Those who men-
aced us turned toward the door. The Changeling Bernalt entered.
"I saw your vehicle," he said. "I thought you might be here,
and perhaps in trouble. It seems I came in time."

308 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
"Not altogether," said the Surgeon. He indicated the fallen out-
worlder, which was beyond all aid. "But why this attack?"
Bernalt gestured. "They will tell you."
We looked at the five Changelings who had ambushed us. They
were not of the educated, civilized sort such as Bernalt, nor were
any two of them of the same styles; each was a twisted, hunched
mockery of the human form, one with ropy tendrils descending
from his chin, one with a face that was a featureless void, another
whose ears were giant cups, and so forth. From the one closest to
us, a creature with small platforms jutting from his skin in a
thousand places, we learned why we had been assaulted. In a bru-
tal Aguptan dialect he told us that we had profaned a temple sa-
cred to Changelings. "We keep out of Jorslem," he told us. "Why
must you come here?"
Of course he was right. We asked forgiveness as sincerely as we
could, and the Surgeon explained that he had visited this place
long ago and it had not been a temple then. That seemed to
soothe the Changeling, who admitted that only in recent years had
his kind used it as a shrine. He was soothed even more when Ol-
mayne opened the overpocket fastened between her breasts and
offered a few glittering gold coins, part of the treasure she had
brought with her from Perris. The bizarre and deformed beings
were satisfied at that and allowed us to leave the building. We
would have taken the dead outworlder with us, but during our
parley with the Changelings the body had nearly vanished, nothing
but a faint gray streak remaining on the sandy floor to tell us
where it had fallen. "A mortuary enzyme," the Surgeon explained.
"Triggered by interruption of the life processes."
Others of this community of desert-dwelling Changelings were
lurking about outside the building as we came forth. They were a
tribe of nightmares, with skin of every texture and color, facial
features arranged at random, all kinds of genetic improvisations of
organs and bodily accessories. Bernalt himself, although their
brother, seemed appalled by their monstrousness. They looked to
him with awe. At the sight of us some of them fondled the throw-
ing weapons at their hips, but a sharp command from Bernalt
prevented any trouble.
He said, "I regret the treatment you received and the death of
the outworlder. But of course it is risky to enter a place that is sa-
cred to backward and violent people."

Nightwings 309
"We had no idea," the Surgeon said. "We never would have
gone in if we had realized—"
"Of course. Of course." Was there something patronizing about
Bernalt's soft, civilized tones? "Well, again I bid you farewell."
I blurted suddenly, "No. Travel with us to Jorslem! It's ridicu-
lous for us to go separately to the same place."
Olmayne gasped. Even the Surgeon seemed amazed. Only Ber-
nalt remained calm. He said, "You forget, friend, that it is im-
proper for Pilgrims to journey with the guildless. Besides, I am
here to worship at this shrine, and it will take me a while. I would
not wish to delay you." His hand reached out to mine. Then he
moved away, entering the ancient Surgery. Scores of his fellow
Changelings rushed in after him. I was grateful to Bernalt for his
tact; my impulsive offer of companionship, though sincerely
meant, had been impossible for him to accept.
We boarded our rollerwagons. In a moment we heard a dread-
ful sound: a discordant Changeling hymn in praise of I dare not
think what deity, a scraping, grinding, screeching song as mis-
shapen as those who uttered it.
"The beasts," Olmayne muttered. "A sacred shrine! A Change-
ling temple! How loathsome! They might have killed us all, Tomis.
How can such monsters have a religion?"
I made no reply. The Surgeon looked at Olmayne sadly and
shook his head as though distressed by so little charity on the part
of one who claimed to be a Pilgrim.
"They also are human," he said.
At the next town along our route we reported the starborn be-
ing's death to the occupying authorities. Then, saddened and si-
lent, we three survivors continued onward, to the place where the
coastline trends north rather than east. We were leaving sleepy
Agupt behind and entering now into the borders of the land in
which holy Jorslem lies.
7
The city of Jorslem sits some good distance inland from Lake
Medit on a cool plateau guarded by a ring of low, barren, rock-
strewn mountains. All my life, it seemed, had been but a prepara-
tion for my first glimpse of this golden city, whose image I knew
so well. Hence when I saw its spires and parapets rising in the
east, I felt not so much awe as a sense of a homecoming.

310 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
A winding road took us down through the encircling hills to the
city, whose wall was made of squared blocks of a fine stone, dark
pink-gold in color. The houses and shrines, too, were of this stone.
Groves of trees bordered the road, nor were they star-trees, but
native products of Earth, as was fitting to this, the oldest of man's
cities, older than Roum, older than Perris, its roots deep in the
First Cycle.
The invaders, shrewdly, had not meddled with Jorslem's admin-
istration. The city remained under the governorship of the Guild-
master of Pilgrims, and even an invader was required to seek the
Guildmaster's permission to enter. Of course, this was strictly a
matter of form; the Pilgrim Guildmaster, like the Chancellor of
the Rememberers and other such officials, was in truth a puppet
subject to our conquerors' wishes. But that harsh fact was kept
concealed. The invaders had left our holy city as a city apart, and
we would not see them swaggering in armed teams through Jors-
lem's streets.
At the outer wall we formally requested entry from the Sentinel
guarding the gate. Though elsewhere most Sentinels now were
unemployed—since cities stood open by command of our masters—
this man was in full guild array and calmly insisted on thorough
procedure. Olmayne and I, as Pilgrims, were entitled to automatic
access to Jorslem; yet he made us produce our starstones as evi-
dence that we came by our robes and masks honestly, and then
donned a thinking cap to check our names with the archives of
our guild. In time we met approval. The Surgeon our companion
had an easier time; he had applied in advance for entry while in
Afreek, and after a moment to check his identity he was admitted.
Within the walls everything had the aspect of great antiquity.
Jorslem alone of the world's cities still preserves much of its First
Cycle architecture: not merely broken columns and ruined aque-
ducts, as in Roum, but whole streets, covered arcades, towers,
boulevards, that have lasted through every upheaval our world has
seen. And so once we passed into the city we wandered in wonder
through its strangeness, down streets paved with cobbled stones,
into narrow alleys cluttered with children and beggars, across
markets fragrant with spices. After an hour of this we felt it was
time to seek lodgings, and here it was necessary for us to part
company with the Surgeon, since he was ineligible to stay at a Pil-
grim hostelry, and it would have been costly and foolish for us to
stay anywhere else. We saw him to the inn where he had pre-

Nightwings 311
viously booked a room. I thanked him for his good compan-
ionship on our journey, and he thanked us just as gravely and ex-
pressed the hope that he would see us again in Jorslem in the days
to come. Then Olmayne and I took leave of him and rented quar-
ters in one of the numerous places catering to the Pilgrim trade.
The city exists solely to serve Pilgrims and casual tourists, and
so it is really one vast hostelry; robed Pilgrims are as common in
Jorslem's streets as Fliers in Hind. We settled and rested awhile;
then we dined and afterward walked along a broad street from
which we could see, to the east, Jorslem's inner and most sacred
district. There is a city within a city here. The most ancient part,
so small it can be traversed in less than an hour on foot, is
wrapped in a high wall of its own. Therein lie shrines revered by
Earth's former religions: the Christers, the Hebers, the Mislams.
The place where the god of the Christers died is said to be there,
but this may be a distortion wrought by time, since what kind of
god is it that dies? On a high place in one corner of the Old City
stands a gilded dome sacred to the Mislams, which is carefully
tended by the common folk of Jorslem. And to the fore part of
that high place are the huge gray blocks of a stone wall worshiped
by the Hebers. These things remain, but the ideas behind them are
lost; never while I was among the Rememberers did I meet any
scholar who could explain the merit of worshiping a wall or a
gilded dome. Yet the old records assure us that these three First
Cycle creeds were of great depth and richness.
In the Old City, also, is a Second Cycle place that was of much
more immediate interest to Olmayne and myself. As we stared
through the darkness at the holy precincts Olmayne said, "We
should make application tomorrow at the house of renewal."
"I agree. I long now to give up some of my years."
"Will they accept me, Tomis?"
"Speculating on it is idle," I told her. "We will go, and we will
apply, and your question will be answered."
She said something further, but I did not hear her words, for at
that moment three Fliers passed above me, heading east. One was
male, two female; they flew naked, according to the custom of
their guild; and the Flier in the center of the group was a slim,
fragile girl, mere bones and wings, moving with a grace that was
exceptional even for her airy kind.
"Avluela!" I gasped.
The trio of Fliers disappeared beyond the parapets of the Old

312 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
City. Stunned, shaken, I clung to a tree for support and struggled
for breath.
"Tomis?" Olmayne said. "Tomis, are you ill?"
"I know it was Avluela. They said she had gone back to Hind,
but no, that was Avluela! How could I mistake her?"
"You've said that about every Flier you've seen since leaving
Perris," said Olmayne coldly.
"But this time I'm certain! Where is a thinking cap? I must
check with the Fliers' Lodge at once!"
Olmayne's hand rested on my arm. "It's late, Tomis. You act
feverish. Why this excitement over your skinny Flier, anyway?
What did she mean to you?"
"She—"
I halted, unable to put my meaning in words. Olmayne knew
the story of my journey up out of Agupt with the girl, how as a
celebate old Watcher I had conceived a kind of paternal fondness
for her, how I had perhaps felt something more powerful than
that, how I had lost her to the false Changeling Gormon, and how
he in turn had lost her to the Prince of Roum. But yet what was
Avluela to me? Why did a glimpse of someone who merely might
have been Avluela send me into this paroxysm of confusion? I
chased symbols in my turbulent mind and found no answers.
"Come back to the inn and rest," Olmayne said. "Tomorrow
we must seek renewal."
First, though, I donned a cap and made contact with the Fliers'
Lodge. My thoughts slipped through the shielding interface to the
storage brain of the guild registry; I asked and received the answer
I had sought. Avluela of the Fliers was indeed now a resident in
Jorslem. "Take this message for her," I said. "The Watcher she
knew in Roum now is here as a Pilgrim, and wishes to meet her
outside the house of renewal at midday tomorrow."
With that done, I accompanied Olmayne to our lodgings. She
seemed sullen and aloof; and when she unmasked in my room her
face appeared rigid with-jealousy? Yes. To Olmayne all men
were vassals, even one so shriveled and worn as I; and she loathed
it that another woman could kindle such a flame in me. When I
drew forth my starstone, Olmayne at first would not join me in
communion. Only when I began the rituals did she submit. But I
was so tense that night that I was unable to make the merging with
the Will, nor could she achieve it; and thus we faced one another

Nightwings 313
glumly for half an hour, and abandoned the attempt, and parted
for the night.
8
One must go by one's self to the house of renewal. At dawn I
awoke, made a brief and more successful communion, and set out
unbreakfasted, without Olmayne. In half an hour I stood before
the golden wall of the Old City; in half an hour more I had
finished my crossing of the inner city's tangled lanes. Passing be-
fore that gray wall so dear to the ancient Hebers, I went up onto
the high place; I passed near the gilded dome of the vanished
Mislams and, turning to the left, followed the stream of Pilgrims
which already at this early hour was proceeding to the house of
renewal.
This house is a Second Cycle building, for it was then that the
renewal process was conceived; and of all that era's science, only
renewal has come down to us approximately as it must have been
practiced in that time. Like those other few Second Cycle struc-
tures that survive, the house of renewal is supple and sleek, archi-
tecturally understated, with deft curves and smooth textures; it is
without windows; it bears no external ornament whatever. There
are many doors. I placed myself before the easternmost entrance,
and in an hour's time I was admitted.
Just inside the entrance I was greeted by a green-robed member
of the guild of Renewers—the first member of this guild I had ever
seen. Renewers are recruited entirely from Pilgrims who are will-
ing to make it their life's work to remain in Jorslem and aid others
toward renewal. Their guild is under the same administration as
the Pilgrims; a single guildmaster directs the destinies of both;
even the garb is the same except for color. In effect Pilgrims and
Renewers are of one guild and represent different phases of the
same affiliation. But a distinction is always drawn.
The Renewer's voice was light and cheerful. "Welcome to this
house, Pilgrim. Who are you, where are you from?"
"I am the Pilgrim Tomis, formerly Tomis of the Rememberers,
and prior to that a Watcher, born to the name Wuellig. I am na-
tive to the Lost Continents and have traveled widely both before
and after beginning my Pilgrimage."
"What do you seek here?"

314 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
"Renewal. Redemption."
"May the Will grant your wishes," said the Renewer. "Come
with me."
I was led through a close, dimly lit passage into a small stone
cell. The Renewer instructed me to remove my mask, enter into a
state of communion, and wait. I freed myself from the bronze
grillwork and clasped my starstone tightly. The familiar sensations
of communion stole over me, but no union with the Will took
place; rather, I felt a specific link forming with the mind of an-
other human being. Although mystified, I offered no resistance.
Something probed my soul. Everything was drawn forth and
laid out as if for inspection on the floor of the cell: my acts of
selfishness and of cowardice, my flaws and failings, my doubts, my
despairs, above all the most shameful of my acts, the selling of the
Rememberer document to the invader overlord. I beheld these
things and knew that I was unworthy of renewal. In this house one
might extend one's lifetime two or three times over; but why
should the Renewers offer such benefits to anyone as lacking in
merit as I?
I remained a long while in contemplation of my faults. Then the
contact broke, and a different Renewer, a man of remarkable stat-
ure, entered the cell.
"The mercy of the Will is upon you, friend," he said, reaching
forth fingers of extraordinary length to touch the tips of mine.
When I heard that deep voice and saw those white fingers, I
knew that I was in the presence of a man I had met briefly before,
as I stood outside the gates of Roum in the season before the con-
quest of Earth. He had been a Pilgrim then, and he had invited me
to join him on his journey to Jorslem, but I had declined, for
Roum had beckoned to me.
"Was your Pilgrimage an easy one?" I asked.
"It was a valuable one," he replied. "And you? You are a
Watcher no longer, I see."
"I am in my third guild this year."
"With one more yet to come," he said.
"Am I to join you in the Renewers, then?"
"I did not mean that guild, friend Tomis. But we can talk more
of that when your years are fewer. You have been approved for
renewal, I rejoice to tell you."
"Despite my sins?"
"Because of your sins, such that they are. At dawn tomorrow

Nightwings 315
you enter the first of the renewal tanks. I will be your guide
through your second birth. I am the Renewer Talmit. Go, now,
and ask for me when you return."
"One question—"
"Yes?"
"I made my Pilgrimage together with a woman, Olmayne, for-
merly a Rememberer of Perris. Can you tell me if she has been
approved for renewal as well?"
"I know nothing of this Olmayne."
"She's not a good woman," I said. "She is vain, imperious, and
cruel. But yet I think she is not beyond saving. Can you do any-
thing to help her?"
"I have no influence in such things," Talmit said. "She must face
interrogation like everyone else. I can tell you this, though: virtue
is not the only criterion for renewal."
He showed me from the building. Cold sunlight illuminated the
city. I was drained and depleted, too empty even to feel cheered
that I had qualified for renewal. It was midday; I remembered my
appointment with Avluela; I circled the house of renewal in rising
anxiety. Would she come?
She was waiting by the front of the building, beside a glittering
monument from Second Cycle days. Crimson jacket, furry leg-
gings, glassy bubbles on her feet, telltale humps on her back: from
afar I could make her out to be a Flier. "Avluela!" I called.
She whirled. She looked pale, thin, even younger than when I
had last seen her. Her eyes searched my face, once again masked,
and for a moment she was bewildered.
"Watcher?" she said. "Watcher, is that you?"
"Call me Tomis now," I told her. "But I am the same man you
knew in Agupt and Roum."
"Watcher! Oh, Watcher! Tomis" She clung to me. "How long
it's been! So much has happened!" She sparkled now, and the
paleness fled her cheeks. "Come, let's find an inn, a place to sit
and talk! How did you discover me here?"
"Through your guild. I saw you overhead last night."
"I came here in the winter. I was in Fars for a while, halfway
back to Hind, and then I changed my mind. There could be no
going home. Now I live near Jorslem, and I help with—" She cut
her sentence sharply off. "Have you won renewal, Tomis?"
We descended from the high place into a humbler part of the
inner city. "Yes," I said, "I am to be made younger. My guide is

316 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
the Renewer Talmit—we met him as a Pilgrim outside Roum, do
you remember?"
She had forgotten that. We seated ourselves at an open-air patio
adjoining an inn, and Servitors brought us food and wine. Her gai-
ety was infectious; I felt renewed just to be with her. She spoke of
those final cataclysmic days in Roum, when she had been taken
into the palace of the Prince as a concubine; and she told me of
that terrible moment when Gormon the Changeling defeated the
Prince of Roum on the evening of conquest—announcing himself
as no Changeling but an invader in disguise, and taking from the
Prince at once his throne, his concubine, and his vision,
"Did the Prince die?" she asked.
"Yes, but not of his blinding." I told her how that proud man
had fled Roum disguised as a Pilgrim, and how I had accompanied
him to Perris, and how, while we were among the Rememberers,
he had involved himself with Olmayne, and had been slain by Ol-
mayne's husband, whose life was thereupon taken by his wife. "I
also saw Gormon in Perris," I said. "He goes by the name of Vic-
torious Thirteen now. He is high in the councils of the invaders."
Avluela smiled. "Gormon and I were together only a short
while after the conquest. He wanted to tour Eyrop; I flew with
him to Donsk and Sved, and there he lost interest in me. It was
then that I felt I must go home to Hind, but later I changed my
mind. When does your renewal begin?"
"At dawn."
"Oh, Tomis, how will it be when you are a young man? Did
you know that I loved you? All the time we traveled, all while I
was sharing Gormon's bed and consorting with the Prince, you
were the one I wanted! But of course you were a Watcher, and it
was impossible. Besides, you were so old. Now you no longer
Watch, and soon you will no longer be old, and—" Her hand
rested on mine. "I should never have left your side. We both
would have been spared much suffering."
"We learn, from suffering," I said.
"Yes. Yes. I see that. How long will your renewal take?"
"The usual time, whatever that may be."
"After that, what will you do? What guild will you choose?
You can't be a Watcher, not now."
"No, nor a Rememberer either. My guide Talmit spoke of some
other guild, which he would not name, and assumed that I would
enroll in it when I was done with renewal. I supposed he thought

Nightwings 317
I'd stay here and join the Renewers, but he said it was another
guild."
"Not the Renewers," said Avluela. She leaned close. "The Re-
deemers," she whispered.
"Redeemers? That is a guild I do not know."
"It is newly founded."
"No new guild has been established in more than a—"
"This is the guild Talmit meant. You would be a desirable
member. The skills you developed when you were a Watcher
make you exceptionally useful."
"Redeemers," I said, probing the mystery. "Redeemers. What
does this guild do?"
Avluela smiled jauntily. "It rescues troubled souls and saves
unhappy worlds. But this is no time to talk of it. Finish your busi-
ness in Jorslem, and everything will become clear." We rose. Her
lips brushed mine. "This is the last time I'll see you as an old
man. It will be strange, Tomis, when you're renewed!"
She left me then.
Toward evening I returned to my lodging. Olmayne was not in
her room. A Servitor told me that she had been out all day. I
waited until it was late; then I made my communion and slept,
and at dawn I paused outside her door. It was sealed. I hurried to
the house of renewal.
9
The Renewer Talmit met me within the entrance and conducted
me down a corridor of green tile to the first renewal tank. "The
Pilgrim Olmayne," he informed me, "has been accepted for re-
newal and will come here later this day." This was the last refer-
ence to the affairs of another human being that I was to hear for
some time. Talmit showed me into a small low room, close and hu-
mid, lit by dim blobs of slavelight and smelling faintly of crushed
deathflower blossoms. My robe and my mask were taken from me,
and the Renewer covered my head with a fine golden-green mesh
of some flimsy metal, through which he sent a current; and when
he removed the mesh, my hair was gone, my head was as glossy as
the tiled walls. "It makes insertion of the electrodes simpler," Tal-
mit explained. "You may enter the tank, now."
A gentle ramp led me down into the tank, which was a tub of

318 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
no great size. I felt the warm soft slipperiness of mud beneath my
feet, and Talmit nodded and told me it was irradiated regenerative
mud, which would stimulate the increase of cell division that was
to bring about my renewal, and I accepted it. I stretched out on
the floor of the tank with only my head above the shimmering
dark violet fluid that it contained. The mud cradled and caressed
my tired body. Talmit loomed above me, holding what seemed to
be a mass of entangled copper wires, but as he pressed the wires
to my bare scalp they opened as of their own accord and their tips
sought my skull and burrowed down through skin and bone into
the hidden wrinkled grayness. I felt nothing more than tiny prick-
ling sensations. "The electrodes," Talmit explained, "seek out the
centers of aging within your brain; we transmit signals that will in-
duce a reversal of the normal processes of decay, and your brain
will lose its perception of the direction of the flow of time. Your
body thus will become more receptive to the stimulation it re-
ceives from the environment of the renewal tank. Close your
eyes." Over my face he placed a breathing mask. He gave me a
gentle shove, and the back of my head slipped from the edge of
the tank, so that I floated out into the middle. The warmth in-
creased. I dimly heard bubbling sounds. I imagined black sul-
furous bubbles coming up from the mud and through the fluid in
which I floated; I imagined that the fluid had turned the color of
mud. Adrift in a tideless sea I lay, distantly aware that a current
was passing over the electrodes, that something was tickling my
brain, that I was engulfed in mud and in what could well have
been an amniotic fluid. From far away came the deep voice of the
Renewer Talmit summoning me to youth, drawing me back across
the decades, unreeling time for me. There was a taste of salt in my
mouth. Again I was crossing Earth Ocean, beset by pirates, de-
fending my Watching equipment against their jeers and thrusts.
Again I stood beneath the hot Aguptan sun meeting Avluela for
the first time. I lived once more on Palash. I returned to the place
of my birth in the western isles of the Lost Continents, in what
formerly had been Usa-amrik. I watched Roum fall a second
time. Fragments of memories swam through my softening brain.
There was no sequence, no rational unrolling of events. I was a
child. I was a weary ancient. I was among the Rememberers. I
visited the Somnambulists. I saw the Prince of Roum attempt to
purchase eyes from an Artificer in Dijon. I bargained with the
Procurator of Perris. I gripped the handles of my instruments and

Nightwings 319
entered Watchfulness. I ate sweet things from a far-off world; I
drew into my nostrils the perfume of springtime on Palash; I shiv-
ered in an old man's private winter; I swam in a surging sea, buoy-
ant and happy; I sang; I wept; I resisted temptation; I yielded to
temptations; I quarreled with Olmayne; I embraced Avluela; I ex-
perienced a flickering succession of nights and days as my biologi-
cal clock moved in strange rhythms of reversal and acceleration.
Illusions beset me. It rained fire from the sky; time rushed in sev-
eral directions; I grew small and then enormous. I heard voices
speaking in shades of scarlet and turquoise. Jagged music sparkled
on the mountains. The sound of my drumming heartbeats was
rough and fiery. I was trapped between strokes of my brain-piston,
arms pressed to my sides so that I would occupy as little space as
possible as it rammed itself home again and again and again. The
stars throbbed, contracted, melted. Avluela said gently, "We earn
a second youthtime through the indulgent, benevolent impulses of
the Will and not through the performance of individual good
works." Olmayne said, "How sleek I get!" Talmit said, "These os-
cillations of perception signify only the dissolution of the wish to-
ward self-destruction that lies at the heart of the aging process."
Gormon said, "These perceptions of oscillation signify only the
self-destruction of the wish toward dissolution that lies at the
aging process of the heart." The Procurator Manrule Seven said,
"We have been sent to this world as the devices of your purgation.
We are instruments of the Will." Earthclaim Nineteen said, "On
the other hand, permit me to disagree. The intersection of Earth's
destinies and ours is purely accidental." My eyelids turned to
stone. The small creatures comprising my lungs began to flower.
My skin sloughed off, revealing strands of muscle clinging to bone.
Olmayne said, "My pores grow smaller. My flesh grows tight. My
breasts grow small." Avluela said, "Afterwards you will fly with
us, Tomis." The Prince of Roum covered his eyes with his hands.
The towers of Roum swayed in the winds of the sun. I snatched a
shawl from a passing Rememberer. Clowns wept in the streets of
Perris. Talmit said, "Awaken, now, Tomis, come up from it, open
your eyes."
"I am young again," I said.
"Your renewal has only begun," he said.
I could no longer move. Attendants seized me and swathed me
in porous wrappings, and placed me on a rolling car, and took me
to a second tank, much larger, in which dozens of people floated,

320 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
each in a dreamy seclusion from the others. Their naked skulls
were festooned with electrodes; their eyes were covered with pink
tape; their hands were peacefully joined on their chests. Into this
tank I went, and there were no illusions here, only a long slumber
unbroken by dreams. This time I awakened to the sounds of a
rushing tide, and found myself passing feet first through a con-
stricted conduit into a sealed tank, where I breathed only fluid,
and where I remained something more than a minute and some-
thing less than a century, while layers of sin were peeled from
my soul. It was slow, taxing work. The Surgeons worked at a dis-
tance, their hands thrust into gloves that controlled the tiny flay-
ing-knives, and they flensed me of evil with flick after flick after
flick of the little blades, cutting out guilt and sorrow, jealousy and
rage, greed, lust, and impatience.
When they were done with me they opened the lid of the tank
and lifted me out. I was unable to stand unaided. They attached
instruments to my limbs that kneaded and massaged my muscles,
restoring the tone. I walked again. I looked down at my bare
body, strong and taut-fleshed and vigorous. Talmit came to me
and threw a handful of mirror-dust into the air so that I could see
myself; and as the tiny particles cohered, I peered at my gleaming
reflection.
"No," I said. "You have the face wrong. I didn't look like that.
The nose was sharper—the Hps weren't so full—the hair not such a
deep black—"
"We have worked from the records of the guild of Watchers,
Tomis. You are more exactly a replica of your early self than your
own memory realizes."
"Can that be?"
"If you prefer, we can shape you to fit your self-conceptions
and not reality. But it would be a frivolous thing to do, and it
would take much time."
"No," I said. "It hardly matters."
He agreed. He informed me then that I would have to remain in
the house of renewal a while longer, until I was fully adapted to
my new self. I was given the neutral clothes of a guildless one to
wear, for I was without affiliation now; my status as Pilgrim had
ended with my renewal, and I might now opt for any guild that
would admit me once I left the house. "How long did my renewal
last?" I asked Talmit as I dressed. He replied, "You came here in
summer. Now it is winter. We do not work swiftly."

Nightwings 321
"And how fares my companion Olmayne?"
"We failed with her."
"I don't understand."
"Would you like to see her?" Talmit asked.
"Yes," I said, thinking that he would bring me to Olmayne's
room. Instead he conveyed me to Olmayne's tank. I stood on a
ramp looking down into a sealed container; Talmit indicated a
fiber telescope, and I peered into its staring eye and beheld Ol-
mayne. Or rather, what I was asked to believe was Olmayne. A
naked girl-child of about eleven, smooth-skinned and breastless,
lay curled up in the tank, knees drawn close to the flat chest,
thumb thrust in mouth. At first I did not understand. Then the
child stirretl, and I recognized the embryonic features of the regal
Olmayne I had known: the wide mouth, the strong chin, the
sharp, strong cheekbones. A dull shock of horror rippled through
me, and I said to Talmit, "What is this?"
"When the soul is too badly stained, Tomis, we must dig deep
to cleanse it. Your Olmayne was a difficult case. We should not
have attempted her; but she was insistent, and there were some in-
dications that we might succeed with her. Those indications were
in error, as you can see."
"But what happened to her?"
"The renewal entered the irreversible stage before we could
achieve a purging of her poisons," Talmit said.
"You went too far? You made her too young?"
"As you can see. Yes."
"What will you do? Why don't you get her out of there and let
her grow up again?"
"You should listen more carefully, Tomis. I said the renewal is
irreversible."
"Irreversible?"
"She is lost in childhood's dreams. Each day she grows years
younger. The inner clock whirls uncontrollably. Her body shrinks;
her brain grows smooth. She enters babyhood shortly. She will
never awaken."
"And at the end—" I looked away. "What then? A sperm and
an egg, separating in the tank?"
"The retrogression will not go that far. She will die in infancy.
Many are lost this way."
"She spoke of the risks of renewal," I said.
"Yet she insisted on our taking her. Her soul was dark, Tomis.

322 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
She lived only for herself. She came to Jorslem to be cleansed, and
now she has been cleansed, and she is at peace with the Will. Did
you love her?"
"Never. Not for an instant."
"Then what have you lost?"
"A segment of my past, perhaps." I put my eye to the telescope
again and beheld Olmayne, innocent now, restored to virginity,
sexless, cleansed. At peace with the Will. I searched her oddly al-
tered yet familiar face for insight into her dreams. Had she known
what was befalling her, as she tumbled helplessly into youth-
fulness? Had she cried out in anguish and frustration when she felt
her life slipping away? Had there been a final flare of the old im-
perious Olmayne, before she sank into this unwanted purity? The
child in the tank was smiling. The supple little body uncoiled, then
drew more tightly into a huddled ball. Olmayne was at peace with
the Will. Suddenly, as though Talmit had spread another mirror in
the air, I looked into my own new self, and saw what had been
done for me, and knew that I had been granted another life with
the proviso that I make something more of it than I had of my
first one, and I felt humbled, and pledged myself to serve the Will,
and I was engulfed in joy that came in mighty waves, like the
surging tides of Earth Ocean, and I said farewell to Olmayne, and
asked Talmit to take me to another place.
10
And Avluela came to me in my room in the house of renewal,
and we both were frightened when we met. The jacket she wore
left her bunched-up wings bare; they seemed hardly under her
control at all, but fluttered nervously, starting to open a short way,
their gossamer tips expanding in little quivering flickers. Her eyes
were large and solemn; her face looked more lean and pointed
than ever. We stared in silence at one another a long while; my
skin grew warm, my vision hazy; I felt the churning of inner forces
that had not pulled at me in decades, and I feared them even as I
welcomed them.
"Tomis?" she said finally, and I nodded.
She touched my shoulders, my arms, my lips. And I put my
fingers to her wrists, her flanks, and then, hesitantly, to the shal-
low bowls of her breasts. Like two who had lost their sight we

Nightwings 323
learned each other by touch. We were strangers. That withered old
Watcher she had known and perhaps loved was gone, banished for
the next fifty years or more, and in his place stood someone mys-
teriously transformed, unknown, unmet. The old Watcher had
been a sort of father to her; what was this guildless young Tomis
supposed to be? And what was she to me, a daughter no longer? I
did not know myself of myself. I was alien to my sleek, taut skin. I
was perplexed and delighted by the juices that now flowed, by the
throbbings and swellings that I had nearly forgotten.
"Your eyes are the same," she said. "I would always know you
by your eyes."
"What have you done these many months, Avluela?"
"I have been flying every night. I flew to Agupt and deep into
Afreek. Then I returned and flew to Stanbool. When it gets dark, I
go aloft. Do you know, Tomis, I feel truly alive only when I'm up
there?"
"You are of the Fliers. It is in the nature of your guild to feel
that way."
"One day we'll fly side by side, Tomis."
I laughed at that. "The old Surgeries are closed, Avluela. They
work wonders here, but they can't transform me into a Flier. One
must be born with wings."
"One doesn't need wings to fly."
"I know. The invaders lift themselves without the help of
wings. I saw you, one day soon after Roum fell—you and Gormon
in the sky together—" I shook my head. "But I am no invader ei-
ther."
"You will fly with me, Tomis. We'll go aloft, and not only by
night, even though my wings are merely nightwings. In bright sun-
light we'll soar together."
Her fantasy pleased me. I gathered her into my arms, and she
was cool and fragile against me, and my own body pulsed with
new heat. For a while we talked no more of flying, though I drew
back from taking what she offered at that moment, and was con-
tent merely to caress her. One does not awaken in a single lunge.
Later we walked through the corridors, passing others who
were newly renewed, and we went into the great central room
whose ceiling admitted the winter sunlight, and studied each other
by that changing pale light, and walked, and talked again. I leaned
a bit on her arm, for I did not have all my strength yet, and so in a
sense it was as it had been for us in the past, the girl helping the

324 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
old dodderer along. When she saw me back to my room, I said,
"Before I was renewed, you told me of a new guild of Redeemers.
I-"
"There is time for that later," she said, displeased.
In my room we embraced, and abruptly I felt the full fire of the
renewed leap up within me, so that I feared I might consume her
cool, slim body. But it is a fire that does not consume—it only kin-
dles its counterpart in others. In her ecstasy her wings unfolded
until I was wrapped in their silken softness. And as I gave myself
to the violence of joy, I knew I would not need again to lean on
her arm.
We ceased to be strangers; we ceased to feel fear with one an-
other. She came to me each day at my exercise time, and I walked
with her, matching her stride for stride. And the fire burned even
higher and more brightly for us.
Talmit was with me frequently too. He showed me the arts of
using my renewed body, and helped me successfully grow youth-
ful. I declined his invitation to view Olmayne once more. One day
he told me that her retrogression had come to its end. I felt no
sorrow over that, just a curious brief emptiness that soon passed.
"You will leave here soon," the Renewer said. "Are you
ready?"
"I think so."
"Have you given much thought to your destination after this
house?"
"I must seek a new guild, I know."
"Many guilds would have you, Tomis. But which do you
want?"
"The guild in which I would be most useful to mankind," I
said. "I owe the Will a life."
Talmit said, "Has the Flier girl spoken to you of the possi-
bilities before you?"
"She mentioned a newly founded guild."
"Did she give it a name?"
"The guild of Redeemers."
"What do you know of it?"
"Very little," I said.
"Do you wish to know more?"
"If there is more to know."
"I am of the guild of Redeemers," Talmit said. "So is the Flier
Avluela."

Nightwings 325
"You both are already guilded! How can you belong to more
than one guild? Only the Dominators were permitted such free-
dom; and they—"
"Tomis, the guild of Redeemers accepts members from all
other guilds. It is the supreme guild, as the guild of Dominators
once was. In its ranks are Rememberers and Scribes, Indexers,
Servitors, Fliers, Landholders, Somnambulists, Surgeons, Clowns,
Merchants, Vendors. There are Changelings as well, and—"
"Changelings?" I gasped. "They are outside all guilds, by law!
How can a guild embrace Changelings?"
"This is the guild of Redeemers. Even Changelings may win re-
demption,. Tomis."
Chastened, I said, "Even Changelings, yes. But how strange it is
to think of such a guild!"
"Would you despise a guild that embraces Changelings?"
"I find this guild difficult to comprehend."
"Understanding will come at the proper time."
"When is the proper time?"
"The day you leave this place," said Talmit.
That day arrived shortly. Avluela came to fetch me. I stepped
forth uncertainly into Jorslem's springtime to complete the ritual
of renewal. Talmit had instructed her on how to guide me. She
took me through the city to the holy places, so that I could wor-
ship at each of the shrines. I knelt at the wall of the Hebers and at
the gilded dome of the Mislams; then I went down into the lower
part of the city, through the marketplace, to the gray, dark, ill-
fashioned building covering the place where the god of the
Christers is said to have died; then I went to the spring of knowl-
edge and the fountain of the Will, and from there to the guild-
house of the guild of Pilgrims to surrender my mask and robes
and starstone, and thence to the wall of the Old City. At each of
these places I offered myself to the Will with words I had waited
long to speak. Pilgrims and ordinary citizens of Jorslem gathered
at a respectful distance; they knew that I had been lately renewed
and hoped that some emanation from my new youthful body
would bring them good fortune. At last my obligations were
fulfilled. I was a free man in full health, able now to choose the
quality of the life I wished to lead.
Avluela said, "Will you come with me to the Redeemers now?"
"Where will we find them? In Jorslem?"

326 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
"In Jorslem, yes. A meeting will convene in an hour's time for
the purpose of welcoming you into membership."
From her tunic she drew something small and gleaming, which I
recognized in bewilderment as a starstone. "What are you doing
with that?" I asked. "Only Pilgrims-"
"Put your hand over mine," she said, extending a fist in which
the starstone was clenched.
I obeyed. Her small pinched face grew rigid with concentration
for a moment. Then she relaxed. She put the starstone away.
"Avluela, what-?"
"A signal to the guild," she said gently. "A notice to them to
gather now that you are on your way."
"How did you get that stone?"
"Come with me," she said. "Oh, Tomis, if only we could fly
there! But it is not far. We meet almost in the shadow of the house
of renewal. Come, Tomis. Come!"
11
There was no light in the room. Avluela led me into the subter-
ranean blackness, and told me that I had reached the guildhall of
the Redeemers, and left me standing by myself. "Don't move," she
cautioned.
I sensed the presence of others in the room about me. But I
heard nothing and saw nothing.
Something was thrust toward me.
Avluela said, "Put out your hands. What do you feel?"
I touched a small square cabinet resting, perhaps, on a metal
framework. Along its face were familiar dials and levers. My
groping hands found handles rising from the cabinet's upper sur-
face. At once it was as though all my renewal had been undone,
and the conquest of Earth canceled as well: I was a Watcher
again, for surely this was a Watcher's equipment!
I said, "It is not the same cabinet I once had. But it is not
greatly different."
"Have you forgotten your skills, Tomis?"
"I think they remain with me even now."
"Use the machine, then," said Avluela. "Do your Watching
once more, and tell me what you see."
Easily and happily I slipped into the old attitudes. I performed

Nightwings 327
the preliminary rituals quickly, clearing my mind of doubts and
frictions. It was surprisingly simple to bring myself into a spirit of
Watchfulness; I had not attempted it since the night Earth fell,
and yet it seemed to me that I was able to enter the state more
rapidly than in the old days.
Now I grasped the handles. How strange they were! They did
not terminate in the grips to which I was accustomed: rather,
something cool and hard was mounted at the tip of each handle. A
gem of some kind, perhaps. Possibly even a starstone, I realized.
My hands closed over the twin coolnesses. I felt a moment of ap-
prehension, even of raw fear. Then I regained the necessary tran-
quillity, and my soul flooded into the device before me, and I
began to Watch.
In my Watchfulness I did not soar to the stars, as I had in the
old days. Although I perceived, my perception was limited to the
immediate surroundings of my room. Eyes closed, body hunched
in trance, I reached out and came first to Avluela; she was near
me, almost upon me. I saw her plainly. She smiled; she nodded;
her eyes were aglow.
—I love you.
—Yes, Tomis. And we will be together always.
—I have never felt so close to another person.
—In this guild we are all close, all the time. We are the Re-
deemers, Tomis. We are new. Nothing like this has been on Earth
before.
—How am I speaking to you, Avluela?
—Your mind speaks to mine through the machine. And some
day the machine will not be needed.
—And then we will fly together?
—Long before then, Tomis.
The starstones grew warm in my hands. I clearly perceived the
instrument, now: a Watcher's cabinet, but with certain modifica-
tions, among them the starstones mounted on the handles. And I
looked beyond Avluela and saw other faces, ones that I knew.
The austere figure of the Renewer Talmit was to my left. Beside
him stood the Surgeon with whom I had journeyed to Jorslem,
with the Changeling Bernalt at his elbow. Aiid now at last I knew
what business it was that had brought these men of Nayrub to the
holy city. The others I did not recognize; but there were two
Fliers, and a Rememberer grasping his shawl, and a woman Servi-
tor, and others. And I saw them all by an inner light for the room

328 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
was as dark as it had been when I entered it. Not only did I see
them, but I touched them, mind to mind.
The mind I touched first was Bernalt's. I met it easily though
fearfully, drew back, met it again. He greeted me and welcomed
me. I realized then that only if I could look upon a Changeling as
my brother could I, and Earth itself, win the sought-for redemp-
tion. For until we were truly one people, how could we earn an
end to our punishment?
I tried to enter Bernalt's mind. But I was afraid. How could I
hide those prejudices, those petty contempts, those conditioned
reflexes with which we unavoidably think of Changelings?
"Hide nothing," he counseled. "Those things are no secret to
me. Give them up now and join me."
I struggled. I cast out demons. I summoned up the memory of
the moment outside the Changeling shrine, after Bernalt had saved
us, when I had invited him to journey with us. How had I felt then
toward him? Had I regarded him, at least for a moment, as a
brother?
I amplified that moment of gratitude and companionship. I let it
swell, and blaze, and it obliterated the encrustations of scorn and
empty disdain; and I saw the human soul beneath the strange
Changeling surface, and I broke through that surface and found
the path to redemption. He drew me toward his mind.
I joined Bernalt, and he enrolled me in his guild. I was of the
Redeemers now.
Through my mind rolled a voice, and I did not know whether I
heard the resonant boom of Talmit, or the dry ironic tone of the
Surgeon, or Bernalt's controlled murmur, or Avluela's soft whis-
per, for it was all these voices at once, and others, and they said:
"When all mankind is enrolled in our guild, we will be con-
quered no longer. When each of us is part of every other one of
us, our sufferings will end. There is no need for us to struggle
against our conquerors, for we will absorb them, once we are all
Redeemed. Enter us, Tomis who was the Watcher Wuellig."
And I entered.
And I became the Surgeon and the Flier and the Renewer and
the Changeling and the Servitor and the rest. And they became
me. And so long as my hands gripped the starstones we were of
one soul and one mind. This was not the merging of communion,
in which a Pilgrim sinks anonymously into the Will, but rather a
union of self and self, maintaining independence within a larger

Nightwings 329
dependence. It was the keen perception one gets from Watching
coupled with the submergence in a larger entity that one gets from
communion, and I knew this was something wholly new on Earth,
not merely the founding of a new guild but the initiation of a new
cycle of human existence, the birth of the Fourth Cycle upon this
defeated planet.
The voice said, "Tomis, we will Redeem those in greatest need
first. We will go into Agupt, into the desert where miserable
Changelings huddle in an ancient building that they worship, and
we will take them into us and make them clean again. We will go
on, to the west, to a pitiful village smitten by the crystallization
disease, and .we will reach the souls of the villagers and free them
from taint, and the crystallization will cease and their bodies will
be healed. And we will go on beyond Agupt, to all the lands of
the world, and find those who are without guilds, and those who
are without hope, and those who are without tomorrows, and we
will give them life and purpose again. And a time will come when
all Earth is Redeemed."
They put a vision before me of a transformed planet, and of the
harsh-faced invaders yielding peacefully to us and begging to be
incorporated into that new thing that had germinated in the midst
of their conquest. They showed me an Earth that had been purged
of its ancient sins.
Then I felt it was time to withdraw my hands from the machine
I grasped, and I withdrew my hands.
The vision ebbed. The glow faded. But yet I was no longer
alone in my skull, for some contact lingered, and the room
ceased to be dark.
"How did this happen?" I asked. "When did this begin?"
"In the days after the conquest," said Talmit, "we asked our-
selves why we had fallen so easily, and how we could lift ourselves
above what we had been. We saw that our guilds had not provided
enough of a structure for our lives, that some closer union was
our way to redemption. We had the starstones; we had the instru-
ments of Watching; all that remained was to fuse them."
The Surgeon said, "You will be important to us, Tomis, be-
cause you understand how to throw your mind forth. We seek for-
mer Watchers. They are the nucleus of our guild. Once your soul
roved the stars to search out mankind's enemies; now it will roam
the Earth to bring mankind together."

330 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
Avluela said, "You will help me to fly, Tomis, even by day.
And you will fly beside me."
"When do you leave?" I asked.
"Now," she said. "I go to Agupt, to the temple of the Change-
lings, to offer them what we have to offer. And all of us will join
to give me strength, and that strength will be focused through you,
Tomis." Her hands touched mine. Her lips brushed mine. "The
life of Earth begins again, now, this year, this new cycle. Oh,
Tomis, we are all reborn!"
12
I remained alone in the room. The others scattered. Avluela
went above, into the street. I put my hands to the mounted star-
stones, and I saw her as clearly as though she stood beside me.
She was preparing herself for flight. First she put off her clothing,
and her bare body glistened in the afternoon sun. Her little body
seemed impossibly delicate; a strong wind would shatter her, I
thought. Then she knelt, bowed, made her ritual. She spoke to
herself, yet I heard her words, the words Fliers say as they ready
themselves to leave the ground. All guilds are one in this new
guild; we have no secrets from one another; there are no myster-
ies. And as she beseeched the favor of the Will and the support of
all her kind, my prayers joined with hers.
She rose and let her wings unfold. Some passers-by looked
oddly at her, not because there was anything unusual about the
sight of a naked Flier in the streets of Jorslem, but because the
sunlight was so strong and her transparent wings, so lightly stained
with pigment, were evidently nightwings incapable of withstanding
the pressure of the solar wind.
"I love you," we said to her, and our hands ran lightly over her
satiny skin in a brief caress.
Her nostrils flickered in delight. Her small girl-child's breasts
became agitated. Her wings now were fully spread, and they
gleamed wondrously in the sunlight.
"Now we fly to Agupt," she murmured, "to Redeem the
Changelings and make them one with us. Tomis, will you come
with me?"
"I will be with you," we said, and I gripped the starstones
tightly and crouched over my cabinet of instruments in the dark

Nightwings 331
room beneath the place where she stood. "We will fly together,
Avluela."
"Up, then," she said, and we said, "Up."
Her wings beat, curving to take the wind, and we felt her strug-
gling in the first moment, and we gave her the strength she needed,
and she took it as it poured from us through me to her, and we
rose high. The spires and parapets of Jorslem the Golden grew
small, and the city became a pink dot in the green hills, and
Avluela's throbbing wings thrust her swiftly westward, toward the
setting sun, toward the land of Agupt. Her ecstasy swept through
us all. "See, Tomis, how wonderful it is, far above everything? Do
you feel it?"
"I feel it,'51 whispered. "The cool wind against bare flesh—the
wind in my hair—we drift on the currents, we coast, we soar,
Avluela, we soar!"
To Agupt. To the sunset.
We looked down at sparkling Lake Medit. In the distance
somewhere was Land Bridge. To the north, Eyrop. To the south,
Afreek. Far ahead, beyond Earth Ocean, lay my homeland. Later
I would return there, flying westward with Avluela, bringing the
good news of Earth's transformation.
From this height one could not tell that our world had ever
been conquered. One saw only the beauty of the colors of the land
and the sea, not the checkpoints of the invaders.
Those checkpoints would not long endure. We would conquer
our conquerors, not with weapons but with love; and as the Re-
demption of Earth became universal we would welcome into our
new self even the beings who had seized our planet.
"I knew that some day you would fly beside me, Tomis," said
Avluela.
In my dark room I sent new surges of power through her wings.
She hovered over the desert. The old Surgery, the Changeling
shrine, would soon be in sight. I grieved that we would have to
come down. I wished we could stay aloft forever, Avluela and I.
"We will, Tomis, we will!" she told me. "Nothing can separate
us now! You believe that, don't you, Tomis?"
"Yes," we said, "I believe that." And we guided her down
through the darkening sky.

DowimRD to the EartH

Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the
spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?
Ecclesiastes 3:21

ONE
He had come back to Holman's World after all. He was not
sure why. Call it irresistible attraction; call it sentimentality; call it
foolishness. Gundersen had never planned to revisit this place. Yet
here he was, waiting for the landing, and there it was in the vision
screen, close enough to grasp and squeeze in one hand, a world
slightly larger than Earth, a world that had claimed the prime dec-
ade of his life, a world where he had learned things about himself
that he had not really wanted to know. Now the signal light in the
lounge was flashing red. The ship would shortly land. Despite ev-
erything, he was coming back.
He saw the shroud of mist that covered the temperate zones, and
the great sprawling icecaps, and the girdling blue-black band of
the scorched tropics. He remembered riding through the Sea of
Dust at blazing twilight, and he remembered a silent, bleak river-
journey beneath bowers of twittering dagger-pointed leaves, and
he remembered golden cocktails on the veranda of a jungle station
on the Night of Five Moons, with Seena close by his side and a
herd of nildoror mooing in the bush. That was a long time ago.
Now the nildoror were masters of Holman's World again. Gunder-
sen had a hard time accepting that. Perhaps that was the real
reason why he had come back: to see what sort of job the nildoror
could do.
"Attention, passengers in lounge," came a voice over the
speaker. "We enter landing orbit for Belzagor in fifteen minutes.
Please prepare to return to cradles."
Belzagor. That was what they called the planet now. The native
name, the nildoror's own word. To Gundersen it seemed like
something out of Assyrian mythology. Of course, it was a roman-
ticized pronunciation; coming from a nildor it would really sound
more like Bills'grr. Belzagor it was, though. He would try to call
the planet by the name it now wore, if that was what he was sup-
posed to do. He attempted never to give needless offense to alien
beings.

336 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
"Belzagor," he said. "It's a voluptuous sound, isn't it? Rolls
nicely off the tongue."
The tourist couple beside him in the ship's lounge nodded. They
agreed readily with whatever Gundersen said. The husband,
plump, pale, overdressed, said, "They were still calling it Hol-
man's World when you were last out here, weren't they?"
"Oh, yes," Gundersen said. "But that was back in the good old
imperialist days, when an Earthman could call a planet whatever
he damn pleased. That's all over now."
The tourist wife's lips tightened in that thin, pinched, dys-
menorrhea! way of hers. Gundersen drew a somber pleasure from
annoying her. All during the voyage he had deliberately played a
role out of Kipling for these tourists—posing as the former colo-
nial administrator going out to see what a beastly botch the na-
tives must be making out of the task of governing themselves. It
was an exaggeration, a distortion, of his real attitude, but some-
times it pleased him to wear masks. The tourists—there were eight
of them—looked upon him in mingled awe and contempt as he
swaggered among them, a big fair-skinned man with the mark of
outworld experience stamped on his features. They disapproved of
him, of the image of himself that he gave them; and yet they knew
he had suffered and labored and striven under a foreign sun, and
there was romance in that.
"Will you be staying at the hotel?" the tourist husband asked.
"Oh, no. I'm going right out into the bush, toward the mist
country. Look—there, you see? In the northern hemisphere, that
band of clouds midway up. The temperature gradient's very steep:
tropic and arctic practically side by side. Mist. Fog. They'll take
you on a tour of it. I have some business in there."
"Business? I thought these new independent worlds were out-
side the zone of economic penetration that—"
"Not commercial business," Gundersen said. "Personal busi-
ness. Unfinished business. Something I didn't manage to discover
during my tour of duty here." The signal light flashed again, more
insistently. "Will you excuse me? We really should cradle up
now."
He went to his cabin and readied himself for landing. Webfoam
spurted from the spinnerets and enfolded him. He closed his eyes.
He felt deceleration thrust, that curiously archaic sensation heark-
ening back to space travel's earliest days. The ship dropped plan-

Downward to the Earth 337
etward as Gundersen swayed, suspended, insulated from the worst
of the velocity change.
Belzagor's only spaceport was the one that Earthmen had built
more than a hundred years before. It was in the tropics, at the
mouth of the great river flowing into Belzagor's single ocean.
Madden's River, Benjamini Ocean—Gundersen didn't know the
nildoror names at all. The spaceport was self-maintaining, fortu-
nately. Automatic high-redundancy devices operated the landing
beacon; homeostatic surveillance kept the pad repaved and the
bordering jungle cropped back. All, all by machine; it was unreal-
istic to expect the nildoror to operate a spaceport, and impossible
to keep a crew of Earthmen stationed here to do it. Gundersen un-
derstood that there were still perhaps a hundred Earthmen living
on Belzagor, even after the general withdrawal, but they were not
such as would operate a spaceport. And there was a treaty, in any
case. Administrative functions were to be performed by nildoror,
or not at all.
They landed. The webfoam cradle dissolved upon signal. They
went out of the ship.
The air had the tropical reek: rich loam, rotting leaves, the
droppings of jungle beasts, the aroma of creamy flowers. It was
early evening. A couple of the moons were out. As always, the
threat of rain was in the air; the humidity was 99%, probably. But
that threat almost never materialized. Rainstorms were rare in this
tropical belt. The water simply precipitated out of the air in drop-
lets all the time, imperceptibly, coating you with fine wet beads.
Gundersen saw lightning flicker beyond the tops of the hullygully
trees at the edge of the pad. A stewardess marshaled the nine
debarkees. "This way, please," she said crisply, and led them to-
ward the one building.
On the left, three nildoror emerged from the bush and solemnly
gazed at the newcomers. Tourists gasped and pointed. "Look! Do
you see them? Like elephants, they are! Are those nili—nildoror?"
"Nildoror, yes," Gundersen said. The tang of the big beasts
drifted across the clearing. A bull and two cows, he guessed, judg-
ing by the size of the tusks. They were all about the same height,
three meters plus, with the deep green skins that marked them as
western-hemisphere nildoror. Eyes as big as platters peered back
at him in dim curiosity. The short-tusked cow in front lifted her
tail and placidly dropped an avalanche of steaming purple dung.
Gundersen heard deep blurred sounds, but at this distance he

338 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
could not make out what the nildoror were saying. Imagine them
running a spaceport, he thought. Imagine them running a planet.
But they do. But they do.
There was no one in the spaceport building. Some robots, part
of the homeostasis net, were repairing the wall at the far side,
where the gray plastic sheeting had apparently succumbed to
spore implantation; sooner or later the jungle rot got everything in
this part of the planet. But that was the only visible activity. There
was no customs desk. The nildoror did not have a bureaucracy of
that sort. They did not care what you brought with you to their
world. The nine passengers had undergone a customs inspection
on Earth, just before setting out; Earth did care, very much, what
was taken to undeveloped planets. There was also no spaceline
office here, nor were there money-changing booths, nor news-
stands, nor any of the other concessions one normally finds in a
spaceport. There was only a big bare shed, which once had been
the nexus of a bustling colonial outpost, in the days when Hol-
man's World had been the property of Earth. It seemed to Gun-
dersen that he saw ghosts of those days all about him: figures in
tropical khaki carrying messages, supercargoes waving inventory
sheets, computer technicians draped in festoons of memory beads,
nildoror bearers laden with outgoing produce. Now all was still.
The scrapings of the repair robots echoed across the emptiness.
The spaceline stewardess was telling the eight passengers,
"Your guide should be here any minute. He'll take you to the
hotel, and—"
Gundersen was supposed to go to the hotel too, just for tonight.
In the morning he hoped to arrange for transport. He had no for-
mal plans for his northward journey; it was going to be largely an
improvisation, a reconnaissance into his own pockmarked past.
He said to the stewardess, "Is the guide a nildor?"
"You mean, native? Oh, no, he's an Earthman, Mr. Gunder-
sen." She rummaged in a sheaf of printout slips. "His name's Van
Beneker, and he was supposed to be here at least half an hour be-
fore the ship landed, so I don't understand why—"
"Van Beneker was never strong on punctuality," Gundersen
said. "But there he is."
A beetle, much rusted and stained by the climate, had pulled up
at the open entrance to the building, and from it now was coming
a short red-haired man, also much rusted and stained by the cli-
mate. He wore rumpled fatigues and a pair of knee-high jungle

Downward to the Earth 339
boots. His hair was thinning and his tanned bald skull showed
through the slicked-down strands. He entered the building and
peered around, blinking. His eyes were light blue and faintly hy-
perthyroid-looking.
"Van?" Gundersen said. "Over here, Van."
The little man came over. In a hurried, perfunctory way he
said, while he was still far from them, "I want to welcome all you
people to Belzagor, as Holman's World is now known. My name's
Van Beneker, and I'm going to show you as much of this fascinat-
ing planet as is legally permissible to show you, and—"
"Hello, Van," Gundersen cut in.
The guide.halted, obviously irritated, in mid-spiel. He blinked
again and looked closely at Gundersen. Finally he said, clearly not
believing it, "Mr. Gundersen?"
"Just Gundersen. I'm not your boss any more."
"Jesus, Mr. Gundersen. Jesus, are you here for the tour?"
"Not exactly. I'm here to take my own tour."
Van Beneker said to the others, "I want you to excuse me. Just
for a minute." To the spaceline stewardess he said, "It's okay.
You can officially convey them to me. I take responsibility. They
all here? One, two, three—eight. That's right. Okay, the luggage
goes out there, next to the beetle. Tell them all to wait. I'll be
right with them." He tugged at Gundersen's elbow. "Come on
over here, Mr. Gundersen. You don't know how amazed I am.
Jesus!"
"How have you been, Van?"
"Lousy. How else, on this planet? When did you leave, ex-
actly?"
"2240. The year after relinquishment. Eight years ago."
"Eight years. And what have you been doing?"
"The home office found work for me," Gundersen said. "I keep
busy. Now I've got a year's accumulated leave."
"To spend it here?"
"Why not?"
"What for?"
"I'm going up mist country," Gundersen said. "I want to visit
the sulidoror."
"You don't want to do that," said Van Beneker. "What do you
want to do that for?"
"To satisfy a curiosity."
"There's only trouble when a man goes up there. You know the

340 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
stories, Mr. Gundersen. I don't need to remind you, how many
guys went up there, how many didn't come back." Van Beneker
laughed. "You didn't come all the way to this place just to rub
noses with the sulidoror. I bet you got some other reason."
Gundersen let the point pass. "What do you do here now,
Van?"
"Tourist guide, mostly. We get nine, ten batches a year. I take
them up along the ocean, then show them a bit of the mist coun-
try, then we hop across the Sea of Dust. It's a nice little tour."
"Yes."
"The rest of the time I relax. I talk to the nildoror a lot, and
sometimes I visit friends at the bush stations. You'll know every-
one, Mr. Gundersen. It's all the old people, still out there."
"What about Seena Royce?" Gundersen asked.
"She's up by Shangri-la Falls."
"Still have her looks?"
"She thinks so," Van Beneker said. "You figure you'll go up
that way?"
"Of course," Gundersen said. "I'm making a sentimental pil-
grimage. I'll tour all the bush stations. See the old friends. Seena.
Cullen. Kurtz. Salamone. Whoever's still there."
"Some of them are dead."
"Whoever's still there," Gundersen said. He looked down at the
little man and smiled. "You'd better take care of your tourists,
now. We can talk at the hotel tonight. I want you to fill me in on
everything that's happened while I've been gone."
"Easy, Mr. Gundersen. I can do it right now in one word. Rot.
Everything's rotting. Look at the spaceport wall over there."
"I see."
"Look at the repair robots, now. They don't shine much, do
they? They're giving out too. If you get close, you can see the
spots on their hulls."
"But homeostasis—"
"Sure. Everything gets repaired, even the repair robots. But the
system's going to break down. Sooner or later, the rot will get into
the basic programs, and then there won't be any more repairs, and
this world will go straight back into the stone age. I mean all the
way back. And then the nildoror will finally be happy. I under-
stand those big bastards as much as anybody does. I know they
can't wait to see the last trace of Earthmen rot right off this

Downward to the Earth 341
planet. They pretend they're friendly, but the hate's there all the
time, real sick hate, and—"
"You ought to look after your tourists, Van," Gundersen said.
"They're getting restless."

TWO
A caravan of nildoror was going to transport them from the
spaceport to the hotel—two Earthmen per alien, with Gundersen
riding alone, and Van Beneker, with the luggage, leading the way
in his beetle. The three nildoror grazing at the edge of the field
ambled over to enroll in the caravan, and two others emerged
from the bush. Gundersen was surprised that nildoror was still
willing to act as beasts of burden for Earthmen. "They don't
mind," Van Beneker explained. "They like to do us favors. It
makes them feel superior. They can't hardly tell there's weight on
them, anyhow. And they don't think there's anything shameful
about letting people ride them."
"When I was here I had the impression they resented it," Gun-
dersen said.
"Since relinquishment they take things like that easier. Anyway,
how could you be sure what they thought? I mean, what they re-
ally thought."
The tourists were a little alarmed at riding nildoror. Van
Beneker tried to calm them by telling them it was an important
part of the Belzagor experience. Besides, he added, machinery did
not thrive on this planet and there were hardly any functioning
beetles left. Gundersen demonstrated how to mount, for the
benefit of the apprehensive newcomers. He tapped his nildor's
left-hand tusk, and the alien knelt in its elephantine way, pon-
derously coming down on its front knees, then its back ones. The
nildor wriggled its shoulders, in effect dislocating them to create
the deep swayback valley in which a man could ride so comfort-
ably, and Gundersen climbed aboard, seizing the short backward-
thrusting horns as his pommels. The spiny crest down the middle
of the alien's broad skull began to twitch. Gundersen recognized it
as a gesture of welcome; the nildoror had a rich language of ges-
ture, employing not only the spines but also their long ropy trunks
and their many-pleated ears. "Sssukh!" Gundersen said, and the
nildor arose. "Do you sit well?" it asked him in its own language.

Downward to the Earth 343
"Very well indeed," Gundersen said, feeling a surge of delight as
the unforgotten vocabulary came to his lips.
In their clumsy, hesitant way, the eight tourists did as he had
done, and the caravan set out down the river road toward the
hotel. Nightflies cast a dim glow under the canopy of trees. A
third moon was in the sky, and the mingled lights came through
the leaves, revealing the oily fast-moving river just to their left.
Gundersen stationed himself at the rear of the procession in case
one of the tourists had a mishap. There was only one uneasy mo-
ment, though, when a nildor paused and left the rank. It rammed
the triple prongs of its tusks into the riverbank to grub up some
morsel, and then resumed its place in line. In the old days, Gun-
dersen knew, that would never have happened. Nildoror were not
permitted then to have whims.
He enjoyed the ride. The jouncing strides were agreeable, and
the pace was swift without being strenuous for the passengers.
What good beasts these nildoror are, Gundersen thought. Strong,
docile, intelligent. He almost reached forward to stroke his
mount's spines, deciding at the last moment that it would seem pa-
tronizing. The nildoror are something other than funny-looking el-
ephants, he reminded himself. They are intelligent beings, the
dominant life-forms of their planet, people, and don't you forget
it.
Soon Gundersen could hear the crashing of the surf. They were
nearing the hotel.
The path widened to become a clearing. Up ahead, one of the
tourist women pointed into the bush; her husband shrugged and
shook his head. When Gundersen reached that place he saw what
was bothering them. Black shapes crouched between the trees, and
dark figures were moving slowly to and fro. They were barely visi-
ble in the shadows. As Gundersen's nildor went past, two of the
dim forms emerged and stood by the edge of the path. They were
husky bipeds, close to three meters tall, covered with thick coats
of dark red hair. Massive tails swished slowly through the greenish
gloom. Hooded eyes, slit-wide even in this scant light, appraised
the procession. Drooping rubbery snouts, tapir-long, sniffed
audibly.
A woman turned gingerly and said to Gundersen, "What are
they?"
"Sulidoror. The secondary species. They come from up mist
country. These are northern ones."

344 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
"Are they dangerous?"
"I wouldn't call them that."
"If they're northern animals, why are they down here?" her
husband wanted to know.
"I'm not sure," Gundersen said. He questioned his mount and
received an answer. "They work at the hotel," Gundersen called
ahead. "Bellhops. Kitchen hands." It seemed strange to him that
the nildoror would have turned the sulidoror into domestic ser-
vants at an Earthman's hotel. Not even before relinquishment had
sulidoror been used as servants. But of course there had been
plenty of robots here then.
The hotel lay just ahead. It was on the coast, a glistening geo-
desic dome that showed no external signs of decay. Before relin-
quishment, it had been a posh resort run exclusively for the benefit
of the top-level administrators of the Company. Gundersen had
spent many happy hours in it. Now he dismounted, and he and
Van Beneker helped the tourists down. Three sulidoror stood at
the hotel entrance. Van Beneker gestured fiercely at them and
they began to take the luggage from the beetle's storage hold.
Inside, Gundersen quickly detected symptoms of decline. A car-
pet of tiger-moss had begun to edge out of an ornamental garden
strip along the lobby wall, and was starting to reach onto the fine
black slabs of the main hall's floor; he saw the toothy little mouths
hopefully snapping as he walked in. No doubt the hotel's mainte-
nance robots once had been programmed to cut the ornamental
moss back to the border of the garden bed, but the program must
have subtly altered with the years so that now the moss was al-
lowed to intrude on the interior of the building as well. Possibly
the robots were gone altogether, and the sulidoror who had re-
placed them were lax in their pruning duties. And there were other
hints that control was slipping away.
"The boys will show you to your rooms," Van Beneker said.
"You can come down for cocktails whenever you're ready. Din-
ner will be served in about an hour and a half."
A towering sulidor conducted Gundersen to a third-floor room
overlooking the sea. Reflex led him to offer the huge creature a
coin; but the sulidor merely looked blankly at him and did not
venture to take it. It seemed to Gundersen that there was a
suppressed tension about the sulidor, an inward seething, but per-
haps it existed only in his own imagination. In the old days suli-

Downward to the Earth 345
doror had rarely been seen outside the zone of mist, and Gunder-
sen did not feel at ease with them.
In nildoror words he said, "How long have you been at the
hotel?" But the sulidor did not respond. Gundersen did not know
the language of the sulidoror, but he was aware that every sulidor
was supposed to speak fluent nildororu as well as sulidororu.
Enunciating more clearly, he repeated his question. The sulidor
scratched its pelt with gleaming claws and said nothing. Moving
past Gundersen, it deopaqued the window-wall, adjusted the
atmospheric filters, and stalked solemnly out.
Gundersen frowned. Quickly he stripped and got under the
cleanser. A quick whirr of vibration took from him the grime of his
day's journey. He unpacked and donned evening clothes, a close
gray tunic, polished boots, a mirror for his brow. He toned the
color of his hair down the spectrum a short distance, dimming it
from yellow almost to auburn.
Suddenly he felt very tired.
He was just into early middle years, only forty-eight, and travel
ordinarily did not affect him. Why this fatigue, then? He realized
that he had been holding himself unusually stiff these few hours he
had been back on this planet. Rigid, inflexible, tense—uncertain of
his motives in returning, unsure of his welcome, perhaps touched a
bit by curdled guilts, and now the strain was telling. He touched a
switch and made the wall a mirror. Yes, his face was drawn; the
cheekbones, always prominent, now jutted like blades, and the
lips were clamped and the forehead was furrowed. The thin slab
of his nose was distended by tension-flared nostrils. Gundersen
shut his eyes and went through one of the drills of a relaxation
mode. He looked better thirty seconds later; but a drink might
help, he decided. He went down to the lounge.
None of the tourists were there yet. The louvers were open, and
he heard the roar and crash of the sea, smelled its saltiness. A
white curdled line of accumulated salt had been allowed to form
along the margin of the beach. The tide was in; only the tips of the
jagged rocks that framed the bathing area were visible. Gundersen
looked out over the moonslight-streaked water, staring into the
blackness of the eastern horizon. Three moons had also been up
on his last night here, when they gave the farewell party for him.
And after the revelry was over, he and Seena had gone for a mid-
night swim, out to the tide-hidden shoal where they could barely
stand, and when they returned to shore, naked and salt-encrusted,

346 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
he had made love to her behind the rocks, embracing her for what
he was sure would be the last time. And now he was back.
He felt a stab of nostalgia so powerful that he winced.
Gundersen had been thirty years old when he came out to Hol-
man's World as an assistant station agent. He had been forty, and
a sector administrator, when he left. In a sense the first thirty
years of his life had been a pale prelude to that decade, and the
last eight years of it had been a hollow epilogue. He had lived his
life on this silent continent, bounded by mist and ice to the north,
mist and ice to the south, the Benjamini Ocean to the east, the Sea
of Dust to the west. For a while he had ruled half a world, at least
in the absence of the chief resident; and this planet had shrugged
him off as though he had never been. Gundersen turned away
from the louvers and sat down.
Van Beneker appeared, still in his sweaty, rumpled fatigues. He
winked cordially at Gundersen and began rummaging in a cabinet.
"I'm the bartender too, Mr. G. What can I get you?"
"Alcohol," Gundersen said. "Any form you recommend."
"Snout or flask?"
"Flask. I like the taste."
"As you say. But snout for me. It's the effect, sir, the effect"
He set an empty glass before Gundersen and handed him a flask
containing three ounces of a dark red fluid. Highland rum, local
product. Gundersen hadn't tasted it in eight years. The flask was
equipped with its own condensation chiller; Gundersen thumbed it
with a quick short push and quietly watched the flakes of ice be-
ginning to form along the inside. When his drink was properly
chilled he poured it and put it quickly to his hps.
"That's pre-relinquishment stock," Van Beneker said. "Not
much of it left, but I knew you'd appreciate it." He was holding
an ultrasonic tube to his left forearm. ZtzI and the snout spurted
alcohol straight into his vein. Van Beneker grinned. "Works faster
this way. The working-class man's boozer. Eh? Eh? Get you an-
other rum, Mr. G?"
"Not just yet. Better look after your tourists, Van."
The tourist couples were beginning to enter the bar: first the
Watsons, then the Mirafloreses, the Steins, finally the Chris-
tophers. Evidently they had expected to find the bar throbbing
with life, full of other tourists giddily hailing one another from
distant parts of the room, and red-jacketed waiters ferrying drinks.
Instead there were peeling plastic walls, a sonic sculpture that no

Downward to the Earth 347
longer worked and was deeply cobwebbed, empty tables, and that
unpleasant Mr. Gundersen moodily peering into a glass. The tour-
ists exchanged cheated glances. Was this what they had spanned
the light-years to see? Van Beneker went to them, offering drinks,
weeds, whatever else the limited resources of the hotel might be
able to supply. They settled in two groups near the windows and
began to talk in low voices, plainly self-conscious in front of Gun-
dersen. Surely they felt the foolishness of their roles, these soft
well-to-do people whose boredom had driven them to peer at the
remote reaches of the galaxy. Stein ran a helix parlor in Califor-
nia, Miraflores a chain of lunar casinos, Watson was a doctor, and
Christopherr-Gundersen could not remember what Christopher
did. Something in the financial world.
Mrs. Stein said, "There are some of those animals on the beach.
The green elephants."
Everyone looked. Gundersen signaled for another drink, and
got it. Van Beneker, flushed, sweating, winked again and put a
second snout to his arm. The tourists began to titter. Mrs. Chris-
topher said, "Don't they have any shame at all?"
"Maybe they're simply playing, Ethel," Watson said.
"Playing? Well, if you call that playing-"
Gundersen leaned forward, glancing out the window without
getting up. On the beach a pair of nildoror were coupling, the
cow kneeling where the salt was thickest, the bull mounting her,
gripping her shoulders, pressing his central tusk down firmly
against the spiny crest of her skull, jockeying his hindquarters
about as he made ready for the consummating thrust. The tourists,
giggling, making heavy-handed comments of appreciation, seemed
both shocked and titillated. To his considerable surprise, Gunder-
sen realized he was shocked, too, although coupling nildoror were
nothing new to him; and when a ferocious orgasmic bellowing rose
from below he glanced away, embarrassed and not understanding
why.
"You look upset," Van Beneker said.
"They didn't have to do that here."
"Why not? They do it all over the place. You know how it is."
"They deliberately went out there," Gundersen muttered. "To
show off for the tourists? Or to annoy the tourists? They shouldn't
be reacting to the tourists at all. What are they trying to prove?
That they're just animals, I suppose."
"You don't understand the nildoror, Gundy."

348 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
Gundersen looked up, started as much by Van Beneker's words
as by the sudden descent from "Mr. Gundersen" to "Gundy." Van
Beneker seemed startled, too, blinking rapidly and tugging at a
stray sparse lock of fading hair.
"I don't?" Gundersen asked. "After spending ten years here?"
"Begging pardon, but I never did think you understood them,
even when you were here. I used to go around with you a lot to
the villages when I was clerking for you. I watched you."
"In what way do you think I failed to understand them, Van?"
"You despised them. You thought of them as animals."
"That isn't so!"
"Sure it is, Gundy. You never once admitted they had any intel-
ligence at all."
"That's absolutely untrue," Gundersen said. He got up and took
a new flask of rum from the cabinet, and returned to the table.
"I would have gotten that for you," Van Beneker said. "You
just had to ask me."
"It's all right." Gundersen chilled the drink and downed it fast.
"You're talking a load of nonsense, Van. I did everything possible
for those people. To improve them, to lift them toward civili-
zation. I requisitioned tapes for them, sound pods, culture by the
ton. I put through new regulations about maximum labor. I
insisted that my men respect their rights as the dominant indige-
nous culture. I—"
"You treated them like very intelligent animals. Not like intelli-
gent alien people. Maybe you didn't even realize it yourself,
Gundy, but I did, and God knows they did. You talked down to
them. You were kind to them in the wrong way. All your interest
in uplifting them, in improving them—crap, Gundy, they have their
own culture. They didn't want yours!"
"It was my duty to guide them," Gundersen said stiffly. "Futile
though it was to think that a bunch of animals who don't have a
written language, who don't-" He stopped, horrified.
"Animals," Van Beneker said.
"I'm tired. Maybe I've had too much to drink. It just slipped
out."
"Animals."
"Stop pushing me, Van. I did the best I could, and if what I
was doing was wrong, I'm sorry. I tried to do what was right."
Gundersen pushed his empty glass forward. "Get me another, will
you?"

Downward to the Earth 349
Van Beneker fetched the drink, and one more snout for himself.
Gundersen welcomed the break in the conversation, and ap-
parently Van Beneker did, too, for they both remained silent a
long moment, avoiding each other's eyes. A sulidor entered the
bar and began to gather the empties, crouching to keep from graz-
ing the Earthman-scaled ceiling. The chatter of the tourists died
away as the fierce-looking creature moved through the room.
Gundersen looked toward the beach. The nildoror were gone. One
of the moons was setting in the east, leaving a fiery track across
the surging water. He realized that he had forgotten the names of
the moons. No matter; the old Earthman-given names were dead
history now. He said finally to Van Beneker, "How come you de-
cided to stay here after relinquishment?"
"I felt at home here. I've been here twenty-five years. Why
should I go anywhere else?"
"No family ties elsewhere?"
"No. And it's comfortable here. I get a company pension. I get
tips from the tourists. There's a salary from the hotel. That's
enough to keep me supplied with what I need. What I need,
mostly, is snouts. Why should I leave?"
"Who owns the hotel?" Gundersen asked.
"The confederation of western-continent nildoror. The Com-
pany gave it to them."
"And the nildoror pay you a salary? I thought they were out-
side the galactic money economy."
"They are. They arranged something with the Company."
"What you're saying is the Company still runs this hotel."
"If anybody can be said to run it, the Company does, yes," Van
Beneker agreed. "But that isn't much of a violation of the relin-
quishment law. There's only one employee. Me. I pocket my sal-
ary from what the tourists pay for accommodations. The rest I
spend on imports from the money sphere. Don't you see, Gundy,
it's all just a big joke? It's a routine designed to allow me to bring
in liquor, that's all. This hotel isn't a commercial proposition. The
Company is really out of this planet. Completely."
"All right. All right. I believe you."
Van Beneker said, "What are you looking for up mist country?"
"You really want to know?"
"It passes the time to ask things."
"I want to watch the rebirth ceremony. I never saw it, all the
time I was here."

350 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
The bulging blue eyes seemed to bulge even more. "Why can't
you be serious, Gundy?"
"I am."
"It's dangerous to fool with the rebirth thing."
"I'm prepared for the risks."
"You ought to talk to some people here about it, first. It's not a
thing for us to meddle in."
Gundersen sighed. "Have you seen it?"
"No. Never. Never even been interested in seeing it. Whatever
the hell the sulidoror do in the mountains, let them do it without
me. I'll tell you who to talk to, though. Seena."
"She's watched the rebirth?"
"Her husband has."
Gundersen felt a spasm of dismay. "Who's her husband?"
"Jeff Kurtz. You didn't know?"
"I'll be damned," Gundersen murmured.
"You wonder what she saw in him, eh?"
"I wonder that she could bring herself to live with a man like
that. You talk about my attitude toward the natives! There's
someone who treated them like his own property, and—"
"Talk to Seena, up at Shangri-la Falls. About the rebirth."
Van Beneker laughed. "You're playing games with me, aren't
you? You know I'm drunk and you're having a little fun."
"No. Not at all." Gundersen rose uneasily. "I ought to get some
sleep now."
Van Beneker followed him to the door. Just as Gundersen went
out, the little man leaned close to him and said, "You know,
Gundy, what the nildoror were doing on the beach before—they
weren't doing that for the tourists. They were doing it for you. It's
the kind of sense of humor they have. Good night, Gundy."

THREE
Gundersen woke early. His head was surprisingly clear. It was
just a little after dawn, and the green-tinged sun was low in the
sky. The eastern sky, out over the ocean: a welcome touch of
Earthliness. He went down to the beach for a swim. A soft south
wind was blowing, pushing a few clouds into view. The hullygully
trees were heavy with fruit; the humidity was as high as ever;
thunder boomed back from the mountains that ran in an arc par-
alleling the coast a day's drive inland. Mounds of nildoror dung
were all over the beach. Gundersen stepped warily, zigzagging
over the crunching sand and hurling himself flat into the surf. He
went under the first curling row of breakers and with quick power-
ful strokes headed toward the shoals. The tide was low. He
crossed the exposed sandbar and swam beyond it until he felt him-
self tiring. When he returned to the shore area, he found two of
the tourist men had also come out for a swim, Christopher and
Miraflores. They smiled tentatively at him. "Bracing," he said.
"Nothing like salt water."
"Why can't they keep the beach clean, though?" Miraflores
asked.
A sullen sulidor served breakfast. Native fruits, native fish.
Gundersen's appetite was immense. He bolted down three golden-
green bitterfruits for a start, then expertly boned a whole
spiderfish and forked the sweet pink flesh into himself as though
engaged in a speed contest. The sulidor brought him another fish
and a bowl of phallic-looking forest candles. Gundersen still was
working on these when Van Beneker entered, wearing clean
though frayed clothes. He looked bloodshot and chastened. In-
stead of joining Gundersen at the table he merely smiled a per-
functory greeting and sailed past.
"Sit with me, Van," Gundersen said.
Uncomfortably, Van Beneker complied. "About last night—"
"Forget it."
"I was insufferable, Mr. Gundersen."
"You were in your cups. Forgiven. In vino Veritas. You were

352 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
calling me Gundy last night, too. You may as well do it this morn-
ing. Who catches the fish?"
"There's an automatic weir just north of the hotel. Catches
them and pipes them right into the kitchen. God knows who'd
prepare food here if we didn't have the machines."
"And who picks the fruit? Machines?"
"The sulidoror do that," Van Beneker said.
"When did sulidoror start working as menials on this planet?"
"About five years ago. Six, maybe. The nildoror got the idea
from us, I suppose. If we could turn them into bearers and living
bulldozers, they could turn the sulidoror into bellhops. After all,
the sulidoror are the inferior species."
"But always their own masters. Why did they agree to serve?
What's in it for them?"
"I don't know," Van Beneker said. "When did anybody ever
understand the sulidoror?"
True enough, Gundersen thought. No one yet had succeeded in
making sense out of the relationship between this planet's two in-
telligent species. The presence of two intelligent species, in the
first place, went against the general evolutionary logic of the uni-
verse. Both nildoror and sulidoror qualified for autonomous rank-
ing, with perception levels beyond those of the higher hominoid
primates; a sulidor was considerably smarter than a chimpanzee,
and a nildor was a good deal more clever than that. If there had
been no nildoror here at all, the presence of the sulidoror alone
would have been enough to force the Company to relinquish pos-
session of the planet when the decolonization movement reached
its peak. But why two species, and why the strange unspoken ac-
commodation between them, the bipedal carnivorous sulidoror
ruling over the mist country, the quadrupedal herbivorous nil-
doror dominating the tropics? How had they carved this world up
so neatly? And why was the division of authority breaking down,
if breaking down was really what was happening? Gundersen
knew that there were ancient treaties between these creatures, that
a system of claims and prerogatives existed, that every nildor went
back to the mist country when the time for its rebirth arrived. But
he did not know what role the sulidoror really played in the life
and the rebirth of the nildoror. No one did. The pull of that mys-
tery was, he admitted, one of the things that had brought him back
to Holman's World, to Belzagor, now that he had shed his admin-
istrative responsibilities and was free to risk his life indulging pri-

Downward to the Earth 353
vate curiosities. The shift in the nildoror-sulidoror relationship
that seemed to be taking place around this hotel troubled him,
though; it had been hard enough to comprehend that relationship
when it was static. Of course, the habits of alien beings were none
of his business, really. Nothing was his business, these days. When
a man had no business, he had to appoint himself to some. So he
was here to do research, ostensibly, which is to say to snoop and
spy. Putting it that way made his return to this planet seem more
like an act of will, and less like the yielding to irresistible compul-
sion that he feared it had been.
"—more complicated than anybody ever thought," Van Bene-
ker was saying.
"I'm sorfy. I must have missed most of what you said."
"It isn't important. We theorize a lot, here. The last hundred
of us. How soon do you start north?"
"In a hurry to be rid of me, Van?"
"Only trying to make plans, sir," the little man said, hurt. "If
you're staying, we need provisions for you, and—"
"I'm leaving after breakfast. If you'll tell me how to get to the
nearest nildoror encampment so I can apply for my travel permit."
"Twenty kilometers, southeast. I'd run you down there in the
beetle, but you understand—the tourists—"
"Can you get me a ride with a nildor?" Gundersen suggested.
"If it's too much bother, I suppose I can hike it, but—"
"I'll arrange things," Van Beneker said.
A young male nildor appeared an hour after breakfast to take
Gundersen down to the encampment. In the old days Gundersen
would simply have climbed on his back, but now he felt the neces-
sity of making introductions. One does not ask an autonomous in-
telligent being to carry you twenty kilometers through the jungle,
he thought, without attempting to enter into elementary courtesies.
"I am Edmund Gundersen of the first birth," he said, "and I wish
you joy of many rebirths, friend of my journey."
"I am Srin'gahar of the first birth," replied the nildor evenly,
"and I thank you for your wish, friend of my journey. I serve you
of free choice and await your commands."
"I must speak with a many-born one and gain permission to
travel north. The man here says you will take me to such a one."
"So it can be done. Now?"
"Now."
Gundersen had one suitcase. He rested it on the nildor's broad

354 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
rump and Srin'gahar instantly curved his tail up and back to
clamp the bag in place. Then the nildor knelt and Gundersen went
through the ritual of mounting. Tons of powerful flesh rose and
moved obediently toward the rim of the forest. It was almost as
though nothing had ever changed.
They traveled the first kilometer in silence, through an ever-
thickening series of bitterfruit glades. Gradually it occurred to
Gundersen that the nildor was not going to speak unless spoken
to, and he opened the conversation by remarking that he had lived
for ten years on Belzagor. Srin'gahar said that he knew that; he
remembered Gundersen from the era of Company rule. The na-
ture of the nildoror vocal system drained all overtones and impli-
cations from the statement. It came out flat, a mooing nasal grunt
that did not reveal whether the nildor remembered Gundersen
fondly, bitterly, or indifferently. Gundersen might have drawn a
hint from the movements of Srin'gahar's cranial crest, but it was
impossible for someone seated on a nildor's back to detect any
but the broadest such movements. The intricate nildoror system of
nonverbal supplementary communication had not evolved for the
convenience of passengers. In any event Gundersen had known
only a few of the almost infinite number of supplementary ges-
tures, and he had forgotten most of those. But the nildor seemed
courteous enough.
Gundersen took advantage of the ride to practice his nildororu.
So far he had done well, but in an interview with a many-born one
he would need all the verbal skill he could muster. Again and
again he said, "I spoke that the right way, didn't I? Correct me if I
didn't."
"You speak very well," Srin'gahar insisted.
Actually the language was not difficult. It was narrow in range,
simple in grammar. Nildororu words did not inflect; they agglu-
tinated, piling syllable atop syllable so that a complex concept like
"the former grazing-ground of my mate's clan" emerged as a long
grumbled growl of sound unbroken even by a brief pause. Nil-
doror speech was slow and stolid, requiring broad rolling tones
that an Earthman had to launch from the roots of his nostrils;
when Gundersen shifted from nildororu to any Earth language,
he felt sudden exhilaration, like a circus acrobat transported in-
stantaneously from Jupiter to Mercury.
Srin'gahar was taking a nildoror path, not one of the old Com-
pany roads. Gundersen had to duck low-hanging branches now

Downward to the Earth 355
and then, and once a quivering nicalanga vine descended to catch
him around the throat in a gentle, cool, quickly broken, and yet
frightening embrace. When he looked back, he saw the vine tumes-
cent with excitement, red and swollen from the thrill of caressing
an Earthman's skin. Shortly the jungle humidity reached the top of
the scale and the level of condensation became something close to
that of rain; the air was so wet that Gundersen had trouble breath-
ing, and streams of sweat poured down his body. The sticky mo-
ment passed. Minutes later they intersected a Company road. It
was a narrow fading track in the jungle, nearly overgrown. In an-
other year it would be gone.
The nildor's vast body demanded frequent feedings. Every half
hour they'halted and Gundersen dismounted while Srin'gahar
munched shrubbery. The sight fed Gundersen's latent prejudices,
troubling him so much that he tried not to look. In a wholly ele-
phantine way the nildor uncoiled his trunk and ripped leafy
branches from low trees; then the great mouth sagged open and in
the bundle went. With his triple tusks Srin'gahar shredded slabs of
bark for dessert. The big jaws moved back and forth tirelessly,
grinding, milling. We are no prettier when we eat, Gundersen told
himself, and the demon within him counterpointed his tolerance
with a shrill insistence that his companion was a beast.
Srin'gahar was not an outgoing type. When Gundersen said
nothing, the nildor said nothing; when Gundersen asked a ques-
tion, the nildor replied politely but minimally. The strain of sus-
taining such a broken-backed conversation drained Gundersen,
and he allowed long minutes to pass in silence. Caught up in the
rhythm of the big creature's steady stride, he was content to be
carried effortlessly along through the steamy jungle. He had no
idea where he was and could not even tell if they were going in the
right direction, for the trees far overhead met in a closed canopy,
screening the sun. After the nildor had stopped for his third meal
of the morning, though, he gave Gundersen an unexpected clue to
their location. Cutting away from the path in a sudden diagonal,
the nildor trotted a short distance into the most dense part of the
forest, battering down the vegetation, and came to a halt in front
of what once had been a Company building—a glassy dome now
dimmed by time and swathed in vines.
"Do you know this house, Edmund of the first birth?" Srin'ga-
har asked.
"What was it?"

356 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
"The serpent station. Where you gathered the juices."
The past abruptly loomed like a toppling cliff above Gundersen.
Jagged hallucinatory images plucked at his mind. Ancient scan-
dals, long forgotten or suppressed, sprang to new life. This the
serpent station, this ruin? This the place of private sins, the scene
of so many falls from grace? Gundersen felt his cheeks reddening.
He slipped from the nildor's back and walked haltingly toward the
building. He stood at the door a moment, looking in. Yes, there
were the hanging tubes and pipes, the runnels through which the
extracted venom had flowed, all the processing equipment still in
place, half devoured by warmth and moisture and neglect. There
was the entrance for the jungle serpents, drawn by alien music
they could not resist, and there they were milked of their venom,
and there—and there—
Gundersen glanced back at Srin'gahar. The spines of the nil-
dor's crest were distended: a mark of tension, a mark perhaps of
shared shame. The nildoror, too, had memories of this building.
Gundersen stepped into the station, pushing back the half-open
door. It split loose from its moorings as he did so, and a musi-
cal tremor ran whang whang whang through the whole of the
spherical building, dying away to a blurred feeble tinkle. Whang
and Gundersen heard Jeff Kurtz's guitar again, and the years fell
away and he was thirty-one years old once more, a newcomer on
Holman's World and about to begin his first stint at the serpent
station, finally assigned to that place that was the focus of so
much gossip. Yes. Out of the shroud of memory came the image
of Kurtz. There he was, standing just inside the station door,
impossibly tall, the tallest man Gundersen had ever seen, with a
great pale domed hairless head and enormous dark eyes socketed
in prehistoric-looking bony ridges, and a bright-toothed smile that
ran at least a kilometer's span from cheek to cheek. The guitar
went whang and Kurtz said, "You'll find it interesting here,
Gundy. This station is a unique experience. We buried your prede-
cessor last week." Whang. "Of course, you must learn to establish
a distance between yourself and what happens here. That's the se-
cret of maintaining your identity on an alien world, Gundy. Com-
prehend the esthetics of distance: draw a boundary line about your
self and say to the planet, thus far you can go in consuming me,
and no farther. Otherwise the planet will eventually absorb you
and make you part of it. Am I being clear?"
"Not at all," said Gundersen.

Downward to the Earth 357
"The meaning will manifest itself eventually." Whang. "Come
see our serpents."
Kurtz was five years older than Gundersen and had been on
Holman's World three years longer. Gundersen had known him by
reputation long before meeting him. Everyone seemed to feel awe
of Kurtz, and yet he was only an assistant station agent, who had
never been promoted beyond that lowly rank. After five minutes
of exposure to him, Gundersen thought he knew why. Kurtz gave
an impression of instability—not quite a fallen angel but certainly
a falling one, Lucifer on his way down, descending from morn to
noon, noon to dewy eve, but now only in the morning of his drop.
One could, not trust a man like that with serious responsibilities
until he had finished his transit and had settled into his ultimate
state.
They went into the serpent station together. Kurtz reached up
as he passed the distilling apparatus, lightly caressing tubing and
petcocks. His fingers were like a spider's legs, and the caress was
astonishingly obscene. At the far end of the room stood a short,
stocky man, dark-haired, black-browed, the station supervisor,
Gio' Salamone. Kurtz made the introductions. Salamone grinned.
"Lucky you," he said. "How did you manage to get assigned
here?"
"They just sent me," Gundersen said.
"As somebody's practical joke," Kurtz suggested.
"I believe it," said Gundersen. "Everyone thought I was fibbing
when I said I was sent here without applying."
"A test of innocence," Kurtz murmured.
Salamone said, "Well, now that you're here, you'd better learn
our basic rule. The basic rule is that when you leave this station,
you never discuss what happens here with anybody else. Capisce?
Now say to me, T swear by the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
and also by Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses—'"
Kurtz choked with laughter.
Bewildered, Gundersen said, "That's an oath I've never heard
before."
"Salamone's an Italian Jew," said Kurtz. "He's trying to cover
all possibilities. Don't bother swearing, but he's right: what hap-
pens here isn't anybody else's business. Whatever you may have
heard about the serpent station is probably true, but nevertheless
tell no tales when you leave here." Whang. Whang. "Watch us

358 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
carefully, now. We're going to call up our demons. Loose the
amplifiers, Gio'."
Salamone seized a plastic sack of what looked like golden flour
and hauled it toward the station's rear door. He scooped out a
handful. With a quick upward heave he sent it into the air; the
breeze instantly caught the tiny glittering grains and carried them
aloft. Kurtz said, "He's just scattered a thousand microamplifiers
into the jungle. In ten minutes they'll cover a radius of ten kilome-
ters. They're tuned to pick up the frequencies of my guitar and
Gio's flute, and the resonances go bouncing back and forth all
over the place." Kurtz began to play, picking up a melody in mid-
course. Salamone produced a short transverse flute and wove a
melody of his own through the spaces in Kurtz's tune. Their play-
ing became a stately sarabande, delicate, hypnotic, two or three
figures repeated endlessly without variations in volume or pitch.
For ten minutes nothing unusual occurred. Then Kurtz nodded to-
ward the edge of the jungle. "They're coming," he whispered.
"We're the original and authentic snake charmers."
Gundersen watched the serpents emerging from the forest. They
were four times as long as a man, and as thick as a big man's arm.
Undulating fins ran down their backs from end to end. Their skins
were glossy, pale green, and evidently sticky, for the detritus of the
forest floor stuck to them in places, bits of leaves and soil and
crumpled petals. Instead of eyes, they had rows of platter-sized
sensor spots flanking their rippling dorsal fins. Their heads were
blunt; their mouths only slits, suitable merely for nibbling on gob-
bets of soil. Where nostrils might be, there protruded two slender
quills as long as a man's thumb; these extended to five times that
length in moments of stress or when the serpent was under attack,
and yielded a blue fluid, a venom. Despite the size of the crea-
tures, despite the arrival of perhaps thirty of them at once, Gun-
dersen did not find them frightening, although he would certainly
have been uneasy at the arrival of a platoon of pythons. These
were not pythons. They were not even reptiles at all, but low-
phylum creatures, actually giant worms. They were sluggish and of
no apparent intelligence. But clearly they responded powerfully
to the music. It had drawn them to the station, and now they
writhed in a ghastly ballet, seeking the source of the sound. The
first few were already entering the building.
"Do you play the guitar?" Kurtz asked. "Here—just keep the
sound going. The tune's not important now." He thrust the instru-

Downward to the Earth 359
ment at Gundersen, who struggled with the fingerings a moment,
then brought forth a lame, stumbling imitation of Kurtz's melody.
Kurtz, meanwhile, was slipping a tubular pink cap over the head
of the nearest serpent. When it was in place, the cap began rhyth-
mic contractions; the serpent's writhings became momentarily
more intense, its fin moved convulsively, its tail lashed the
ground. Then it grew calm. Kurtz removed the cap and slid it over
the head of another serpent, and another, and another.
He was milking them of venom. These creatures were deadly to
native metabolic systems, so it was said; they never attacked, but
when provoked they struck, and their poison was universally effec-
tive. But what was poison on Holman's World was a blessing on
Earth. The venom of the jungle serpents was one of the Com-
pany's most profitable exports. Properly distilled, diluted, crys-
tallized, purified, the juice served as a catalyst in limb-regenera-
tion work. A dose of it softened the resistance of the human cell
to change, insidiously corrupting the cytoplasm, leading it to in-
duce the nucleus to switch on its genetic material. And so it
greatly encouraged the reawakening of cell division, the replica-
tion of bodily parts, when a new arm or leg or face had to be
grown. How or why it worked, Gundersen knew not, but he had
seen the stuff in action during his training period, when a fellow
trainee had lost both legs below the knee in a soarer accident.
The drug made the flesh flow. It liberated the guardians of the
body's coded pattern, easing the task of the genetic surgeons ten-
fold by sensitizing and stimulating the zone of regeneration. Those
legs had grown back in six months.
Gundersen continued to strum the guitar, Salamone to play his
flute, Kurtz to collect the venom. Mooing sounds came suddenly
from the bush: a herd of nildoror evidently had been drawn by the
music as well. Gundersen saw them lumber out of the un-
derbrush and stand almost shyly by the border of the clearing,
nine of them. After a moment they entered into a clumsy, lurch-
ing, ponderous dance. Their trunks waved in time to the music;
their tails swung, their spiny crests revolved. "All done," Kurtz
announced. "Five liters—a good haul." The serpents, milked,
drifted off into the forest as soon as the music ceased. The nil-
doror stayed a while longer, peering intently at the men inside the
station, but finally they left also. Kurtz and Salamone instructed
Gundersen in the techniques of distilling the precious fluid, mak-
ing it ready for shipment to Earth.

360 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
And that was all. He could see nothing scandalous in what had
happened, and did not understand why there had been so much
sly talk at headquarters about this place, nor why Salamone had
tried to wring an oath of silence from him. He dared not ask.
Three days later they again summoned the serpents, again col-
lected their venom, and again the whole process seemed unexcep-
tionable to Gundersen. But soon he came to realize that Kurtz and
Salamone were testing his reliability before initiating him into
their mysteries.
In the third week of his stint at the serpent station they finally
admitted him to the inner knowledge. The collection was done;
the serpents had gone; a few nildoror, out of more than a dozen
that had been attracted by that day's concert, still lingered outside
the building. Gundersen realized that something unusual was
about to happen when he saw Kurtz, after darting a sharp glance
at Salamone, unhook a container of venom before it started on its
route through the distilling apparatus. He poured it into a broad
bowl that held at least a liter of fluid. On Earth, that much of the
drug would be worth a year of Gundersen's salary as an assistant
station agent.
"Come with us," Kurtz said.
The three men stepped outside. At once three nildoror ap-
proached, behaving oddly, their spines upraised, their ears trem-
bling. They seemed skittish and eager. Kurtz handed the bowl of
raw venom to Salamone, who sipped from it and handed it back.
Kurtz also drank. He gave the bowl to Gundersen, saying, "Take
communion with us?"
Gundersen hesitated. Salamone said, "It's safe. It can't work on
your nuclei when you take it internally."
Putting the bowl to his hps, Gundersen took a cautious swig.
The venom was sweet but watery.
"—only on your brain," Salamone added.
Kurtz gently took the bowl from him and set it down on the
ground. Now the largest nildor advanced and delicately dipped his
trunk into it. Then the second nildor drank, and the third. The
bowl now was empty.
Gundersen said, "If it's poisonous to native life—"
"Not when they drink it. Just when it's shot directly into the
bloodstream," Salamone said.
"What happens now?"

Downward to the Earth 361
"Wait," Kurtz said, "and make your soul receptive to any sug-
gestions that arise."
Gundersen did not have to wait long. He felt a thickening at the
base of his neck and a roughness about his face, and his arms
seemed impossibly heavy. It seemed best to drop to his knees as
the effect intensified. He turned toward Kurtz, seeking reassurance
from those dark shining eyes, but Kurtz's eyes had already begun
to flatten and expand, and his green and prehensile trunk nearly
reached the ground. Salamone, too, had entered the metamor-
phosis, capering comically, jabbing the soil with his tusks. The
thickening continued. Now Gundersen knew that he weighed sev-
eral tons, and he tested his body's coordination, striding back and
forth, learning how to move on four limbs. He went to the spring
and sucked up water in his trunk. He rubbed his leathery hide
against trees. He trumpeted bellowing sounds of joy in his huge-
ness. He joined with Kurtz and Salamone in a wild dance, mak-
ing the ground quiver. The nildoror too were transformed; one
had become Kurtz, one had become Salamone, one had become
Gundersen, and the three former beasts moved in wild pirouettes,
tumbling and toppling in their unfamiliarity with human ways. But
Gundersen lost interest in what the nildoror were doing. He con-
centrated solely on his own experience. Somewhere at the core of
his soul it terrified him to know that this change had come over
him and he was doomed forever to live as a massive animal of the
jungle, shredding bark and ripping branches; yet it was rewarding
to have shifted bodies this way and to have access to an entirely
new range of sensory data. His eyesight now was dimmed, and ev-
erything that he saw was engulfed in a furry halo, but there were
compensations: he was able to sort odors by their directions and
by their textures, and his hearing was immensely more sensitive. It
was the equivalent of being able to see into the ultraviolet and the
infrared. A dingy forest flower sent dizzying waves of sleek moist
sweetness at him; the click of insect-claws in underground tunnels
was like a symphony for percussion. And the bigness of him! The
ecstasy of carrying such a body! His transformed consciousness
soared, swooped, rose high again. He trampled trees and praised
himself for it in booming tones. He grazed and gorged. Then he
sat for a while, perfectly still, and meditated on the existence of
evil in the universe, asking himself why there should be such a
thing, and indeed whether evil in fact existed as an objective phe-
nomenon. His answers surprised and delighted him, and he turned

362 A Robert Silverberfi Omnibus
to Kurtz to communicate his insights, but just then the effect of
the venom began to fade with quite startling suddenness, and in a
short while Gundersen felt altogether normal again. He was weep-
ing, though, and he felt an anguish of shame, as though he had
been flagrantly detected molesting a child. The three nildoror were
nowhere in sight. Salamone picked up the bowl and went into
the station. "Come," Kurtz said. "Let's go in too."
They would not discuss any of it with him. They had let him
share in it, but they would not explain a thing, cutting him off
sternly when he asked. The rite was hermetically private. Gunder-
sen was wholly unable to evaluate the experience. Had his body
actually turned into that of a nildor for an hour? Hardly. Well,
then, had his mind, his soul, somehow migrated into the nildor's
body? And had the nildor's soul, if nildoror had souls, gone
into his? What kind of sharing, what sort of union of innernesses,
had occurred in that clearing?
Three days afterward, Gundersen applied for a transfer out of
the serpent station. In those days he was easily upset by the un-
known. Kurtz's only reaction, when Gundersen announced he was
leaving, was a short brutal chuckle. The normal tour of duty at the
station was eight weeks, of which Gundersen had done less than
half. He never again served a stint there.
Later, he gathered what gossip he could about the doings at the
serpent station. He was told vague tales of sexual abominations in
the grove, of couplings between Earthman and nildor, between
Earthman and Earthman; he heard murmurs that those who habit-
ually drank the venom underwent strange and terrible and perma-
nent changes of the body; he heard stories of how the nildoror
elders in their private councils bitterly condemned the morbid
practice of going to the serpent station to drink the stuff the Earth-
men offered. But Gundersen did not know if any of these whispers
were true. He found it difficult, in later years, to look Kurtz in the
eye on the rare occasions when they met. Sometimes he found it
difficult even to live with himself. In some peripheral way he had
been tainted by his single hour of metamorphosis. He felt like a
virgin who had stumbled into an orgy, and who had come away
deflowered but yet ignorant of what had befallen her.
The phantoms faded. The sound of Kurtz's guitar diminished
and was gone.
Srin'gahar said, "Shall we leave now?"

Downward to the Earth 363
Gundersen slowly emerged from the ruined station. "Does any-
one gather the juices of the serpents today?"
"Not here," said the nildor. He knelt. The Earthman mounted
him, and in silence Srin'gahar carried him away, back to the path
they had followed earlier.

FOUR
In early afternoon they neared the nildoror encampment that
was Gundersen's immediate goal. For most of the day they had
been traveling across the broad coastal plain, but now the back of
the land dipped sharply, for this far inland there was a long, nar-
row depression running from north to south, a deep rift between
the central plateau and the coast. At the approach to this rift Gun-
dersen saw the immense devastation of foliage that signaled the
presence of a large nildoror herd within a few kilometers. A jag-
ged scar ran through the forest from ground level to a point about
twice a man's height.
Even the lunatic tropical fertility of this region could not keep
up with the nildoror appetite; it took a year or more for such
zones of defoliation to restore themselves after the herd had
moved on. Yet despite the impact of the herd, the forest on all
sides of the scar was even more close-knit here than on the coastal
plain to the east. This was a jungle raised to the next higher
power, damp, steamy, dark. The temperature was considerably
higher in the valley than at the coast, and though the atmosphere
could not possibly have been any more humid here, there was an
almost tangible wetness about the air. The vegetation was
different, too. On the plain the trees tended to have sharp, some-
times dangerously sharp, leaves. Here the foliage was rounded and
fleshy, heavy sagging disks of dark blue that glistened voluptu-
ously whenever stray shafts of sunlight pierced the forest canopy
overhead.
Gundersen and his mount continued to descend, following the
line of the grazing scar. Now they made their way along the route
of a stream that flowed perversely inland; the soil was spongy and
soft, and more often than not Srin'gahar walked knee-deep in
mud. They were entering a wide circular basin at what seemed to
be the lowest point in the entire region. Streams flowed into it on
three or four sides, feeding a dark weed-covered lake at the cen-
ter; and around the margin of the lake was Srin'gahar's herd. Gun-

Downward to the Earth 365
dersen saw several hundred nildoror grazing, sleeping, coupling,
strolling.
"Put me down," he said, taking himself by surprise. "I'll walk
beside you."
Wordlessly Srin'gahar allowed him to dismount.
Gundersen regretted his egalitarian impulse the moment he
stepped down. The nildor's broad-padded feet were able to cope
with the muddy floor; but Gundersen discovered that he had a
tendency to begin to sink in if he remained in one place more than
a moment. But he would not remount now. Every step was a
struggle, but he struggled. He was tense and uncertain, too, of the
reception he would get here, and he was hungry as well, having
eaten nothing on the long journey but a few bitterfruits plucked
from passing trees. The closeness of the climate made each breath
a battle for him. He was greatly relieved when the footing became
easier a short distance down the slope. Here, a webwork of spongy
plants spreading out from the lake underwove the mud to form a
firm, if not altogether reassuring, platform a few centimeters
down.
Srin'gahar raised his trunk and sounded a trumpetblast of greet-
ing to the encampment. A few of the nildoror replied in kind. To
Gundersen, Srin'gahar said, "The many-born one stands at the
edge of the lake, friend of my journey. You see him, yes, in that
group? Shall I lead you now to him?"
"Please," said Gundersen.
The lake was congested with drifting vegetation. Humped
masses of it broke the surface everywhere: leaves like horns of
plenty, cup-shaped spore-bodies, ropy tangled stems, everything
dark blue against the lighter blue-green of the water. Through this
maze of tight-packed flora there slowly moved huge semiaquatic
mammals, half a dozen malidaror, whose tubular yellowish bodies
were almost totally submerged. Only the rounded bulges of their
backs and the jutting periscopes of their stalked eyes were in
view, and now and then a pair of cavernous snorting nostrils.
Gundersen could see the immense swaths that the malidaror had
cut through the vegetation in this day's feeding, but at the far side
of the lake the wounds were beginning to close as new growth has-
tened to fill the fresh gaps.
Gundersen and Srin'gahar went down toward the water. Sud-
denly the wind shifted, and Gundersen had a whiff of the lake's
fragrance. He coughed; it was like breathing the fumes of a distill-

366 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
ery vat. The lake was in ferment. Alcohol was a by-product of the
respiration of these water-plants, and, having no outlet, the lake
became one large tub of brandy. Both water and alcohol evapo-
rated from it at a rapid pace, making the surrounding air not only
steamy but potent; and during centuries when evaporation of
water had exceeded the inflow from the streams, the proof of the
residue had steadily risen. When the Company ruled this planet,
such lakes had been the undoing of more than one agent, Gunder-
sen knew.
The nildoror appeared to pay little heed to him as he came near
them. Gundersen was aware that every member of the encamp-
ment was actually watching him closely, but they pretended to
casualness and went about their business. He was puzzled to see a
dozen brush shelters flanking one of the streams. Nildoror did not
live in dwellings of any sort; the climate made it unnecessary, and
besides they were incapable of constructing anything, having no
organs of manipulation other than the three "fingers" at the tips of
their trunks. He studied the crude lean-tos in bewilderment, and
after a moment it dawned on him that he had seen structures of
this sort before: they were the huts of sulidoror. The puzzle deep-
ened. Such close association between the nildoror and the carniv-
orous bipeds of the mist country was unknown to him. Now he
saw the sulidoror themselves, perhaps twenty of them, sitting
crosslegged inside their huts. Slaves? Captives? Friends of the
tribe? None of those ideas made sense.
"That is our many-born," Srin'gahar said, indicating with a
wave of his trunk a seamed and venerable nildor in the midst of a
group by the lakeshore.
Gundersen felt a surge of awe, inspired not only by the great
age of the creature, but by the knowledge that this ancient beast,
blue-gray with years, must have taken part several times in the
unimaginable rites of the rebirth ceremony. The many-born one
had journeyed beyond the barrier of spirit that held Earthmen
back. Whatever nirvana the rebirth ceremony offered, this being
had tasted it, and Gundersen had not, and that crucial distinction
of experience made Gundersen's courage shrivel as he approached
the leader of the herd.
A ring of courtiers surrounded the old one. They were gray-
skinned and wrinkled, too: a congregation of seniors. Younger
nildoror, of the generation of Srin'gahar, kept a respectful dis-
tance. There were no immature nildoror in the encampment at all.

Downward to the Earth 367
No Earthman had ever seen a young nildor. Gundersen had been
told that the nildoror were always bora in the mist country, in the
home country of the sulidoror, and apparently they remained in
close seclusion there until they had reached the nildoror equiva-
lent of adolescence, when they migrated to the jungles of the
tropics. He also had heard that every nildor hoped to go back to
the mist country when its time had come to die. But he did not
know if such things were true. No one did.
The ring opened, and Gundersen found himself facing the
many-born one. Protocol demanded that Gundersen speak first;
but he faltered, dizzied by tension perhaps, or perhaps by the
fumes of the lake, and it was an endless moment before he pulled
himself together.
He said at last, "I am Edmund Gundersen of the first birth, and
I wish you joy of many rebirths, O wisest one."
Unhurriedly the nildor swung his vast head to one side, sucked
up a snort of water from the lake, and squirted it into his mouth.
Then he rumbled, "You are known to us, Edmundgundersen,
from days past. You kept the big house of the Company at Fire
Point in the Sea of Dust."
The nildor's sharpness of memory astonished and distressed
him. If they remembered him so well, what chance did he have to
win favors from these people? They owed him no kindnesses.
"I was there, yes, a long time ago," he said tightly.
"Not so long ago. Ten turnings is not a long time." The nildor's
heavy-lidded eyes closed, and it appeared for some moments as
though the many-born one had fallen asleep. Then the nildor said,
eyes still closed, "I am Vol'himyor of the seventh birth. Will you
come into the water with me? I grow tired easily on the land in
this present birth of mine."
Without waiting, Vol'himyor strode into the lake, swimming
slowly to a point some forty meters from shore and floating there,
submerged up to the shoulders. A malidar that had been browsing
on the weeds in that part of the lake went under with a bubbling
murmur of discontent and reappeared far away. Gundersen knew
that he had no choice but to follow the many-bora one. He
stripped off his clothing and walked forward.
The tepid water rose about him. Not far out, the spongy mat-
ting of fibrous stems below ground level gave way to soft warm
mud beneath Gundersen's bare feet. He felt the occasional move-
ment of small many-legged things under his soles. The roots of the

368 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
water-plants swirled whiplike about his legs, and the black bub-
bles of alcohol that came up from the depths and burst on the sur-
face almost stifled him with their release of vapor. He pushed
plants aside, forcing his way through them with the greatest
difficulty, and feeling a great relief when his feet lost contact with
the mud. Quickly he paddled himself out to Vol'himyor. The sur-
face of the water was clear there, thanks to the malidar. In the
dark depths of the lake, though, unknown creatures moved to and
fro, and every few moments something slippery and quick slith-
ered along Gundersen's body. He forced himself to ignore such
things.
Vol'himyor, still seemingly asleep, murmured, "You have been
gone from this world for many turnings, have you not?"
"After the Company relinquished its rights here, I returned to
my own world," said Gundersen.
Even before the nildor's eyelids parted, even before the round
yellow eyes fixed coldly on him, Gundersen was aware that he had
blundered.
"Your Company never had rights here to relinquish," said the
nildor in the customary flat, neutral way. "Is this not so?"
"It is so," Gundersen conceded. He searched for a graceful cor-
rection and finally said, "After the Company relinquished posses-
sion of this planet, I returned to my own world."
"Those words are more nearly true. Why, then, have you come
back here?"
"Because I love this place and wish to see it again."
"Is it possible for an Earthman to feel love for Belzagor?"
"An Earthman can, yes."
"An Earthman can become captured by Belzagor," Vol'himyor
said with more than usual slowness. "An Earthman may find that
his soul has been seized by the forces of this planet and is held in
thrall. But I doubt that an Earthman can feel love for this planet,
as I understand your understanding of love."
"I yield the point, many-born one. My soul has become cap-
tured by Belzagor. I could not help but return."
"You are quick to yield such points."
"I have no wish to give offense."
"Commendable tact. And what will you do here on this world
that has seized your soul?"
"Travel to many parts of your world," said Gundersen. "I wish
particularly to go to the mist country."

Downward to the Earth 369
"Why there?"
"It is the place that captures me most deeply."
"That is not an informative answer," the nildor said.
"I can give no other."
"What thing has captured you there?"
"The beauty of the mountains rising out of the mist. The spar-
kle of sunlight on a clear, cold, bright day. The splendor of the
moons against a field of glittering snow."
"You are quite poetic," said VoPhimyor.
Gundersen could not tell if he were being praised or mocked.
He said, "Under the present law, I must have the permission of
a many-born trne to enter the mist country. So I come to make ap-
plication to you for such permission."
"You are fastidious in your respect for our law, my once-born
friend. Once it was different with you."
Gundersen bit his lip. He felt something crawling up his calf,
down in the depths of the lake, but he compelled himself to stare
serenely at the many-born one. Choosing his words with care, he
said, "Sometimes we are slow to understand the nature of others,
and we give offense without knowing that we do so."
"It is so."
"But then understanding comes," Gundersen said, "and one
feels remorse for the deeds of the past, and one hopes that one
may be forgiven for his sins."
"Forgiveness depends on the quality of the remorse," said
Vol'himyor, "and also on the quality of the sins."
"I believe my failings are known to you."
"They are not forgotten," said the nildor.
"I believe also that in your creed the possibility of personal re-
demption is not unknown."
"True. True."
"Will you allow me to make amends for my sins of the past
against your people, both known and unknown?"
"Making amends for unknown sins is meaningless," said the
nildor. "But in any case we seek no apologies. Your redemption
from sin is your own concern, not ours. Perhaps you will find that
redemption here, as you hope. I sense already a welcome change
in your soul, and it will count heavily in your favor."
"I have your permission to go north, then?" Gundersen asked.
"Not so fast. Stay with us a while as our guest. We must think
about this. You may go to shore, now."

370 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
The dismissal was clear. Gundersen thanked the many-born one
for his patience, not without some self-satisfaction at the way he
had handled the interview. He had always displayed proper def-
erence toward many-born ones—even a really Kiplingesque impe-
rialist knew enough to show respect for venerable tribal leaders—
but in Company days it had never been more than a charade for
him, a put-on show of humility, since ultimate power resided with
the Company's sector agent, not with any nildor no matter how
holy. Now, of course, the old nildor really did have the power to
keep him out of the mist country, and might even see some poetic
justice in banning him from it. But Gundersen felt that his def-
erential and apologetic attitude had been reasonably sincere just
now, and that some of that sincerity had been communicated to
VoPhimyor. He knew that he could not deceive the many-born
one into thinking that an old Company hand like himself was sud-
denly eager to grovel before the former victims of Earth's expan-
sionism; but unless some show of earnestness did come through,
he stood no chance at all of gaining the permission he needed.
Abruptly, when Gundersen was still a good distance from
shore, something hit him a tremendous blow between the shoul-
ders and flung him, stunned and gasping, face forward into the
water.
As he went under, the thought crossed his mind that Vol'hi-
myor had treacherously come up behind him and lashed him with
his trunk. Such a blow could easily be fatal if aimed with real mal-
ice. Spluttering, his mouth full of the lake's liquor, his arms half
numbed by the impact of the blow, Gundersen warily surfaced,
expecting to find the old nildor looming above him ready to
deliver the coup de grace.
He opened his eyes, with some momentary trouble focusing
them. No, there was the many-born one far away across the water,
looking in another direction. And then Gundersen felt a curious
prickly premonition and got his head down just in time to avoid
being decapitated by whatever it was that had hit him before.
Huddling nose-deep in the water, he saw it swing by overhead, a
thick yellowish rod like a boom out of control. Now he heard
thunderous shrieks of pain and felt widening ripples sweeping
across the lake. He glanced around.
A dozen sulidoror had entered the water and were killing a
malidar. They had harpooned the colossal beast with sharpened
sticks; now the malidar thrashed and coiled in its final agonies,

Downward to the Earth 371
and it was the mighty tail of the animal that had knocked Gunder-
sen over. The hunters had fanned out in the shallows, waist-deep,
their thick fur bedraggled and matted. Each group grasped the line
of one harpoon, and they were gradually drawing the malidar to-
ward shore. Gundersen was no longer in danger, but he continued
to stay low in the water, catching his breath, rotating his shoulders
to assure himself that no bones were broken. The malidar's tail
must have given him the merest tip-flick the first time; he would
surely have been destroyed the second time that tail came by, if he
had not ducked. He was beginning to ache, and he felt half
drowned by the water he had gulped. He wondered when he
would start tp get drunk.
Now the sulidoror had beached their prey. Only the malidar's
tail and thick web-footed hind legs lay in the water, moving
fitfully. The rest of the animal, tons of it, stretching five times the
length of a man, was up on shore, and the sulidoror were methodi-
cally driving long stakes into it, one through each of the forelimbs
and several into the broad wedge-shaped head. A few nildoror
were watching the operation in mild curiosity. Most ignored it.
The remaining malidaror continued to browse in the woods as
though nothing had happened.
A final thrust of a stake severed the malidar's spinal column.
The beast quivered and lay still.
Gundersen hurried from the water, swimming quickly, then
wading through the unpleasantly voluptuous mud, at last stum-
bling out onto the beach. His knees suddenly failed him and he
toppled forward, trembling, choking, puking. A thin stream of fluid
burst from his hps. Afterward he rolled to one side and watched
the sulidoror cutting gigantic blocks of pale pink meat from the
malidar's sides and passing them around. Other sulidoror were
coming from the huts to share the feast. Gundersen shivered. He
was in a kind of shock, and a few minutes passed before he real-
ized that the cause of his shock was not only the blow he had re-
ceived and the water he had swallowed, but also the knowledge
that an act of violence had been committed in front of a herd of
nildoror, and the nildoror did not seem at all disturbed. He had
imagined that these peaceful, nonbelligerent creatures would react
in horror to the slaughter of a malidar. But they simply did not
care. The shock Gundersen felt was the shock of disillusionment.
A sulidor approached him and stood over him. Gundersen
stared up uneasily at the towering shaggy figure. The sulidor held

372 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
in its forepaws a gobbet of malidar meat the size of Gundersen's
head.
"For you," said the sulidor in the nildoror language. "You eat
with us?"
It did not wait for a reply. It tossed the slab of flesh to the
ground next to Gundersen and rejoined its fellows. Gundersen's
stomach writhed. He had no lust for raw meat just now.
The beach was suddenly very silent.
They were all watching him, sulidoror and nildoror both.

FIVE
Shakily Gundersen got to his feet. He sucked warm air into his
lungs and bought a little time by crouching at the lake's edge to
wash his face. He found his discarded clothing and consumed a
few minutes by getting it on. Now he felt a little better; but the
problem of the raw meat remained. The sulidoror, enjoying their
feast, rending and tearing flesh and gnawing on bones, never-
theless frequently looked his way to see whether he would accept
their hospitality. The nildoror, who of course had not touched the
meat themselves, also seemed curious about his decision. If he re-
fused the meat, would he offend the sulidoror? If he ate it, would
he stamp himself as bestial in the eyes of the nildoror? He con-
cluded that it was best to force some of the meat into him, as a
gesture of good will toward the menacing-looking bipeds. The nil-
doror, after all, did not seem troubled that the sulidoror were eat-
ing meat; why should it bother them if an Earthman, a known car-
nivore, did the same?
He would eat the meat. But he would eat it as an Earthman
would.
He ripped some leaves from the water-plant and spread them
out to form a mat; he placed the meat on this. From his tunic he
took his fusion torch, which he adjusted for wide aperture, low in-
tensity, and played on the meat until its outer surface was charred
and bubbling. With a narrower beam he cut the cooked meat into
chunks he could manage. Then, squatting cross-legged, he picked
up a chunk and bit into it.
The meat was soft and cheesy, interlaced by tough string-like
masses forming an intricate grid. By will alone Gundersen suc-
ceeded in getting three pieces down. When he decided he had had
enough, he rose, called out his thanks to the sulidoror, and knelt
by the side of the lake to scoop up some of the water. He needed a
chaser.
During all this time no one spoke to him or approached him.
The nildoror had all left the water, for night was approaching.
They had settled down in several groups well back from the shore.

374 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
The feast of the sulidoror continued noisily, but was nearing its
end; already several small scavenger-beasts had joined the party,
and were at work at the lower half of the malidar's body while the
sulidoror finished the other part.
Gundersen looked about for Srin'gahar. There were things he
wished to ask.
It still troubled him that the nildoror had accepted the killing in
the lake so coolly. He realized that he had somehow always re-
garded the nildoror as more noble than the other big beasts of this
planet because they did not take life except under supreme provo-
cation, and sometimes not even then. Here was an intelligent race
exempt from the sin of Cain. And Gundersen saw in that a corol-
lary: that the nildoror, because they did not kill, would look upon
killing as a detestable act. Now he knew that his reasoning was
faulty and even naive. The nildoror did not kill simply because
they were not eaters of meat; but the moral superiority that he had
attributed to them on that score must in fact be a product of his
own guilty imagination.
The night came on with tropic swiftness. A single moon glim-
mered. Gundersen saw a nildor he took to be Srin'gahar, and went
to him.
"I have a question, Srin'gahar, friend of my journey," Gunder-
sen began. "When the sulidoror entered the water—"
The nildor said gravely, "You make a mistake. I am Thali'van-
oom of the third birth."
Gundersen mumbled an apology and turned away, aghast. What
a typically Earthman blunder, he thought. He remembered his old
sector chief making the same blunder a dozen dozen times, hope-
lessly confusing one nildor with another and muttering angrily,
"Can't tell one of these big bastards from the next! Why don't
they wear badges?" The ultimate insult, the failure to recognize
the natives as individuals. Gundersen had always made it a point
of honor to avoid such gratuitous insults. And so, here, at this del-
icate time when he depended wholly on winning the favor of the
nildoror—
He approached a second nildor, and saw just at the last mo-
ment that this one too was not Srin'gahar. He backed off as grace-
fully as he could. On the third attempt he finally found his travel-
ing companion. Srin'gahar sat placidly against a narrow tree, his
thick legs folded beneath his body. Gundersen put his question to
him and Srin'gahar said, "Why should the sight of violent death

Downward to the Earth 375
shock us? Malidaror have no g'rakh, after all. And it is obvious
that sulidoror must eat."
"No g'rakh?" Gundersen said. "This is a word I do not know."
"The quality that separates the souled from the unsouled,"
Srin'gahar explained. "Without g'rakh a creature is but a beast."
"Do sulidoror have g'rakh?"
"Of course."
"And nildoror also, naturally. But malidaror don't. What about
Earthmen?"
"It is amply clear that Earthmen have g'rakh "
"And one may freely kill a creature which lacks that quality?"
"If one has the need to do so, yes," said Srin'gahar. "These are
elementary matters. Have you no such concepts on your own
world?"
"On my world," said Gundersen, "there is only one species that
has been granted g'rakh, and so perhaps we give such matters too
little thought. We know that whatever is not of our own kind must
be lacking in g'rakh."
"And so, when you come to another world, you have difficulty
in accepting the presence of g'rakh in other beings?" Srin'gahar
asked. "You need not answer, I understand."
"May I ask another question?" said Gundersen. "Why are there
sulidoror here?"
"We allow them to be here."
"In the past, in the days when the Company ruled Belzagor, the
sulidoror never went outside the mist country."
"We did not allow them to come here then."
"But now you do. Why?"
"Because now it is easier for us to do so. Difficulties stood in the
way at earlier times."
"What kind of difficulties?" Gundersen persisted.
Softly Srin'gahar said, "You will have to ask that of someone
who has been born more often than 1.1 am once-born, and many
things are as strange to me as they are to you. Look, another
moon is in the sky! At the third moon we shall dance."
Gundersen looked up and saw the tiny white disk moving rap-
idly, low in the sky, seemingly skimming the fringe of the treetops.
Belzagor's five moons were a random assortment, the closest one
just outside Roche's Limit, the farthest so distant it was visible
only to sharp eyes on a clear night. At any given time two or three
moons were in the night sky, but the fourth and fifth moons had

376 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
such eccentric orbits that they could never be seen at all from vast
regions of the planet, and passed over most other zones no more
than three or four times a year. One night each year all five moons
could be seen at once, just along a band ten kilometers wide run-
ning at an angle of about forty degrees to the equator from north-
east to southwest. Gundersen had experienced the Night of Five
Moons only a single time.
The nildoror were starting to move toward the lakeshore now.
The third moon appeared, spinning retrograde into view from
the south.
So he was going to see them dance again. He had witnessed
their ceremonies once before, early in his career, when he was sta-
tioned at Shangri-la Falls in the northern tropics. That night the
nildoror had massed just upstream of the falls, on both banks of
Madden's River, and for hours after dark their blurred cries could
be heard even above the roar of the water. And finally Kurtz, who
was also stationed at Shangri-la then, said, "Come, let's watch the
show!" and led Gundersen out into the night. This was six months
before the episode at the serpent station, and Gundersen did not
then realize how strange Kurtz was. But he realized it quickly
enough after Kurtz joined the nildoror in their dance. The huge
beasts were clustered in loose semicircles, stamping back and
forth, trumpeting piercingly, shaking the ground, and suddenly
there was Kurtz out there among them, arms upflung, bare chest
beaded with sweat and shining in the moonslight, dancing as in-
tensely as any of them, crying out in great booming roars, stamp-
ing his feet, tossing his head. And the nildoror were forming a
group around him, giving him plenty of space, letting him enter
fully into the frenzy, now running toward him, now backing away,
a systole and diastole of ferocious power. Gundersen stood awed,
and did not move when Kurtz called to him to join the dance. He
watched for what seemed like hours, hypnotized by the boom
boom boom boom of the dancing nildoror, until in the end he
broke somehow from his trance, and searched for Kurtz and
found him still in ceaseless motion, a gaunt bony skeletonic figure
jerking puppet-like on invisible strings, looking fragile despite his
extreme height as he moved within the circle of colossal nildoror.
Kurtz could neither hear Gundersen's words nor take note of his
presence, and finally Gundersen went back to the station alone. In
the morning he found Kurtz, looking spent and worn, slumped on

Downward to the Earth 377
the bench overlooking the waterfall. Kurtz merely said, "You
should have stayed. You should have danced."
Anthropologists had studied these rites. Gundersen had looked
up the literature, learning what little there was to learn. Evidently
the dance was preceded and surrounded by drama, a spoken epi-
sode akin to Earth's medieval mystery plays, a theatrical reenact-
ment of some supremely important nildoror myth, serving both as
mode of entertainment and as ecstatic religious experience. Unfor-
tunately the language of the drama was an obsolete liturgical
tongue, not a word of which could be understood by an Earthman,
and the nildoror, who had not hesitated to instruct their first Earth-
born visitors in their relatively simple modern language, had never
offered any clue to the nature of the other one. The anthro-
pological observers had noted one point which Gundersen now
found cheering: invariably, within a few days after the perform-
ance of this particular rite, groups of nildoror from the herd per-
forming it would set out for the mist country, presumably to un-
dergo rebirth.
He wondered if the rite might be some ceremony of purifica-
tion, some means of entering a state of grace before undergoing
rebirth.
The nildoror all had gathered, now, beside the lake. Srin'gahar
was one of the last to go. Gundersen sat alone on the slope above
the basin, watching the massive forms assembling. The contrary
motions of the moons fragmented the shadows of the nildoror,
and the cold light from above turned their smooth green hides into
furrowed black cloaks. Looking over to his left, Gundersen saw
the sulidoror squatting before their huts, excluded from the cere-
mony but apparently not forbidden to view it.
In the silence came a low, clear, forceful flow of words. He
strained to hear, hoping to catch some clue to the meaning, seek-
ing a magical gateway that would let him burst through into an
understanding of that secret language. But no understanding came.
Vol'himyor was the speaker, the old many-born one, reciting
words clearly familiar to everyone at the lake, an invocation, an
introit. Then came a long interval of silence, and then came a re-
sponse from a second nildor at the opposite end of the group, who
exactly duplicated the rhythms and sinuosities of Vol'himyor's ut-
terance. Silence again; and then a reply from Vol'himyor, spoken
more crisply. Back and forth the center of the service moved, and
the interplay between the two celebrants became what was for nil-

378 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
doror a surprisingly quick exchange of dialogue. About every
tenth line the herd at large repeated what a celebrant had said,
sending dark reverberations through the night.
After perhaps ten minutes of this the voice of a third solo nildor
was heard. VoPhimyor made reply. A fourth speaker took up the
recitation. Now isolated lines were coming in rapid bursts from
many members of the congregation. No cue was missed; no nildor
trampled on another's lines. Each seemed intuitively to know
when to speak, when to stay silent. The tempo accelerated. The
ceremony had become a mosaic of brief utterances blared forth
from every part of the group in a random rotation. A few of the
nildoror were up and moving slowly in place, lifting their feet,
putting them down.
Lightning speared through the sky. Despite the closeness of the
atmosphere, Gundersen felt a chill. He saw himself as a wanderer
on a prehistoric Earth, spying on some grotesque conclave of mas-
todons. All the things of man seemed infinitely far away now. The
drama was reaching some sort of climax. The nildoror were bel-
lowing, stamping, calling to one another with tremendous snorts.
They were taking up formations, assembling in aisled rows. Still
there came utterances and responses, antiphonal amplifications of
words heavy with strange significance. The air grew more steamy.
Gundersen could no longer hear individual words, only rich deep
chords of massed grunts, ah ah ah ah, ah ah ah ah, the old rhythm
that he remembered from the night at Shangri-la Falls. It was a
breathy, gasping sound now, ecstatic, an endless chuffing pattern
of exhalations, ah ah ah ah, ah ah ah ah, ah ah ah ah, with
scarcely a break between each group of four beats, and the whole
jungle seemed to echo with it. The nildoror had no musical instru-
ments whatever, yet to Gundersen it appeared that vast drums
were pounding out that hypnotically intense rhythm. Ah ah ah ah.
Ah ah ah ah. AH AH AH AH! AH AH AH AH!
And the nildoror were dancing.
Down below on the margin of the lake moved scores of great
shadowy shapes, prancing like gazelles, two running steps for-
ward, stamp down hard on the third step, regain the balance on
the fourth. The universe trembled. Boom boom boom boom,
boom boom boom boom. The earlier phase of the ceremony, the
dramatic dialogue, which might have been some sort of subtle
philosophical disquisition, had given way totally to this primeval
pounding, this terrifying shuffling of gigantic elephantine bodies.

Downward to the Earth 379
Boom boom boom boom. Gundersen looked to his left and saw
the sulidoror entranced, hairy heads switching back and forth in
the rhythm of the dance; but not one of the bipeds had risen from
the crosslegged posture. They were content to rock and nod, and
now and then to pound their elbows on the ground.
Gundersen was cut off from his own past, even from a sense of
his own kinship to his species. Disjointed memories floated up.
Again he was at the serpent station, a prisoner of the hallucinatory
venom, feeling himself transformed into a nildor and capering
thickly in the grove. Again he stood by the bank of the great river,
seeing another performance of this very dance. And also he re-
membered nights spent in the safety of Company stations deep in
the forest, among his own kind, when they had listened to the
sound of stamping feet in the distance. All those other times Gun-
dersen had drawn back from whatever strangeness this planet was
offering him; he had transferred out of the serpent station rather
than taste the venom a second time, he had refused Kurtz's invita-
tion to join the dance, he had remained within the stations when
the rhythmic poundings began in the forest. But tonight he felt lit-
tle allegiance to mankind. He found himself longing to join that
black and incomprehensible frenzy at the lakeshore. Something
monstrous was running free within him, liberated by the incessant
repetition of that boom boom boom boom. But what right had he
to caper Kurtzlike in an alien ceremony? He did not dare intrude
on their ritual.
Yet he discovered that he was walking down the spongy slope
toward the place where the massed nildoror cavorted.
If he could think of them only as leaping, snorting elephants it
would be all right. If he could think of them even as savages kick-
ing up a row it would be all right. But the suspicion was unavoida-
ble that this ceremony of words and dancing held intricate mean-
ings for these people, and that was the worst of it. They might have
thick legs and short necks and long dangling trunks, but that did
not make them elephants, for their triple tusks and spiny crests and
alien anatomies said otherwise; and they might be lacking in all
technology, lacking even in a written language, but that did not
make them savages, for the complexity of their minds said other-
wise. They were creatures who possessed g'rakh. Gundersen re-
membered how he had innocently attempted to instruct the nil-
doror in the arts of terrestrial culture, in an effort to help them
"improve" themselves; he had wanted to humanize them, to lift

380 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
their spirits upward, but nothing had come of that, and how he
found his own spirit being drawn—downward?—certainly to their
level, wherever that might lie. Boom boom boom boom. His feet
hesitantly traced out the four-step as he continued down the slope
toward the lake. Did he dare? Would they crush him as blas-
phemous?
They had let Kurtz dance. They had let Kurtz dance.
It had been in a different latitude, a long time ago, and other
nildoror had been involved, but they had let Kurtz dance.
"Yes," a nildor called to him. "Come, dance with us!"
Was it VoPhimyor? Was it Srin'gahar? Was it Thali'vanoom of
the third birth? Gundersen did not know which of them had
spoken. In the darkness, in the sweaty haze, he could not see
clearly, and all these giant shapes looked identical. He reached the
bottom of the slope. Nildoror were everywhere about him, tracing
out passages in their private journeys from point to point on the
lakeshore. Their bodies emitted acrid odors, which, mixing with
the fumes of the lake, choked and dizzied him. He heard several
of them say to him, "Yes, yes, dance with us!"
And he danced.
He found an open patch of marshy soil and laid claim to it,
moving forward, then backward, covering and recovering his one
little tract in his fervor. No nildoror trespassed on him. His head
tossed; his eyes rolled; his arms dangled; his body swayed and
rocked; his feet carried him untiringly. Now he sucked in the thick
air. Now he cried out in strange tongues. His skin was on fire; he
stripped away his clothing, but it made no difference. Boom boom
boom boom. Even now, a shred of his old detachment was left,
enough so that he could marvel at the spectacle of himself dancing
naked amid a herd of giant alien beasts. Would they, in their ulti-
mate transports of passion, sweep in over his plot and crush him
into the muck? Surely it was dangerous to stay here in the heart of
the herd. But he stayed. Boom boom boom boom, again, again,
yet again. As he whirled he looked out over the lake, and by
sparkling refracted moonslight he saw the malidaror placidly
munching the weeds, heedless of the frenzy on land. They are
without g'rakh, he thought. They are beasts, and when they die
their leaden spirits go downward to the earth. Boom. Boom.
BOOM. Boom.
He became aware that glossy shapes were moving along the
ground, weaving warily between the rows of dancing nildoror. The

Downward to the Earth 381
serpents! This music of pounding feet had summoned them from
the dense glades where they lived.
The nildoror seemed wholly unperturbed that these deadly
worms moved among them. A single stabbing thrust of the two
spiny quills would bring even a mighty nildor toppling down; but
no matter. The serpents were welcome, it appeared. They glided
toward Gundersen, who knew he was in no mortal danger from
their venom, but who did not seek another encounter with it. He
did not break the stride of his dance, though, as five of the thick
pink creatures wriggled past him. They did not touch him.
The serpents passed through, and were gone. And still the up-
roar continued. And still the ground shook. Gundersen's heart
hammered, but he did not pause. He gave himself up fully, blend-
ing with those about him, sharing as deeply as he was able to
share it the intensity of the experience.
The moons set. Early streaks of dawn stained the sky.
Gundersen became aware that he no longer could hear the
thunder of stamping feet. He danced alone. About him, the nil-
doror had settled down, and their voices again could be heard, in
that strange unintelligible litany. They spoke quietly but with great
passion. He could no longer follow the patterns of their words; ev-
erything merged into an echoing rumble of tones, without defini-
tion, without shape. Unable to halt, he jerked and twisted
through his obsessive gyration until the moment that he felt the
first heat of the morning sun.
Then he fell exhausted, and lay still, and slipped down easily
into sleep.

SIX
When he woke it was some time after midday. The normal life
of the encampment had resumed; a good many of the nildoror
were in the lake, a few were munching on the vegetation at the top
of the slope, and most were resting in the shade. The only sign of
last night's frenzy was in the spongy turf near the lakeshore,
which was terribly scuffed and torn.
Gundersen felt stiff and numb. Also he was abashed, with the
embarrassment of one who has thrown himself too eagerly into
someone else's special amusement. He could hardly believe that
he had done what he knew himself to have done. In his shame he
felt an immediate impulse to leave the encampment at once, be-
fore the nildoror could show him their contempt for an Earthman
capable of making himself a thrall to their festivity, capable of al-
lowing himself to be beguiled by their incantations. But he shack-
led the thought, remembering that he had a purpose in coming
here.
He limped down to the lake and waded out until its water came
up to his breast. He soaked a while, and washed away the sweat
of the night before. Emerging, he found his clothing and put it on.
A nildor came to him and said, "Vol'himyor will speak to you
now."
The many-born one was halfway up the slope. Coming before
him, Gundersen could not find the words of any of the greetings
formulas, and simply stared raggedly at the old nildor until Vol'hi-
myor said, "You dance well, my once-born friend. You dance
with joy. You dance with love. You dance like a nildor, do you
know that?"
"It is not easy for me to understand what happened to me last
night," said Gundersen.
"You proved to us that our world has captured your spirit."
"Was it offensive to you that an Earthman danced among you?"
"If it had been offensive," said Vol'himyor slowly, "you would
not have danced among us." There was a long silence. Then the
nildor said, "We will make a treaty, we two. I will give you per-

Downward to the Earth 383
mission to go into the mist country. Stay there until you are ready
to come out. But when you return, bring with you the Earthman
known as Cullen, and offer him to the northernmost encampment
of nildoror, the first of my people that you find. Is this agreed?"
"Cullen?" Gundersen asked. Across his mind flared the image
of a short broad-faced man with fine golden hair and mild green
eyes. "Cedric Cullen, who was here when I was here?"
"The same man."
"He worked with me when I was at the station in the Sea of
Dust."
"He lives now in the mist country," Vol'himyor said, "having
gone there without permission. We want him."
"What has he done?"
"He is guilty of a grave crime. Now he has taken sanctuary
among the sulidoror, where we are unable to gain access to him. It
would be a violation of our covenant with them if we removed this
man ourselves. But we may ask you to do it."
Gundersen frowned. "You won't tell me the nature of his
crime?"
"Does it matter? We want him. Our reasons are not trifling
ones. We request you to bring him to us."
"You're asking one Earthman to seize another and turn him in
for punishment," said Gundersen. "How am I to know where jus-
tice lies in this affair?"
"Under the treaty of relinquishment, are we not the arbiters of
justice on this world?" asked the nildor.
Gundersen admitted that this was so.
"Then we hold the right to deal with Cullen as he deserves,"
Vol'himyor said.
That did not, of course, make it proper for Gundersen to act as
catspaw in handing his old comrade over to the nildoror. But
Vol'himyor's implied threat was clear: do as we wish, or we grant
you no favors.
Gundersen said, "What punishment will Cullen get if he falls
into your custody?"
"Punishment? Punishment? Who speaks of punishment?"
"If the man's a criminal—"
"We wish to purify him," said the many-born one. "We desire
to cleanse his spirit. We do not regard that as punishment."
"Will you injure him physically in any way?"
"It is not to be thought."

384 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"Will you end Ms life?"
"Can you mean such a thing? Of course not."
"Will you imprison him?"
"We will keep him in custody," said Vol'himyor, "for however
long the rite of purification takes. I do not think it will be long. He
will swiftly be freed, and he will be grateful to us."
"I ask you once more to tell me the nature of his crime."
"He will tell you that himself," the nildor said. "It is not neces-
sary for me to make his confession for him."
Gundersen considered all aspects of the matter. Shortly he said,
"I agree to our treaty, many-born one, but only if I may add sev-
eral clauses."
"Go on."
"If Cullen will not tell me the nature of his crime, I am released
from my obligation to hand him over."
"Agreed."
"If the sulidoror object to my taking Cullen out of the mist
country, I am released from my obligation also."
"They will not object. But agreed."
"If Cullen must be subdued by violence in order to bring him
forth, I am released."
The nildor hesitated a moment. "Agreed," he said finally.
"I have no other conditions to add."
"Then our treaty is made," Vorhimyor said. "You may begin
your northward journey today. Five of our once-born ones must
also travel to the mist country, for their time of rebirth has come,
and if you wish they will accompany you and safeguard you along
the way. Among them is Srin'gahar, whom you already know."
"Will it be troublesome for them to have me with them?"
"Srin'gahar has particularly requested the privilege of serving as
your guardian," said Vol'himyor. "But we would not compel you
to accept his aid, if you would rather make your journey alone."
"It would be an honor to have his company," Gundersen said.
"So be it, then."
A senior nildor summoned Srin'gahar and the four others who
would be going toward rebirth. Gundersen was gratified at this
confirmation of the existing data: once more the frenzied dance of
the nildoror had preceded the departure of a group bound for
rebirth.
It pleased him, too, to know that he would have a nildoror
escort on the way north. There was only one dark aspect to the

Downward to the Earth 385
treaty, that which involved Cedric Cullen. He wished he had not
sworn to barter another Earthman's freedom for his own safe-con-
duct pass. But perhaps Cullen had done something really loath-
some, something that merited punishment—or purification, as
Vol'himyor put it. Gundersen did not understand how that nor-
mally sunny man could have become a criminal and a fugitive, but
Cullen had lived on this world a long time, and the strangeness of
alien worlds ultimately corroded even the brightest souls. In any
case, Gundersen felt that he had opened enough honorable exits
for himself if he needed to escape from his treaty with Vol'himyor.
Srin'gahar and Gundersen went aside to plan their route.
"Where in the mist country do you intend to go?" the nildor
asked.
"It does not matter. I just want to enter it. I suppose I'll have to
go wherever Cullen is."
"Yes. But we do not know exactly where he is, so we will have
to wait until we are there to learn it. Do you have special places to
visit on the way north?"
"I want to stop at the Earthman stations," Gundersen said.
"Particularly at Shangri-la Falls. So my idea is that we'll follow
Madden's River northwestward, and—"
"These names are unknown to me."
"Sorry. I guess they've all reverted back to nildororu names.
And I don't know those. But wait—" Seizing a stick, Gundersen
scratched a hasty but serviceable map of Belzagor's western hemi-
sphere in the mud. Across the waist of the disk he drew the thick
swath of the tropics. At the right side he gouged out a curving bite
to indicate the ocean; on the left he outlined the Sea of Dust.
Above and below the band of the tropics he drew the thinner lines
representing the northern and southern mist zones, and beyond
them he indicated the gigantic icecaps. He marked the spaceport
and the hotel at the coast with an X, and cut a wiggly line up from
there, clear across the tropics into the northern mist country, to
show Madden's River. At the midway point of the river he placed
a dot to mark Shangri-la Falls. "Now," said Gundersen, "if you
follow the tip of my stick—"
"What are those marks on the ground?" asked Srin'gahar.
A map of your planet, Gundersen wanted to say. But there was
no nildororu word in his mind for "map." He found that he also
lacked words for "image," "picture," and similar concepts. He

386 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
said lamely, "This is your world. This is Belzagor, or at least half
of it. See, this is the ocean, and the sun rises here, and—"
"How can this be my world, these marks, when my world is so
large?"
"This is like your world. Each of these lines, here, stands for a
place on your world. You see, here, the big river that runs out of
the mist country and comes down to the coast, where the hotel is,
yes? And this mark is the spaceport. These two lines are the top
and the bottom of the northern mist country. The—"
"It takes a strong sulidor a march of many days to cross the
northern mist country," said Srin'gahar. "I do not understand how
you can point to such a small space and tell me it is the northern
mist country. Forgive me, friend of my journey. I am very stupid."
Gundersen tried again, attempting to communicate the nature
of the marks on the ground. But Srin'gahar simply could not com-
prehend the idea of a map, nor could he see how scratched lines
could represent places. Gundersen considered asking Vol'himyor
to help him, but rejected that plan when he realized that Vol'hi-
myor, too, might not understand; it would be tactless to expose
the many-born one's ignorance in any area. The map was a meta-
phor of place, an abstraction from reality. Evidently even beings
possessing g'rakh might not have the capacity to grasp such ab-
stractions.
He apologized to Srin'gahar for his own inability to express
concepts clearly, and rubbed out the map with his boot. Without
it, planning the route was somewhat more difficult, but they found
ways to communicate. Gundersen learned that the great river at
whose mouth the hotel was situated was called the Seran'nee in
nildororu, and that the place where the river plunged out of the
mountains into the coastal plain, which Earthmen knew as Shan-
gri-la Falls, was Du'jayukh to nildoror. Then it was simple for
them to agree to follow the Seran'nee to its source, with a stop at
Du'jayukh and at any other settlement of Earthmen that happened
to lie conveniently on the path north.
While this was being decided, several of the sulidoror brought
a late breakfast of fruit and lake fish to Gundersen, exactly as
though they recognized his authority under the Company. It was a
curiously anachronistic gesture, almost servile, not at all like the
way in which they had tossed him a raw slab of malidar meat the
day before. Then they had been testing him, even taunting him;
now they were waiting upon him. He was uncomfortable about

Downward to the Earth 387
that, but he was also quite hungry, and he made a point of asking
Srin'gahar to tell him the sulidororu words of thanks. There was
no sign that the powerful bipeds were pleased or flattered or
amused by his use of their language, though.
They began their journey in late afternoon. The five nildoror
moved in single file, Srin'gahar at the back of the group with Gun-
dersen perched on his back; the Earthman did not appear to be
the slightest burden for him. Their path led due north along the
rim of the great rift, with the mountains that guarded the central
plateau rising on their left. By the light of the sinking sun Gunder-
sen stared toward that plateau. Down here in the valley, his sur-
roundings had a certain familiarity; making the necessary allow-
ances for the native plants and animals, he might almost be in
some steamy jungle of South America. But the plateau appeared
truly alien. Gundersen eyed the thick tangles of spiky purplish
moss that festooned and nearly choked the trees along the top of
the rift wall. The way the parasitic growth drowned its hosts the
trees seemed grisly to him. The wall itself, of some soapy gray-
green rock, dotted with angry blotches of crimson lichen and
punctuated every few hundred meters by long ropy strands of a
swollen blue fungus, cried out its otherworldliness: the soft min-
eral had never felt the impact of raindrops, but had been gently
carved and shaped by the humidity alone, taking on weird knob-
binesses and hollows over the millennia. Nowhere on Earth could
one see a rock wall like that, serpentine and involute and greasy.
The forest beyond the wall looked impenetrable and vaguely
sinister. The silence, the heavy and sluggish air, the sense of dark
strangeness, the flexible limbs of the glossy trees bowed almost to
the ground by moss, the occasional distant snort of some giant
beast, made the central plateau seem forbidding and hostile. Few
Earthmen had ever entered it, and it had never been surveyed in
detail. The Company once had had some plans for stripping away
large patches of jungle up there and putting in agricultural settle-
ments, but nothing had come of the scheme, because of relin-
quishment. Gundersen had been in the plateau country only once,
by accident, when his pilot had had to make a forced landing en
route from coastal headquarters to the Sea of Dust. Seena had
been with him. They spent a night and a day in that forest, Seena
terrified from the moment of landing, Gundersen comforting her
in a standard manly way but finding that her terror was somehow
contagious. The girl trembled as one alien happening after another

388 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
presented itself, and shortly Gundersen was on the verge of trem-
bling too. They watched, fascinated and repelled, while an army
of innumerable insects with iridescent hexagonal bodies and long
hairy legs strode with maniacal persistence into a sprawling glade
of tiger-moss; for hours the savage mouths of the carnivorous
plants bit the shining insects into pieces and devoured them, and
still the horde marched on to destruction. At last the moss was so
glutted that it went into sporulation, puffing up cancerously and
sending milky clouds of reproductive bodies spewing into the air.
By morning the whole field of moss lay deflated and helpless, and
tiny green reptiles with broad rasping tongues moved in to devour
every strand, laying bare the soil for a new generation of flora.
And then there were the feathery jelly-like things, streaked with
blue and red, that hung in billowing cascades from the tallest
trees, trapping unwary flying creatures. And bulky rough-skinned
beasts as big as rhinos, bearing mazes of blue antlers with in-
terlocking tines, grubbed for roots a dozen meters from their
camp, glaring sourly at the strangers from Earth. And long-necked
browsers with eyes like beacons munched on high leaves, squirting
barrelfuls of purple urine from openings at the bases of their taut
throats. And dark fat otter-like beings ran chattering past the
stranded Earthmen, stealing anything within quick grasp. Other
animals visited them also. This planet, which had never known the
hunter's hand, abounded in big mammals. He and Seena and the
pilot had seen more grotesqueness in a day and a night than they
had bargained for when they signed up for outworld service.
"Have you ever been in there?" Gundersen asked Srin'gahar, as
night began to conceal the rift wall.
"Never. My people seldom enter that land."
"Occasionally, flying low over the plateau, I used to see nil-
doror encampments in it. Not often, but sometimes. Do you mean
that your people no longer go there?"
"No," said Srin'gahar. "A few of us have need to go to the pla-
teau, but most do not. Sometimes the soul grows stale, and one
must change one's surroundings. If one is not ready for rebirth,
one goes to the plateau. It is easier to confront one's own soul in
there, and to examine it for flaws. Can you understand what I
say?"
"I think so," Gundersen said. "It's like a place of pilgrimage,
then—a place of purification?"
"In a way."

Downward to the Earth 389
"But why have the nildoror never settled permanently up there?
There's plenty of food—the climate is warm—"
"It is not a place where g'rakh rules," the nildor replied.
"Is it dangerous to nildoror? Wild animals, poisonous plants,
anything like that?"
"No, I would not say that. We have no fear of the plateau, and
there is no place on this world that is dangerous to us. But the
plateau does not interest us, except those who have the special
need of which I spoke. As I say, g'rakh is foreign to it. Why
should we go there? There is room enough for us in the lowlands."
The plateau is too alien even for them, Gundersen thought.
They prefer their nice little jungle. How curious!
He was riot sorry when darkness hid the plateau from view.
They made camp that night beside a hissing-hot stream. Evi-
dently its waters issued from one of the underground cauldrons
that were common in this sector of the continent; Srin'gahar said
that the source lay not far to the north. Clouds of steam rose from
the swift flow; the water, pink with high-temperature microor-
ganisms, bubbled and boiled. Gundersen wondered if Srin'gahar
had chosen this stopping place especially for his benefit, since nil-
doror had no use for hot water, but Earthmen notoriously did.
He scrubbed his face, taking extraordinary pleasure in it, and
supplemented a dinner of food capsules and fresh fruit with a stew
of greenberry roots—delectable when boiled, poisonous otherwise.
For shelter while sleeping Gundersen used a monomolecular jun-
gle blanket that he had stowed in his backpack, his one meager ar-
ticle of luggage on this journey. He draped the blanket over a tri-
pod of boughs to keep away nightflies and other noxious insects,
and crawled under it. The ground, thickly grassed, was a good
enough mattress for him.
The nildoror did not seem disposed toward conversation. They
left him alone. All but Srin'gahar moved several hundred meters
upstream for the night. Srin'gahar settled down protectively a
short distance from Gundersen and wished him a good sleep.
Gundersen said, "Do you mind talking a while? I want to know
something about the process of rebirth. How do you know, for in-
stance, that your time is upon you? Is it something you feel within
yourself, or is it just a matter of reaching a certain age? Do you—"
He became aware that Srin'gahar was paying no attention. The
nildor had fallen into what might have been a deep trance, and lay
perfectly still.

390 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
Shrugging, Gundersen rolled over and waited for sleep, but
sleep was a long time coming.
He thought a good deal about the terms under which he had
been permitted to make this northward journey. Perhaps another
many-born one would have allowed him to go into the mist coun-
try without attaching the condition that he bring back Cedric Cul-
len; perhaps he would not have been granted safe-conduct at all.
Gundersen suspected that the results would have been the same no
matter which encampment of nildoror he had happened to go to
for his travel permission. Though the nildoror had no means of
long-distance communication, no governmental structure in an
Earthly sense, no more coherence as a race than a population of
jungle beasts, they nevertheless were remarkably well able to
keep in touch with one another and to strike common policies.
What was it that Cullen had done, Gundersen wondered, to
make him so eagerly sought?
In the old days Cullen had seemed overwhelmingly normal: a
cheerful, amiable ruddy man who collected insects, spoke no
harsh words, and held his liquor well. When Gundersen had been
the chief agent out at Fire Point, in the Sea of Dust, a dozen years
before, Cullen had been his assistant. Months on end there were
only the two of them in the place, and Gundersen had come to
know him quite well, he imagined. Cullen had no plans for making
a career with the Company; he said he had signed a six-year con-
tract, would not renew, and intended to take up a university ap-
pointment when he had done his time on Holman's World. He was
here only for seasoning, and for the prestige that accrues to any-
one who has a record of outworld service. But then the political
situation on Earth grew complex, and the Company was forced to
agree to relinquish a great many planets that it had colonized.
Gundersen, like most of the fifteen thousand Company people
here, had accepted a transfer to another assignment. Cullen, to
Gundersen's amazement, was among the handful who opted to
stay, even though that meant severing his ties with the home
world. Gundersen had not asked him why; one did not discuss
such things. But it seemed odd.
He saw Cullen clearly in memory, chasing bugs through the Sea
of Dust, killing bottle jouncing against his hip as he ran from one
rock outcropping to the next—an overgrown boy, really. The
beauty of the Sea of Dust was altogether lost on him. No sector of
the planet was more truly alien, nor more spectacular: a dry

Downward to the Earth 391
ocean bed, greater in size than the Atlantic, coated with a thick
layer of fine crystalline mineral fragments as bright as mirrors
when the sun was on them. From the station at Fire Point one
could see the morning light advancing out of the east like a river
of flame, spilling forth until the whole desert blazed. The crystals
swallowed energy all day, and gave it forth all night, so that even
at twilight the eerie radiance rose brightly, and after dark a throb-
bing purplish glow lingered for hours. In this almost lifeless but
wondrously beautiful desert the Company had mined a dozen pre-
cious metals and thirty precious and semiprecious stones. The
mining machines set forth from the station on far-ranging rounds,
grinding up loveliness and returning with treasure; there was not
much for an agent to do there except keep inventory of the
mounting wealth and play host to the tourist parties that came to
see the splendor of the countryside. Gundersen had grown ter-
ribly bored, and even the glories of the scenery had become tire-
some to him, but Cullen, to whom the incandescent desert was
merely a flashy nuisance, fell back on his hobby for entertainment,
and filled bottle after bottle with his insects. Were the mining ma-
chines still standing in the Sea of Dust, Gundersen wondered,
waiting for the command to resume operations? If the Company
had not taken them away after relinquishment, they would surely
stand there throughout all eternity, unrusting, useless, amidst the
hideous gouges they had cut. The machines had scooped down
through the crystalline layer to the dull basalt below, and had
spewed out vast heaps of tailings and debris as they gnawed for
wealth. Probably the Company had left the things behind, too, as
monuments to commerce. Machinery was cheap, interstellar trans-
port was costly; why bother removing them? "In another thousand
years," Gundersen once had said, "the Sea of Dust will all be de-
stroyed and there'll be nothing but rubble here, if these machines
continue to chew up the rock at the present rate." Cullen had
shrugged and smiled. "Well, one won't need to wear these dark
glasses, then, once the infernal glare is gone," he had said. "Eh?"
And now the rape of the desert was over and the machines were
still; and now Cullen was a fugitive in the mist country, wanted for
some crime so terrible the nildoror would not even give it a name.

SEVEN
When they took to the road in the morning it was Srin'gahar,
uncharacteristically, who opened the conversation.
"Tell me of elephants, friend of my journey. What do they look
like, and how do they live?"
"Where did you hear of elephants?"
"The Earthpeople at the hotel spoke of them. And also in the
past, I have heard the word said. They are beings of Earth that
look like nildoror, are they not?"
"There is a certain resemblance," Gundersen conceded.
"A close one?"
"There are many similarities." He wished Srin'gahar were able
to comprehend a sketch. "They are long and high in the body, like
you, and they have four legs, and tails, and trunks. They have
tusks, but only two, one here, one here. Their eyes are smaller and
placed in a poor position, here, here. And here—" He indicated
Srin'gahar's skullcrest. "Here they have nothing. Also their bones
do not move as your bones do."
"It sounds to me," said Srin'gahar, "as though these elephants
look very much like nildoror."
"I suppose they do."
"Why is this, can you say? Do you believe that we and the ele-
phants can be of the same race?"
"It isn't possible," said Gundersen. "It's simply a—a—" He
groped for words; the nildororu vocabulary did not include the
technical terms of genetics. "Simply a pattern in the development
of life that occurs on many worlds. Certain basic designs of living
creatures recur everywhere. The elephant design—the nildoror de-
sign—is one of them. The large body, the huge head, the short
neck, the long trunk enabling the being to pick up objects and
handle them without having to bend—these things will develop
wherever the proper conditions are found."
"You have seen elephants, then, on many other worlds?"
"On some," Gundersen said. "Following the same general pat-
tern of construction, or at least some aspects of it, although the

Downward to the Earth 393
closest resemblance of all is between elephants and nildoror. I
could tell you of half a dozen other creatures that seem to belong
to the same group. And this is also true of many other life-forms—
insects, reptiles, small mammals, and so on. There are certain
niches to be filled on every world. The thoughts of the Shaping
Force travel the same path everywhere."
"Where, then, are Belzagor's equivalents of men?"
Gundersen faltered. "I didn't say that there were exact equiva-
lents everywhere. The closest thing to the human pattern on your
planet, I guess, is the sulidoror. And they aren't very close."
"On Earth, the men rule. Here the sulidoror are the secondary
race."
"And accident of development. Your g'rakh is superior to that
of the sulidoror; on our world we have no other species that
possesses g'rakh at all. But the physical resemblances between
men and sulidoror are many. They walk on two legs; so do we.
They eat both flesh and fruit; so do we. They have hands which
can grasp things; so do we. Their eyes are in front of their heads;
so are ours. I know, they're bigger, stronger, hairier, and less intel-
ligent than human beings, but I'm trying to show you how patterns
can be similar on different planets, even though there's no real
blood relationship between—"
Srin'gahar said quietly, "How do you know that elephants are
without g'rakh?"
"We—they—it's clear that—" Gundersen stopped, uneasy. After
a pause for thought he said carefully, "They've never demon-
strated any of the qualities of g'rakh. They have no village life, no
tribal structure, no technology, no religion, no continuing cul-
ture."
"We have no village life and no technology," the nildor said.
"We wander through the jungles, stuffing ourselves with leaves
and branches. I have heard this said of us, and it is true."
"But you're different. You-"
"How are we different? Elephants also wander through jungles,
stuffing themselves with leaves and branches, do they not? They
wear no skins over their own skins. They make no machines. They
have no books. Yet you admit that we have g'rakh, and you insist
that they do not."
"They can't communicate ideas," said Gundersen desperately.
"They can tell each other simple things, I guess, about food and

394 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
mating and danger, but that's all. If they have a true language, we
can't detect it. We're aware of only a few basic sounds."
"Perhaps their language is so complex that you are unable to
detect it," Srin'gahar suggested.
"I doubt that. We were able to tell as soon as we got here that
the nildoror speak a language; and we were able to learn it. But in
all the thousands of years that men and elephants have been shar-
ing the same planet, we've never been able to see a sign that they
can accumulate and transmit abstract concepts. And that's the es-
sence of having g'rakh, isn't it?"
"I repeat my statement. What if you are so inferior to your ele-
phants that you cannot comprehend their true depths?"
"A cleverly put point, Srin'gahar. But I won't accept it as any
sort of description of the real world. If elephants have g'rakh, why
haven't they managed to get anywhere in their whole time on
Earth? Why does mankind dominate the planet, with the elephants
crowded into a couple of small corners and practically wiped
out?"
"You kill your elephants?"
"Not any more. But there was a time when men killed ele-
phants for pleasure, or for food, or to use their tusks for orna-
ments. And there was a time when men used elephants for beasts
of burden. If the elephants had g'rakh, they—"
He realized that he had fallen into Srin'gahar's trap.
The nildor said, "On this planet, too, the 'elephants' let them-
selves be exploited by mankind. You did not eat us and you rarely
killed us, but often you made us work for you. And yet you admit
we are beings of g'rakh "
"What we did here," said Gundersen, "was a gigantic mistake,
and when we came to realize it, we relinquished your world and
got off it. But that still doesn't mean that elephants are rational
and sentient beings. They're animals, Srin'gahar, big simple ani-
mals, and nothing more."
"Cities and machines are not the only achievements of g'rakh "
"Where are their spiritual achievements, then? What does an el-
ephant believe about the nature of the universe? What does he
think about the Shaping Force? How does he regard his own place
in his society?"
"I do not know," said Srin'gahar. "And neither do you, friend
of my journey, because the language of the elephants is closed to

Downward to the Earth 395
you. But it is an error to assume the absence of g'rakh where you
are incapable of seeing it."
"In that case, maybe the malidaror have g'rakh too. And the
venom-serpents. And the trees, and the vines, and—"
"No," said Srin'gahar. "On this planet, only nildoror and suli-
doror possess g'rakh. This we know beyond doubt. On your world
it is not necessarily the case that humans alone have the quality of
reason."
Gundersen saw the futility of pursuing the point. Was Srin'ga-
har a chauvinist defending the spiritual supremacy of elephants
throughout the universe, or was he deliberately adopting an ex-
treme position to expose the arrogances and moral vulnerabilities
of Earth's imperialism? Gundersen did not know, but it hardly
mattered. He thought of Gulliver discussing the intelligence of
horses with the Houyhnhnms.
"I yield the point," he said curtly. "Perhaps someday I'll bring
an elephant to Belzagor, and let you tell me whether or not it has
g'rakh»
"I would greet it as a brother."
"You might be unhappy over the emptiness of your brother's
mind," Gundersen said. "You would see a being fashioned in your
shape, but you wouldn't succeed in reaching its soul."
"Bring me an elephant, friend of my journey, and I will be the
judge of its emptiness," said Srin'gahar. "But tell me one last
thing, and then I will not trouble you: when your people call us
elephants, it is because they think of us as mere beasts, yes?
Elephants are 'big simple animals,' those are your words. Is this
how the visitors from Earth see us?"
"They're referring only to the resemblance in form between nil-
doror and elephants. It's a superficial thing. They say you are like
elephants."
"I wish I could believe that," the nildor said, and fell silent,
leaving Gundersen alone with his shame and guilt. In the old days
it had never been his habit to argue the nature of intelligence with
his mounts. It had not even occurred to him then that such a
debate might be possible. Now he sensed the extent of Srin'gahar's
suppressed resentment. Elephants—yes, that was how he too had
seen the nildoror. Intelligent elephants, perhaps. But still ele-
phants.
In silence they followed the boiling stream northward. Shortly
before noon they came to its source, a broad bow-shaped lake

396 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
pinched between a double chain of steeply rising hills. Clouds of
oily steam rose from the lake's surface. Thermophilic algae
streaked its waters, the pink ones forming a thin scum on top and
nearly screening the meshed tangles of the larger, thicker blue-
gray plants a short distance underneath.
Gundersen felt some interest in stopping to examine the lake
and its unusual life-forms. But he was strangely reluctant to ask
Srin'gahar to halt. Srin'gahar was not only his carrier, he was his
companion on a journey; and to say, tourist-fashion, "Let's stop
here a while," might reinforce the nildor's belief that Earthmen
still thought of his people merely as beasts of burden. So he re-
signed himself to passing up this bit of sightseeing. It was not
right, he told himself, that he should delay Srin'gahar's journey to-
ward rebirth merely to gratify a whim of idle curiosity.
But as they were nearing the lake's farther curve, there came
such a crashing and smashing in the underbrush to the east that
the entire procession of nildoror paused to see what was going on.
To Gundersen it sounded as if some prowling dinosaur were about
to come lurching out of the jungle, some huge clumsy tyrannosaur
inexplicably displaced in time and space. Then, emerging from a
break in the row of hills, there came slowly across the bare soil
flanking the lake a little snub-snouted vehicle, which Gundersen
recognized as the hotel's beetle, towing a crazy primitive-looking
appendage of a trailer, fashioned from raw planks and large
wheels. Atop this jouncing, clattering trailer four small tents had
been pitched, covering most of its area; alongside the tents, over
the wheels, luggage was mounted in several racks; and at the rear,
clinging to a railing and peering nervously about, were the eight
tourists whom Gundersen had last seen some days earlier in the
hotel by the coast.
Srin'gahar said, "Here are some of your people. You will want
to talk with them."
The tourists were, in fact, the last species whatever that Gun-
dersen wanted to see at this point. He would have preferred lo-
custs, scorpions, fanged serpents, tyrannosaurs, toads, anything at
all. Here he was coming from some sort of mystical experience
among the nildoror, the nature of which he barely understood;
here, insulated from his own kind, he rode toward the land of
rebirth struggling with basic questions of right and wrong, of the
nature of intelligence, of the relationship of human to nonhuman
and of himself to his own past; only a few moments before he had

Downward to the Earth 397
been forced into an uncomfortable, even painful confrontation
with that past by Srin'gahar's casual, artful questions about the
souls of elephants; and abruptly Gundersen found himself once
more among these empty, trivial human beings, these archetypes
of the ignorant and blind tourist, and whatever individuality he
had earned in the eyes of his nildor companion vanished instantly
as he dropped back into the undifferentiated class of Earthmen.
These tourists, some part of his mind knew, were not nearly as
vulgar and hollow as he saw them; they were merely ordinary peo-
ple, friendly, a bit foolish, overprivileged, probably quite satis-
factory human beings within the context of their lives on Earth,
and only seeming to be cardboard figurines here because they
were essentially irrelevant to the planet they had chosen to visit.
But he was not yet ready to have Srin'gahar lose sight of him as a
person separate from all the other Earthmen who came to Bel-
zagor, and he feared that the tide of bland chatter welling out of
these people would engulf him and make him one of them.
The beetle, obviously straining to haul the trailer, came to rest a
dozen meters from the edge of the lake. Out of it came Van
Beneker, looking sweatier and seedier than usual. "All right," he
called to the tourists. "Everyone down! We're going to have a
look at one of the famous hot lakes!" Gundersen, high atop
Srin'gahar's broad back, considered telling the nildor to move
along. The other four nildoror, having satisfied themselves about
the cause of the commotion, had already done that and were
nearly out of view at the far end of the lake. But he decided to
stay a while; he knew that a display of snobbery toward his own
species would win him no credit with Srin'gahar.
Van Beneker turned to Gundersen and called out, "Morning,
sir! Glad to see you! Having a good trip?"
The four Earth couples clambered down from their trailer.
They were fully in character, behaving exactly as Gundersen's
harsh image of them would have them behave: they seemed bored
and glazed, surfeited with the alien wonders they had already
seen. Stein, the helix-parlor proprietor, dutifully checked the aper-
ture of his camera, mounted it in his cap, and routinely took a
360-degree hologram of the scene; but when the printout emerged
from the camera's output slot a moment later he did not even
bother to glance at it. The act of picture-taking, not the picture it-
self, was significant. Watson, the doctor, muttered a joyless joke of
some sort to Christopher, the financier, who responded with a me-

398 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
chanical chuckle. The women, bedraggled and jungle-stained, paid
no attention to the lake. Two simply leaned against the beetle and
waited to be told what it was they were being shown, while the
other two, as they became aware of Gundersen's presence, pulled
facial masks from their backpacks and hurriedly slipped the thin
plastic films over their heads so that they could present at least the
illusion of properly groomed features before the handsome
stranger.
"I won't stay here long," Gundersen heard himself promising
Srin'gahar, as he dismounted.
Van Beneker came up to him. "What a trip!" the little man
blurted. "What a stinking trip! Well, I ought to be used to it by
now. How's everything been going for you, Mr. G?"
"No complaints." Gundersen nodded at the trailer. "Where'd
you get that noisy contraption?"
"We built it a couple of years ago when one of the old cargo
haulers broke down. Now we use it to take tourists around when
we can't get any nildoror bearers."
"It looks like something out of the eighteenth century."
"Well, you know, sir, out here we don't have much left in the
way of modern equipment. We're short of servos and hydraulic
walkers and all that. But you can always find wheels and some
planks around. We make do."
"What happened to the nildoror we were riding coming from
the spaceport to the hotel? I thought they were willing to work for
you."
"Sometimes yes, sometimes no," Van Beneker said. "They're
unpredictable. We can't force them to work, and we can't hire
them to work. We can only ask them politely, and if they say
they're not available, that's it. Couple of days back, they decided
they weren't going to be available for a while, so we had to get out
the trailer." He lowered his voice. "If you ask me, it's on account
of these eight baboons here. They think the nildoror don't under-
stand any English, and they keep telling each other how terrible it
is that we had to hand a planet as valuable as this over to a bunch
of elephants."
"On the voyage out here," said Gundersen, "some of them were
voicing quite strong liberal views. At least two of them were big
pro-relinquishment people."
"Sure. Back on Earth they bought relinquishment as a political
theory. 'Give the colonized worlds back to their long-oppressed

Downward to the Earth 399
natives,' and all that. Now they're out here and suddenly they've
decided that the nildoror aren't 'natives,' just animals, just funny-
looking elephants, and maybe we should have kept the place after
all." Van Beneker spat. "And the nildoror take it all in. They pre-
tend they don't understand the language, but they do, they do.
You think they feel like hauling people like that on their backs?"
"I see," said Gundersen. He glanced at the tourists. They were
eyeing Srin'gahar, who had wandered off toward the bush and was
energetically ripping soft boughs loose for his midday meal. Wat-
son nudged Miraflores, who quirked his lips and shook his head as
if in disapproval. Gundersen could not hear what they were say-
ing, but he imagined that they were expressing scorn for Srin'ga-
har's enthusiastic foraging. Evidently civilized beings were not
supposed to pull their meals off trees with their trunks.
Van Beneker said, "You'll stay and have lunch with us, won't
you, Mr. G?"
"That's very kind of you," Gundersen said.
He squatted in the shade while Van Beneker rounded up his
charges and led them down to the rim of the steaming lake. When
they were all there Gundersen rose and quietly affiliated himself
with the group. He listened to the guide's spiel, but managed to
train only half his attention on what was being said. "High-tem-
perature life-zone . . . better than 70 °C . . . more in some
places, even above boiling, yet things live in it. . . special genetic
adaptation . . . thermophilic, we call it, that is, heat-loving . . .
the DNA doesn't get cooked, no, but the rate of spontaneous mu-
tation is pretty damned high, and the species change so fast you
wouldn't believe it. . . enzymes resist the heat... put the lake
organisms in cool water and they'll freeze in about a minute . . .
life processes extraordinarily fast . . . unfolded and denatured
proteins can also function when circumstances are such that. . .
you get quite a range up to middle-phylum level... a pocket en-
vironment, no interaction with the rest of the planet. . . thermal
gradients . . . quantitative studies ... the famous kinetic biolo-
gist, Dr. Brock . . . continuous thermal destruction of sensitive
molecules. . . unending resynthesis. . . ."
Srin'gahar was still stuffing himself with branches. It seemed to
Gundersen that he was eating far more than he normally did at
this time of day. The sounds of rending and chewing clashed with
the jerky drone of Van Beneker's memorized scientific patter.
Now, unhooking a biosensitive net from his belt, Van Beneker

400 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
began to dredge up samples of the lake's fauna for the edification
of his group. He gripped the net's handle and made vernier adjust-
ments governing the mass and length of the desired prey; the net,
mounted at the end of an almost infinitely expandable length of
fine flexible metal coil, swept back and forth beneath the surface
of the lake, hunting for organisms of the programmed dimensions.
When its sensors told it that it was in the presence of living mat-
ter, its mouth snapped open and quickly shut again. Van Beneker
retracted it, bringing to shore some unhappy prisoner trapped
within a sample of its own scalding environment.
Out came one lake creature after another, red-skinned, boiled-
looking, but live and angry and flapping. An armored fish
emerged, concealed in shining plates, embellished with fantastic
excrescences and ornaments. A lobster-like thing came forth, lash-
ing a long spiked tail, waving ferocious eye-stalks. Up from the
lake came something that was a single immense claw with a tiny*
vestigial body. No two of Van Beneker's grotesque catches were
alike. The heat of the lake, he repeated, induces frequent muta-
tions. He rattled off the whole genetic explanation a second time,
while dumping one little monster back into the hot bath and prob-
ing for the next.
The genetic aspects of the thermophilic creatures seemed to
catch the interest of only one of the tourists—Stein, who, as a
helix-parlor owner specializing in the cosmetic editing of human
genes, would know more than a little about mutation himself. He
asked a few intelligent-sounding questions, which Van Beneker
naturally was unable to answer; the others simply stared, patiently
waiting for their guide to finish showing them funny animals and
take them somewhere else. Gundersen, who had never had a
chance before to examine the contents of one of these high-tem-
perature pockets, was grateful for the exhibition, although the
sight of writhing captive lake-dwellers quickly palled on him. He
became eager to move on.
He glanced around and discovered that Srin'gahar was nowhere
in sight.
"What we've got this time," Van Beneker was saying, "is the
most dangerous animal of the lake, what we call a razor shark.
Only I've never seen one like this before. You see those little
horns? Absolutely new. And that lantern sort of thing on top of
the head, blinking on and off?" Squirming in the net was a slender
crimson creature about a meter in length. Its entire underbelly,

Downward to the Earth 401
from snout to gut, was hinged, forming what amounted to one gi-
gantic mouth rimmed by hundreds of needle-like teeth. As the
mouth opened and closed, it seemed as if the whole animal were
splitting apart and healing itself. "This beast feeds on anything up
to three times its own size," Van Beneker said. "As you can see,
it's fierce and savage, and—"
Uneasy, Gundersen drifted away from the lake to look for
Srin'gahar. He found the place where the nildor had been eating,
where the lower branches of several trees were stripped bare. He
saw what seemed to be the nildor's trail, leading away into the
jungle. A painful white light of desolation flared in his skull at the
awareness that Srin'gahar must quietly have abandoned him.
In that case his journey would have to be interrupted. He did
not dare go alone and on foot into that pathless wilderness ahead.
He would have to ask Van Beneker to take him back to some nil-
doror encampment where he might find another means of getting
to the mist country.
The tour group was coming up from the lake now. Van Bene-
ker's net was slung over his shoulder; Gundersen saw some lake
creatures moving slowly about in it.
"Lunch," he said. "I got us some jelly-crabs. You hungry?"
Gundersen managed a thin smile. He watched, not at all hun-
gry, as Van Beneker opened the net; a gush of hot water rushed
from it, carrying along eight or ten oval purplish creatures, each
different from the others in the number of legs, shell markings,
and size of claws. They crawled in stumbling circles, obviously an-
noyed by the relative coolness of the air. Steam rose from their
backs. Expertly Van Beneker pithed them with sharpened sticks,
and cooked them with his fusion torch, and split open their shells
to reveal the pale quivering jelly-like metabolic regulators within.
Three of the women grimaced and turned away, but Mrs.
Miraflores took her crab and ate it with delight. The men seemed
to enjoy it. Gundersen, merely nibbling at the jelly, eyed the forest
and worried about Srin'gahar.
Scraps of conversation drifted toward him.
"—enormous profit potential, just wasted, altogether wasted—"
"—even so, our obligation is to encourage self-determination on
every planet that—"
"—but are they people?"
"—look for the soul, it's the only way to tell that—"

402 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"—elephants, and nothing but elephants. Did you see him rip-
ping up the trees and—"
"—relinquishment was the fault of a highly vocal minority of
bleeding hearts who—"
"—no soul, no relinquishment—"
"—you're being too harsh, dear. There were definite abuses on
some of the planets, and—"
"—stupid political expediency, I call it. The blind leading the
blind-"
"—can they write? Can they think? Even in Africa we were
dealing with human beings, and even there—"
"—the soul, the inner spirit—"
"—I don't need to tell you how much I favored relinquishment.
You remember, I took the petitions around and everything. But
even so, I have to admit that after seeing—"
"—piles of purple crap on the beach—"
"—victims of sentimental overreaction—"
"-I understand the annual profit was on the order of-"
"—no doubt that they have souls. No doubt at all." Gundersen
realized that his own voice had entered the conversation. The
others turned to him; there was a sudden vacuum to fill. He said,
"They have a religion, and that implies the awareness of the exist-
ence of a spirit, a soul, doesn't it?"
"What kind of religion?" Miraflores asked.
"I'm not sure. One important part of it is ecstatic dancing—a
kind of frenzied prancing around that leads to some sort of mystic
experience. I know. I've danced with them. I've felt at least the
edges of that experience. And they've got a thing called rebirth,
which I suppose is central to their rituals. I don't understand it.
They go north, into the mist country, and something happens to
them there. They've always kept the details a secret. I think the
sulidoror give them something, some drug, maybe, and it rejuve-
nates them in some inner way, and leads to a kind of illumination
—am I at all clear?" Gundersen, as he spoke, was working his way
almost unconsciously through the pile of uneaten jelly-crabs. "All
I can tell you is that rebirth is vitally important to them, and they
seem to derive their tribal status from the number of rebirths
they've undergone. So you see they're not just animals. They have
a society, they have a cultural structure—complex, difficult for us
to grasp."
Watson asked, "Why don't they have a civilization, then?"

Downward to the Earth 403
"I've just told you that they do."
"I mean cities, machines, books—"
"They're not physically equipped for writing, for building
things, for any small manipulations," Gundersen said. "Don't you
see, they have no hands? A race with hands makes one kind of so-
ciety. A race built like elephants makes another." He was
drenched in sweat and his appetite was suddenly insatiable. The
women, he noticed, were staring at him strangely. He realized
why: he was cleaning up all the food in sight, compulsively
stuffing it into his mouth. Abruptly his patience shattered and he
felt that his skull would explode if he did not instantly drop all
barriers and admit the one great guilt that by stabbing his soul had
spurred him into strange odysseys. It did not matter that these
were not the right people from whom to seek absolution. The
words rushed uncontrollably upward to his lips and he said,
"When I came here I was just like you. I underestimated the nil-
doror. Which led me into a grievous sin that I have to explain to
you. You know, I was a sector administrator for a while, and one
of my jobs was arranging the efficient deployment of native labor.
Since we didn't fully understand that the nildoror were intelligent
autonomous beings, we used them, we put them to work on heavy
construction jobs, lifting girders with their trunks, anything we
thought they were capable of handling on sheer muscle alone. We
just ordered them around as if they were machines." Gundersen
closed his eyes and felt the past roaring toward him, inexorably, a
black cloud of memory that enveloped and overwhelmed him,
"The nildoror let us use them, God knows why. I guess we were
the crucible in which their race had to be purged. Well, one day a
dam broke, out in Monroe District up in the north, not far from
where the mist country begins, and a whole thornbush plantation
was in danger of flooding, at a loss to the Company of who knows
how many millions. And the main power plant of the district was
endangered too, along with our station headquarters and—let's just
say that if we didn't react fast, we'd lose our entire investment in
the north. My responsibility. I began conscripting nildoror to build
a secondary line of dikes. We threw every robot we had into the
job, but we didn't have enough, so we got the nildoror too, long
lines of them plodding in from every part of the jungle, and we
worked day and night until we were all ready to fall down dead.
We were beating the flood, but I couldn't be sure of it. And on the
sixth morning I drove out to the dike site to see if the next crest

404 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
would break through, and there were seven nildoror I hadn't ever
seen before, marching along a path going north. I told them to fol-
low me. They refused, very gently. They said, no, they were on
their way to the mist country for the rebirth ceremony, and they
couldn't stop. Rebirth? What did I care about rebirth? I wasn't
going to take that excuse from them, not when it looked like I
might lose my whole district. Without thinking I ordered them to
report for dike duty or I'd execute them on the spot. Rebirth can
wait, I said. Get reborn some other time. This is serious business.
They put their heads down and pushed the tips of their tusks into
the ground. That's a sign of great sadness among them. Their
spines drooped. Sad. Sad. We pity you, one of them said to me,
and I got angry and told him what he could do with his pity.
Where did he get the right to pity me? Then I pulled my fusion
torch. Go on, get moving, there's a work crew that needs you. Sad.
Big eyes looking pity at me. Tusks in the ground. Two or three of
the nildoror said they were very sorry, they couldn't do any work
for me now, it was impossible for them to break their journey. But
they were ready to die right there, if I insisted on it. They didn't
want to hurt my prestige by defying me, but they had to defy me,
and so they were willing to pay the price. I was about to fry one,
as an example to the others, and then I stopped and said to my-
self, what the hell am I doing, and the nildoror waited, and my
aides were watching and so were some of our other nildoror, and I
lifted the fusion torch again, telling myself that I'd kill one of
them, the one who said he pitied me, and hoping that then the
others would come to their senses. They just waited. Calling my
bluff. How could I fry seven pilgrims even if they were defying a
sector chief's direct order? But my authority was at stake. So I
pushed the trigger. I just gave him a slow burn, not deep, enough
to scar the hide, that was all, but the nildor stood there taking it,
and in another few minutes I would have burned right through to
a vital organ. And so I soiled myself in front of them by using
force. It was what they had been waiting for. Then a couple of the
nildoror who looked older than the others said, stop it, we wish to
reconsider, and I turned off the torch, and they went aside for a
conference. The one I had burned was hobbling a little, and
looked hurt, but he wasn't badly wounded, not nearly as badly as
I was. The one who pushes the trigger can get hurt worse than his
target, do you know that? And in the end the nildoror all agreed
to do as I asked. So instead of going north for rebirth they went to

Downward to the Earth 405
work on the dike, even the burned one, and nine days later the
flood crest subsided and the plantation and the power plant and
all the rest were saved and we lived happily ever after." Gunder-
sen's voice trailed off. He had made his confession, and now he
could not face these people any longer. He picked up the shell of
the one remaining crab and explored it for some scrap of jelly,
feeling depleted and drained. There was an endless span of si-
lence.
Then Mrs. Christopher said, "So what happened then?"
Gundersen looked up, blinking. He thought he had told it all.
"Nothing happened then," he said. "The flood crest subsided."
"But what was the point of the story?"
He wanted to hurl the empty crab in her tensely smiling face.
"The point?" he said. "The point? Why-" He was dizzy, now. He
said, "Seven intelligent beings were journeying toward the holiest
rite of their religion, and at gunpoint I requisitioned their services
on a construction job to save property that meant nothing to them,
and they came and hauled logs for me. Isn't the point obvious
enough? Who was spiritually superior there? When you treat a ra-
tional autonomous creature as though he's a mere beast, what
does that make you?"
"But it was an emergency," said Watson. "You needed all the
help you could get. Surely other considerations could be laid aside
at a time like that. So they were nine days late getting to their
rebirth. Is that so bad?"
Gundersen said hollowly, "A nildor goes to rebirth only when
the time is ripe, and I can't tell you how they know the time is
ripe, but perhaps it's astrological, something to do with the con-
junction of the moons. A nildor has to get to the place of rebirth
at the propitious time, and if he doesn't make it in time, he isn't
reborn just then. Those seven nildoror were already late, because
the heavy rains had washed out the roads in the south. The nine
days more that I tacked on made them too late. When they were
finished building dikes for me, they simply went back south to
rejoin their tribe. I didn't understand why. It wasn't until much
later that I found out that I had cost them their chance at rebirth
and they might have to wait ten or twenty years until they could
go again. Or maybe never get another chance." Gundersen did not
feel like talking any more. His throat was dry. His temples
throbbed. How cleansing it would be, he thought, to dive into the
steaming lake. He got stiffly to his feet, and as he did so he noticed

406 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
that Srin'gahar had returned and was standing motionless a few
hundred meters away, beneath a mighty swordflower tree.
He said to the tourists, "The point is that the nildoror have
religion and souls, and that they are people, and that if you can
buy the concept of relinquishment at all, you can't object to relin-
quishing this planet. The point is also that when Earthmen collide
with an alien species they usually do so with maximum misun-
derstanding. The point is furthermore that I'm not surprised you
think of the nildoror the way you do, because I did too, and
learned a little better when it was too late to matter, and even so I
didn't learn enough to do me any real good, which is one of the
reasons why I came back to this planet. And I'd like you to excuse
me now, because this is the propitious time for me to move on,
and I have to go." He walked quickly away from them.
Approaching Srin'gahar, he said, "I'm ready to leave now."
The nildor knelt. Gundersen remounted.
"Where did you go?" the Earthman asked. "I was worried
when you disappeared."
"I felt that I should leave you alone with your friends," said
Srin'gahar. "Why did you worry? There is an obligation on me to
bring you safely to the country of the mist."

EIGHT
The quality of the land was undoubtedly changing. They were
leaving the heart of the equatorial jungle behind, and starting to
enter the highlands that led into the mist zone. The climate here
was still tropical, but the humidity was not so intense; the atmos-
phere, instead of holding everything in a constant clammy em-
brace, released its moisture periodically in rain, and after the rain
the texture of the air was clear and light until its wetness was
renewed. There was different vegetation in this region: harsh-
looking angular stuff, with stiff leaves sharp as blades. Many of
the trees had luminous foliage that cast a cold light over the forest
by night. There were fewer vines here, and the treetops no longer
formed a continuous canopy shutting out most of the sunlight;
splashes of brightness dappled the forest floor, in some places ex-
tending across broad open plazas and meadows. The soil, leached
by the frequent rains, was a pale yellowish hue, not the rich black
of the jungle. Small animals frequently sped through the under-
brush. At a slower pace moved solemn slug-like creatures, blue-
green with ebony mantles, which Gundersen recognized as the mo-
bile fungoids of the highlands—plants that crawled from place to
place in quest of fallen boughs or a lightning-shattered tree-trunk.
Both nildoror and men considered their taste a great delicacy.
On the evening of the third day northward from the place of the
boiling lake Srin'gahar and Gundersen came upon the other four
nildoror, who had marched on ahead. They were camped at the
foot of a jagged crescent-shaped hill, and evidently had been there
at least a day, judging by the destruction they had worked upon
the foliage all around their resting-place. Their trunks and faces,
smeared and stained with luminous juices, glowed brightly. With
them was a sulidor, by far the largest one Gundersen had ever
seen, almost twice Gundersen's own height, with a pendulous
snout the length of a man's forearm. The sulidor stood erect be-
side a boulder encrusted with blue moss, his legs spread wide and
his tail, tripod fashion, bracing his mighty weight. Narrowed eyes
surveyed Gundersen from beneath shadowy hoods. His long arms,

408 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
tipped with terrifying curved claws, hung at rest. The fur of the
sulidor was the color of old bronze, and unusually thick.
One of the candidates for rebirth, a female nildor called
Luu'khamin, said to Gundersen, "The sulidor's name is Na-
sinisul. He wishes to speak with you."
"Let him speak, then."
"He prefers that you know, first, that he is not a sulidor of the
ordinary kind. He is one of those who administers the ceremony
of rebirth, and we will see him again when we approach the mist
country. He is a sulidor of rank and merit, and his words are not
to be taken lightly. Will you bear that in mind as you listen to
him?"
"I will. I take no one's words lightly on this world, but I will
give him a careful hearing beyond any doubt. Let him speak."
The sulidor strode a short distance forward and once again
planted himself firmly, digging his great spurred feet deep into the
resilient soil. When he spoke, it was in a nildororu stamped with
the accent of the north: thick-tongued, slow, positive.
"I have been on a journey," said Na-sinisul, "to the Sea of
Dust, and now I am returning to my own land to aid in the prepa-
rations for the event of rebirth in which these five travelers are to
take part. My presence here is purely accidental. Do you under-
stand that I am not in this place for any particular purpose involv-
ing you or your companions?"
"I understand," said Gundersen, astounded by the precise and
emphatic manner of the sulidor's speech. He had known the suli-
doror only as dark, savage, ferocious-looking figures lurking in
mysterious glades.
Na-sinisul continued, "As I passed near here yesterday, I came
by chance to the site of a former station of your Company. Again
by chance, I chose to look within, though it was no business of
mine to enter that place. Within I found two Earthmen whose
bodies had ceased to serve them. They were unable to move and
could barely talk. They requested me to send them from this
world, but I could not do such a thing on my own authority.
Therefore I ask you to follow me to this station and to give me in-
structions. My time is short here, so it must be done at once."
"How far is it?"
"We could be there before the rising of the third moon."
Gundersen said to Srin'gahar, "I don't remember a Company

Downward to the Earth 409
station here. There should be one a couple of days north of here,
but-"
"This is the place where the food that crawls was collected and
shipped downriver," said the nildor.
"Here?" Gundersen shrugged. "I guess I've lost my bearings
again. All right, I'll go there." To Na-sinisul he said, "Lead and
I'll follow."
The sulidor moved swiftly through the glowing forest, and Gun-
dersen, atop Srin'gahar, rode just to his rear. They seemed to be
descending, and the air grew warm and murky. The landscape also
changed, for the trees here had aerial roots that looped up like im-
mense scraggy elbows, and the fine tendrils sprouting from the
roots emitted a harsh green radiance. The soil was loose and
rocky; Gundersen could hear it crunching under Srin'gahar's
tread. Bird-like things were perched on many of the roots. They
were owlish creatures that appeared to lack all color; some were
black, some white, some a mottled black and white. He could not
tell if that was their true hue or if the luminosity of the vegetation
simply robbed them of color. A sickly fragrance came from vast,
pallid parasitic flowers sprouting from the trunks of the trees.
By an outcropping of naked, weathered yellow rock lay the
remains of the Company station. It seemed even more thoroughly
ruined than the serpent station far to the south; the dome of its
roof had collapsed and coils of wiry-stemmed saprophytes were
clinging to its sides, perhaps feeding on the decomposition prod-
ucts that the rain eroded from the abrasions in the plastic walls.
Srin'gahar allowed Gundersen to dismount. The Earthman hesi-
tated outside the building, waiting for the sulidor to take the lead.
A fine warm rain began to fall; the tang of the forest changed at
once, becoming sweet where it had been sour. But it was the
sweetness of decay.
"The Earthmen are inside," said Na-sinisul. "You may go in. I
await your instructions."
Gundersen entered the building. The reek of rot was far more
intense here, concentrated, perhaps, by the curve of the shattered
dome. The dampness was all-pervasive. He wondered what sort of
virulent spores he sucked into his nostrils with every breath.
Something dripped in the darkness, making a loud tocking sound
against the lighter patter of the rain coming through the gaping
roof. To give himself light, Gundersen drew his fusion torch and
kindled it at the lowest beam. The warm white glow spread

410 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
through the station. At once he felt a flapping about his face as
some thermotropic creature, aroused and attracted by the heat of
the torch, rose up toward it. Gundersen brushed it away; there
was slime on his fingertips afterward.
Where were the Earthmen?
Cautiously he made a circuit of the building. He remembered it
vaguely, now—one of the innumerable bush stations the Company
once had scattered across Holman's World. The floor was split
and warped, requiring him to climb over the buckled, sundered
sections. The mobile fungoids crawled everywhere, devouring the
scum that covered all interior surfaces of the building and leaving
narrow glistening tracks behind. Gundersen had to step carefully
to avoid putting his feet on the creatures, and he was not always
successful. Now he came to a place where the building widened,
puckering outward; he flashed his torch around and caught sight
of a blackened wharf, overlooking the bank of a swift river. Yes,
he remembered. The fungoids were wrapped and baled here and
sent downriver on their voyage toward the market. But the Com-
pany's barges no longer stopped here, and the tasty pale slugs now
wandered unmolested over the mossy relics of furniture and
equipment.
"Hello?" Gundersen called. "Hello, hello, hello?"
He received a moan by way of answer. Stumbling and slipping
in the dimness, fighting a swelling nausea, he forced his way on-
ward through a maze of unseen obstacles. He came to the source
of the loud dripping sound. Something bright red and basket-
shaped and about the size of a man's chest had established itself
high on the wall, perpendicular to the floor. Through large pores
in its spongy surface a thick black fluid exuded, falling in a con-
tinuous greasy splash. As the light of Gundersen's torch probed it,
the exudation increased, becoming almost a cataract of tallowy
liquid. When he moved the light away the flow became less co-
pious, though still heavy.
The floor sloped here so that whatever dripped from the spongy
basket flowed quickly down, collecting at the far side of the room
in the angle between the floor and the wall. Here Gundersen found
the Earthmen. They lay side by side on a low mattress; fluid from
the dripping thing had formed a dark pool around them, com-
pletely covering the mattress and welling up over their bodies.
One of the Earthmen, head lolling to the side, had his face totally
immersed in the stuff. From the other one came the moans.

Downward to the Earth 411
They both were naked. One was a man, one a woman, though
Gundersen had some difficulty telling that at first; both were so
shrunken and emaciated that the sexual characteristics were ob-
scured. They had no hair, not even eyebrows. Bones protruded
through parchment-like skin. The eyes of both were open, but
were fixed in a rigid, seemingly sightless stare, unblinking, glassy.
Lips were drawn back from teeth. Grayish algae sprouted in the
furrows of their skins, and the mobile fungoids roamed their bod-
ies, feeding on this growth. With a quick automatic gesture of
revulsion Gundersen plucked two of the slug-like creatures from
the woman's empty breasts. She stirred; she moaned again. In the
language .of the nildoror she murmured, "Is it over yet?" Her
voice was like a flute played by a sullen desert breeze.
Speaking English, Gundersen said, "Who are you? How did this
happen?"
He got no response from her. A fungoid crept across her
mouth, and he flicked it aside. He touched her cheek. There was a
rasping sound as his hand ran across her skin; it was like caressing
stiff paper. Struggling to remember her, Gundersen imagined dark
hair on her bare skull, gave her light arching brows, saw her
cheeks full and her lips smiling. But nothing registered; either he
had forgotten her, or he had never known her, or she was unrec-
ognizable in her present condition.
"Is it over soon?" she asked, again in nildororu.
He turned to her companion. Gently, half afraid the fragile
neck would snap, Gundersen lifted the man's head out of the pool
of fluid. It appeared that he had been breathing it; it trickled from
his nose and hps, and after a moment he showed signs of being
unable to cope with ordinary air. Gundersen let his face slip back
into the pool. In that brief moment he had recognized the man as
a certain Harold—or was it Henry?—Dykstra, whom he had known
distantly in the old days.
The unknown woman was trying to move one arm. She lacked
the strength to lift it. These two were like living ghosts, like death-
in-life, mired in their sticky fluid and totally helpless. In the lan-
guage of the nildoror he said, "How long have you been this
way?"
"Forever," she whispered.
"Who are you?"
"I don't. . . remember. I'm. . . waiting."
"For what?"

412 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"For the end."
"Listen," he said, "I'm Edmund Gundersen, who used to be
sector chief. I want to help you."
"Kill me first. Then him."
"We'll get you out of here and back to the spaceport. We can
have you on the way to Earth in a week or ten days, and then—"
"No . . . please. . . ."
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Finish it. Finish it." She found enough strength to arch her
back, lifting her body halfway out of the fluid that nearly con-
cealed her lower half. Something rippled and briefly bulged be-
neath her skin. Gundersen touched the taut belly and felt move-
ment within, and that quick inward quiver was the most
frightening sensation he had ever known. He touched the body of
Dykstra, too: it also rippled inwardly.
Appalled, Gundersen scrambled to his feet and backed away
from them. By faint torchlight he studied their shriveled bodies,
naked but sexless, bone and ligament, shorn of flesh and spirit yet
still alive. A terrible fear came over him. "Na-sinisul!" he called.
"Come in here! Come in!"
The sulidor shortly was at his side. Gundersen said, "Some-
thing's inside their bodies. Some kind of parasite? It moves. What
is it?"
"Look there," said Na-sinisul, indicating the spongy basket
from which the dark fluid trickled. "They carry its young. They
have become hosts. A year, two years, perhaps three, and the lar-
vae will emerge."
"Why aren't they both dead?"
"They draw nourishment from this," said the sulidor, swishing
his tail through the black flow. "It seeps into their skins. It feeds
them, and it feeds that which is within them."
"If we took them out of here and sent them down to the hotel
on rafts-?"
"They would die," Na-sinisul said, "moments after they were
removed from the wetness about them. There is no hope of saving
them."
"When does it end?" the woman asked.
Gundersen trembled. All his training told him never to accept
the finality of death; any human in whom some shred of life
remained could be saved, rebuilt from a few scraps of cells into a
reasonable facsimile of the original. But there were no facilities

Downward to the Earth 413
for such things on this world. He confronted a swirl of choices.
Leave them here to let alien things feed upon their guts; try to
bring them back to the spaceport for shipment to the nearest tec-
togenetic hospital; put them out of their misery at once; seek to
free their bodies himself of whatever held them in thrall. He knelt
again. He forced himself to experience that inner quivering again.
He touched the woman's stomach, her thighs, her bony haunches.
Beneath the skin she was a mass of strangeness. Yet her mind still
ticked, though she had forgotten her name and her native lan-
guage. The man was luckier; though he was infested too, at least
Dykstra did not have to lie here in the dark waiting for the death
that couM come only when the harbored larvae erupted from the
enslaved human flesh. Was this what they had desired, when they
refused repatriation from this world that they loved? An Earth-
man can become captured by Belzagor, the many-born nildor
Vol'himyor had said. But this was too literal a capture.
The stink of bodily corruption made him retch.
"Kill them both," he said to Na-sinisul. "And be quick about
it."
"This is what you instruct me to do?"
"Kill them. And rip down that thing on the wall and kill it too."
"It has given no offense," said the sulidor. "It has done only
what is natural to its kind. By killing these two, I will deprive it of
its young, but I am not willing to deprive it of life as well."
"All right," Gundersen said. "Just the Earthmen, then. Fast."
"I do this as an act of mercy, under your direct orders," said
Na-sinisul. He leaned forward and lifted one powerful arm. The
savage curved claws emerged fully from their sheath. The claw de-
scended twice.
Gundersen compelled himself to watch. The bodies split like
dried husks; the things within came spilling out, unformed, raw.
Even now, in some inconceivable reflex, the two corpses twitched
and jerked. Gundersen stared into their eroded depths. "Do you
hear me?" he asked. "Are you alive or dead?" The woman's
mouth gaped but no sound came forth, and he did not know
whether this was an attempt to speak or merely a last convulsion
of the ravaged nerves. He stepped his fusion torch up to high
power and trained it on the dark pool. I am the resurrection and
the life, he thought, reducing Dykstra to ashes, and the woman be-
side him, and the squirming unfinished larvae. Acrid, choking
fumes rose; not even the torch could destroy the building's

414 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
dampness. He turned the torch back to illumination level.
"Come," he said to the sulidor, and they went out together.
"I feel like burning the entire building and purifying this place,"
Gundersen said to Na-sinisul.
"I know."
"But you would prevent me."
"You are wrong. No one on this world will prevent you from
doing anything."
But what good would it do . . . Gundersen asked himself. The
purification had already been accomplished. He had removed the
only beings in this place that were foreign to it.
The rain had stopped. To the waiting Srin'gahar, Gundersen
said, "Will you take me away from here?"
They rejoined the other four nildoror. Then, because they had
lingered too long here and the land of rebirth was still far away,
they resumed the march, even though it was night. By morning
Gundersen could hear the thunder of Shangri-la Falls, which the
nildoror called Du'jayukh.

NINE
It was as though a white wall of water descended from the sky.
Nothing on Earth could match the triple plunge of this cataract,
by which Madden's River, or the Seran'nee, dropped five hundred
meters, and then six hundred, and then five hundred more, falling
from ledge to ledge in its tumble toward the sea. Gundersen and
the five nildoror stood at the foot of the falls, where the entire vio-
lent cascade crashed into a broad rock-flanged basin out of which
the serpentine river continued its southeasterly course; the sulidor
had taken his leave in the night and was proceeding northward by
his own route. To Gundersen's rear lay the coastal plain, behind
his right shoulder, and the central plateau, behind his left. Before
him, up by the head of the falls, the northern plateau began, the
highlands that controlled the approach to the mist country. Just as
a titanic north-south rift cut the coastal plain off from the central
plateau, so did another rift running east-west separate both the
central plateau and the coastal plain from the highlands ahead.
He bathed in a crystalline pool just beyond the tumult of the
cataract, and then they began their ascent. The Shangri-la Station,
one of the Company's most important outposts, was invisible from
below; it was set back a short way from the head of the falls. Once
there had been way-stations at the foot of the falls and at the head
of the middle cataract, but no trace of these structures remained;
the jungle had swallowed them utterly in only eight years. A wind-
ing road, with an infinity of switchbacks, led to the top. When he
first had seen it, Gundersen had imagined it was the work of Com-
pany engineers, but he had learned that it was a natural ridge in
the face of the plateau, which the nildoror themselves had en-
larged and deepened to make their journeys toward rebirth more
easy.
The swaying rhythm of his mount lulled him into a doze; he
held tight to Srin'gahar's pommel-like horns and prayed that in his
grogginess he would not fall off. Once he woke suddenly and
found himself clinging only by his left hand, with his body half
slung out over a sheer drop of at least two hundred meters. An-

416 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
other time, drowsy again, he felt cold spray and snapped to atten-
tion to see the entire cascade of the falling river rushing past him
no more than a dozen meters away. At the head of the lowest cat-
aract the nildoror paused to eat, and Gundersen dashed icy water
in his face to shatter his sluggishness. They went on. He had less
difficulty keeping awake now; the air was thinner, and the after-
noon breeze was cool. In the hour before twilight they reached the
head of the falls.
Shangri-la Station, seemingly unchanged, lay before him: three
rectangular unequal blocks of dark shimmering plastic, a somber
ziggurat rising on the western bank of the narrow gorge through
which the river sped. The formal gardens of tropical plants, es-
tablished by a forgotten sector chief at least forty years before,
looked as though they were being carefully maintained. At each of
the building's setbacks there was an outdoor veranda overlooking
the river, and these, too, were bedecked with plants. Gundersen
felt a dryness in his throat and a tightness in his loins. He said to
Srin'gahar, "How long may we stay here?"
"How long do you wish to stay?"
"One day, two—I don't know yet. It depends on the welcome I
get."
"We are not yet in a great hurry," said the nildor. "My friends
and I will make camp in the bush. When it is time for you to go
on, come to us."
The nildoror moved slowly into the shadows. Gundersen ap-
proached the station. At the entrance to the garden he paused.
The trees here were gnarled and bowed, with long feathery gray
fronds dangling down; highland flora was different from that to
the south, although perpetual summer ruled here even as in the
true tropics behind him. Lights glimmered within the station. Ev-
erything out here seemed surprisingly orderly; the contrast with
the shambles of the serpent station and the nightmare decay of the
fungoid station was sharp. Not even the hotel garden was this well
tended. Four neat rows of fleshy, obscene-looking pink forest can-
dles bordered the walkway that ran toward the building. Slender,
stately globe-flower trees, heavy with gigantic fruit, formed little
groves to left and right. There were hullygully trees and bit-
terfruits—exotics here, imported from the steaming equatorial trop-
ics—and mighty swordflower trees in full bloom, lifting their long
shiny stamens to the sky. Elegant glitterivy and spiceburr vines
writhed along the ground, but not in any random way. Gundersen

Downward to the Earth 417
took a few steps farther in, and heard the soft sad sigh of a sen-
sifrons bush, whose gentle hairy leaves coiled and shrank as he
went by, opening warily when he had gone past, shutting again
when he whirled to steal a quick glance. Two more steps, and he
came to a low tree whose name he could not recall, with glossy
red winged leaves that took flight, breaking free of their delicate
stems and soaring away; instantly their replacements began to
sprout. The garden was magical. Yet there were surprises here.
Beyond the glitterivy he discovered a crescent patch of tiger-moss,
the carnivorous ground cover native to the unfriendly central pla-
teau. The moss had been transplanted to other parts of the planet
—there was a patch of it growing out of control at the seacoast ho-
tel—but Gundersen remembered that Seena abhorred it, as she
abhorred all the productions of that forbidding plateau. Worse
yet, looking upward so that he could follow the path of the grace-
fully gliding leaves, Gundersen saw great masses of quivering jelly,
streaked with blue and red neural fibers, hanging from several of
the biggest trees: more carnivores, also natives of the central pla-
teau. What were those sinister things doing in this enchanted gar-
den? A moment later he had a third proof that Seena's terror of
the plateau had faded: across his path there ran one of the plump,
thieving otter-like animals that had bedeviled them the time they
had been marooned there. It halted a moment, nose twitching,
cunning paws upraised, looking for something to seize. Gundersen
hissed at it and it scuttled into the shrubbery.
Now a massive two-legged figure emerged from a shadowed
corner and blocked his way. Gundersen thought at first it was a
sulidor, but he realized it was merely a robot, probably a gar-
dener. It said resonantly, "Man, why are you here?"
"As a visitor I'm a traveler seeking lodging for the night."
"Does the woman expect you?"
"I'm sure she doesn't. But she'll be willing to see me. Tell her
Edmund Gundersen is here."
The robot scanned him carefully. "I will tell her. Remain where
you are and touch nothing."
Gundersen waited. What seemed like an unhealthily long span
of time went by. The twilight deepened, and one moon appeared.
Some of the trees in the garden became luminous. A serpent, of
the sort once used as a source of venom, slid silently across the
path just in front of Gundersen and vanished. The wind shifted,
stirring the trees and bringing him the faint sounds of a conver-

418 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
sation of nildoror somewhere not far inland from the riverbank.
Then the robot returned and said, "The woman will see you.
Follow the path and enter the station."
Gundersen went up the steps. On the porch he noticed un-
familiar-looking potted plants, scattered casually as though await-
ing transplantation to the garden. Several of them waved tendrils at
him or wistfully flashed lights intended to bring curious prey fa-
tally close. He went in, and, seeing no one on the ground floor,
caught hold of a dangling laddercoil and let himself be spun up to
the first veranda. He observed that the station was as flawlessly
maintained within as without, every surface clean and bright, the
decorative murals unfaded, the artifacts from many worlds still
mounted properly in their niches. This station has always been a
showplace, but he was surprised to see it so attractive in these
years of the decay of Earth's presence on Belzagor.
"Seena?" he called.
He found her alone on the veranda, leaning over the rail. By
the light of two moons he saw the deep cleft of her buttocks and
thought she had chosen to greet him in the nude; but as she turned
toward him he realized that a strange garment covered the front of
her body. It was a pale, gelatinous sprawl, shapeless, purple-
tinged, with the texture and sheen that he imagined an immense
amoeba might have. The central mass of it embraced her belly and
loins, leaving her hips and haunches bare; her left breast also was
bare, but one broad pseudopod extended upward over the right
one. The stuff was translucent, and Gundersen plainly could see
the red eye of her covered nipple, and the narrow socket of her
navel. It was also alive, to some degree, for it began to flow, ap-
parently of its own will, sending out slow new strands that en-
circled her left thigh and right hip.
The eeriness of this clinging garment left him taken aback. Ex-
cept for it, she appeared to be the Seena of old; she had gained
some weight, and her breasts were heavier, her hips broader, yet
she was still a handsome woman in the last bloom of youth. But
the Seena of old would never have allowed such a bizarreness to
touch her skin.
She regarded him steadily. Her lustrous black hair tumbled to
her shoulders, as in the past. Her face was unlined. She faced him
squarely and without shame, her feet firmly planted, her arms at
ease, her head held high. "I thought you were never coming back
here, Edmund," she said. Her voice had deepened, indicating

Downward to the Earth 419
some inner deepening as well. When he had last known her she
had tended to speak too quickly, nervously pitching her tone too
high, but now, calm and perfectly poised, she spoke with the reso-
nance of a fine cello. "Why are you back?" she asked.
"It's a long story, Seena. I can't even understand all of it my-
self. May I stay here tonight?"
"Of course. How needless to ask!"
"You look so good, Seena. Somehow I expected—after eight
years—"
"A hag?"
"Well, not exactly." His eyes met hers, and he was shaken
abruptly by the rigidity he found there, a fixed and inflexible gaze,
a beadiness that reminded him terrifyingly of the expression in the
eyes of Dykstra and his woman at the last jungle station. "I—I
don't know what I expected," he said.
"Time's been good to you also, Edmund. You have that stern,
disciplined look, now—all the weakness burned away by years,
only the core of manhood left. You've never looked better."
"Thank you."
"Won't you kiss me?" she asked.
"I understand you're a married woman."
She winced and tightened one fist. The thing she was wearing
reacted also, deepening in color and shooting a pseudopod up to
encircle, though not to conceal, her bare breast. "Where did you
hear that?" she asked.
"At the coast. Van Beneker told me you married Jeff Kurtz."
"Yes. Not long after you left, as a matter of fact."
"I see. Is he here?"
She ignored his question. "Don't you want to kiss me? Or do
you have a policy about kissing other men's wives?"
He forced a laugh. Awkwardly, self-consciously, he reached
for her, taking her lightly by the shoulders and drawing her to-
ward him. She was a tall woman. He inclined his head, trying to
put his lips to hers without having any part of his body come in
contact with the amoeba. She pulled back before the kiss.
"What are you afraid of?" she asked.
"What you're wearing makes me nervous."
"The slider?"
"If that's what it's called."
"It's what the sulidoror call it," Seena said. "It comes from the

420 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
central plateau. It clings to one of the big mammals there and
lives by metabolizing perspiration. Isn't it splendid?"
"I thought you hated the plateau."
"Oh, that was a long time ago. I've been there many times. I
brought the slider back on the last trip. It's as much of a pet as it
is something to wear. Look." She touched it lightly and it went
through a series of color changes, expanding as it approached the
blue end of the spectrum, contracting toward the red. At its
greatest extension it formed a complete tunic covering Seena from
throat to thighs. Gundersen became aware of something dark and
pulsing at the heart of it, resting just above her loins, hiding the
pubic triangle: its nerve-center, perhaps. "Why do you dislike
it?" she asked. "Here. Put your hand on it." He made no move.
She took his hand in hers and touched it to her side; he felt the
slider's cool dry surface and was surprised that it was not slimy.
Easily Seena moved his hand upward until it came to the heavy
globe of a breast, and instantly the slider contracted, leaving the
firm warm flesh bare to his fingers. He cupped it a moment, and,
uneasy, withdrew his hand. Her nipples had hardened; her nostrils
had flared.
He said, "The slider's very interesting. But I don't like it on
you."
"Very well." She touched herself at the base of her belly, just
above the organism's core. It shrank inward and flowed down her
leg in one swift rippling movement, gliding away and collecting it-
self at the far side of the veranda. "Is that better?" Seena asked,
naked, now, sweat-shiny, moist-lipped.
The coarseness of her approach startled him. Neither he nor she
had ever worried much about nudity, but there was a deliberate
sexual aggressiveness about this kind of self-display that seemed
out of keeping with what he regarded as her character. They were
old friends, yes; they had once been lovers for several years; they
had been married in all but the name for many months of that
time; but even so the ambiguity of their parting should have de-
stroyed whatever intimacy once existed. And, leaving the question
of her marriage to Kurtz out of it, the fact that they had not seen
one another for eight years seemed to him to dictate the necessity
of a more gradual return to physical closeness. He felt that by
making herself pantingly available to him within minutes of his
unexpected arrival she was committing a breach not of morals but
of esthetics.

Downward to the Earth 421
"Put something on," he said quietly. "And not the slider. I
can't have a serious conversation with you while you're waving all
those jiggling temptations in my face."
"Poor conventional Edmund. All right. Have you had dinner?"
"No."
"I'll have it served out here. And drinks. I'll be right back."
She entered the building. The slider remained behind on the ve-
randa; it rolled tentatively toward Gundersen, as though offering
to climb up and be worn by him for a while, but he glared at it
and enough feeling got through to make the plateau creature move
hurriedly away. A minute later a robot emerged, bearing a tray on
which two golden cocktails sat. It offered one drink to Gundersen,
set the other on the railing, and noiselessly departed. Then Seena
returned, chastely clad in a soft gray shift that descended from her
shoulders to her shins.
"Better?" she asked.
"For now." They touched glasses; she smiled; they put their
drink to their lips. "You remembered that I don't like sonic
snouts," he said.
"I forget very little, Edmund."
"What's it like, living up here?"
"Serene. I never imagined that my life could be so calm. I read
a good deal; I help the robots tend the garden; occasionally there
are guests; sometimes I travel. Weeks often go by without my see-
ing another human being."
"What about your husband?"
"Weeks often go by without my seeing another human being,"
she said.	/
"You're alone here? You and the robots?"
"Quite alone."
"But the other Company people must come here fairly fre-
quently."
"Some do. There aren't many of us left now," Seena said. "Less
than a hundred, I imagine. About six at the Sea of Dust. Van
Beneker down by the hotel. Four or five at the old rift station.
And so on—little islands of Earthmen widely scattered. There's a
sort of a social circuit, but it's a sparse one."
"Is this what you wanted when you chose to stay here?" Gun-
dersen asked.
"I didn't know what I wanted, except that I wanted to stay. But

422 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
I'd do it again. Knowing everything I know, I'd do it just the same
way."
He said, "At the station just south of here, below the falls, I
saw Harold Dykstra—"
"Henry Dykstra."
"Henry. And a woman I didn't know."
"Pauleen Mazor. She was one of the customs girls, in the time
of the Company. Henry and Pauleen are my closest neighbors, I
guess. But I haven't seen them in years. I never go south of the
falls any more, and they haven't come here."
"They're dead, Seena."
"Oh?"
"It was like stepping into a nightmare. A sulidor led me to them.
The station was a wreck, mold and fungoids everywhere, and
something was hatching inside them, the larvae of some kind of
basket-shaped red sponge that hung on a wall and dripped black
oil-"
"Things like that happen," Seena said, not sounding disturbed.
"Sooner or later this planet catches everyone, though always in a
different way."
"Dykstra was unconscious, and the woman was begging to be
put out of her misery, and—"
"You said they were dead."
"Not when I got there. I told the sulidor to kill them. There
was no hope of saving them. He split them open, and then I used
my torch on them."
"We had to do that for Gio' Salamone, too," Seena said. "He
was staying at Fire Point, and went out into the Sea of Dust and
got some kind of crystalline parasite into a cut. When Kurtz and
Ced Cullen found him, he was all cubes and prisms, outcroppings
of the most beautiful iridescent minerals breaking through his skin
everywhere. And he was still alive. For a while. Another drink?"
"Please. Yes."
She summoned the robot. It was quite dark, now. A third moon
had appeared.
In a low voice Seena said, "I'm so happy you came tonight, Ed-
mund. It was such a wonderful surprise."
"Kurtz isn't here now?"
"No," she said. "He's away, and I don't know when he'll be
back."
"How has it been for him, living here?"

Downward to the Earth 423
"I think he's been quite happy, generally speaking. Of course,
he's a very strange man."
"He is," Gundersen said.
"He's got a quality of sainthood about him, I think."
"He would have been a dark and chilling saint, Seena."
"Some saints are. They don't all have to be St. Francis of As-
sisi."
"Is cruelty one of the desirable traits of a saint?"
"Kurtz saw cruelty as a dynamic force. He made himself an art-
ist of cruelty."
"So did the Marquis de Sade. Nobody's canonized him"
"You know what I mean," she said. "You once spoke of Kurtz
to me, and you called him a fallen angel. That's exactly right. I
saw him out among the nildoror, dancing with hundreds of them,
and they came to him and practically worshipped him. There he
was, talking to them, caressing them. And yet also doing the most
destructive things to them as well, but they loved it."
"What kind of destructive things?"
"They don't matter. I doubt that you'd approve. He—gave them
drugs, sometimes."
"The serpent venom?"
"Sometimes."
"Where is he now? Out playing with the nildoror?"
"He's been ill for a while." The robot now was serving dinner.
Gundersen frowned at the strange vegetables on his plate.
"They're perfectly safe," Seena said. "I grow them myself, in
back. I'm quite the farmer."
"I don't remember any of these."
"They're from the plateau."
Gundersen shook his head. "When I think of how disgusted you
were by the plateau, how strange and frightening it seemed to you
that time we had to crash-land there—"
"I was a child then. When was it, eleven years ago? Soon after I
met you. I was only twenty years old. But on Belzagor you must
defeat what frightens you, or you will be defeated. I went back to
the plateau. Again and again. It ceased to be strange to me, and so
it ceased to frighten me, and so I came to love it. And brought
many of its plants and animals back here to live with me. It's so
very different from the rest of Belzagor—cut off from everything
else, almost alien."

424 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"You went there with Kurtz?"
"Sometimes. And sometimes with Ced Cullen. And most often
alone."
"Cullen," Gundersen said. "Do you see him often?"
"Oh, yes. He and Kurtz and I have been a kind of triumvirate.
My other husband, almost. I mean, in a spiritual way. Physical
too, at times, but that's not as important."
"Where is Cullen now?" he asked, looking intently into her
harsh and glossy eyes.
Her expression darkened. "In the north. The mist country."
"What's he doing there?"
"Why don't you go ask him?" she suggested.
"I'd like to do just that," Gundersen said. "I'm on my way up
mist country, actually, and this is just a sentimental stop on the
way. I'm traveling with five nildoror going for rebirth. They're
camped in the bush out there somewhere."
She opened a flask of a musky gray-green wine and gave him
some. "Why do you want to go to the mist country?" she asked
tautly.
"Curiosity. The same motive that sent Cullen up there, I
guess."
"I don't think his motive was curiosity."
"Will you amplify that?"
"I'd rather not," she said.
The conversation sputtered into silence. Talking to her led only
in circles, he thought. This new serenity of hers could be madden-
ing. She told him only what she cared to tell him, playing with
him, seemingly relishing the touch of her sweet contralto voice on
the night air, communicating no information at all. This was not a
Seena he had ever known. The girl he had loved had been resilient
and strong, but not crafty or secretive; there had been an inno-
cence about her that seemed totally lost now. Kurtz might not be
the only fallen angel on this planet.
He said suddenly, "The fourth moon has risen!"
"Yes. Of course. Is that so amazing?"
"One rarely sees four, even in this latitude."
"It happens at least ten times a year. Why waste your awe? In a
little while the fifth one will be up, and—"
Gundersen gasped. "Is that what tonight is?"
"The Night of Five Moons, yes."

Downward to the Earth 425
"No one told me!"
"Perhaps you never asked."
"Twice I missed it because I was at Fire Point. One year I was
at sea, and once I was in the southern mist country, the time that
the copter went down. And so on and on. I managed to see it only
once, Seena, right here, ten years ago, with you. When things were
at their best for us. And now, to come in by accident and have it
happen!"
"I thought you had arranged to be here deliberately. To com-
memorate that other time."
"No. No. Pure coincidence."
"Happy coincidence, then."
"When does it rise?"
"Perhaps an hour."
He watched the four bright dots swimming through the sky. It
was so long ago that he had forgotten where the fifth moon should
be coming from. Its orbit was retrograde, he thought. It was the
most brilliant of the moons, too, with a high-albedo surface of ice,
smooth as a mirror.
Seena filled his glass again. They had finished eating. "Excuse
me," she said. "I'll be back soon."
Alone, he studied the sky and tried to comprehend this
strangely altered Seena, this mysterious woman whose body had
grown more voluptuous and whose soul, it seemed, had turned to
stone. He saw now that the stone had been in her all along: at
their breakup, for example, when he had put in for transfer to
Earth, and she had absolutely refused to leave Holman's World. I
love you, she had said, and I'll always love you, but this is where I
stay. Why? Why? Because I want to stay, she told him. And she
stayed; and he was just as stubborn, and left without her; and they
slept together on the beach beneath the hotel on his last night, so
that the warmth of her body was still on his skin when he boarded
the ship that took him away. She loved him and he loved her, but
they broke apart, for he saw no future on this world, and she saw
all her future on it. And she had married Kurtz. And she had ex-
plored the unknown plateau. And she spoke in a rich deep new
voice, and let alien amoebas clasp her loins, and shrugged at the
news that two nearby Earthmen had died a horrible death. Was
she still Seena, or some subtle counterfeit?
Nildoror sounds drifted out of the darkness. Gundersen heard

426 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
another sound, too, closer by, a kind of stifled snorting grunt that
was wholly unfamiliar to him. It seemed like a cry of pain, though
perhaps that was his imagination. Probably it was one of Seena's
plateau beasts, snuffling around searching for tasty roots in the
garden. He heard it twice more, and then not again.
Time went by and Seena did not return.
Then he saw the fifth moon float placidly into the sky, the size
of a large silver coin, and so bright that it dazzled the eye. About
it the other four danced, two of them mere tiny dots, two of them
more imposing, and the shadows of the moonslight shattered and
shattered again as planes of brilliance intersected. The heavens
poured light upon the land in icy cascades. He gripped the rail of
the veranda and silently begged the moons to hold their pattern;
like Faust he longed to cry out to the fleeting moment, stay, stay
forever, stay, you are beautiful! But the moons shifted, driven by
the unseen Newtonian machinery; he knew that in another hour
two of them would be gone and the magic would ebb. Where was
Seena?
"Edmund?" she said, from behind him.
She was bare, again, and once more the slider was on her body,
covering her loins, sending a long thin projection up to encompass
only the nipple of each ripe breast. The light of the five moons
made her tawny skin glitter and shine. Now she did not seem
coarse to him, nor overly aggressive; she was perfect in her nudity,
and the moment was perfect, and unhesitatingly he went to her.
Quickly he dropped his clothing. He put his hands to her hips,
touching the slider, and the strange creature understood, flowing
obediently from her body, a chastity belt faithless to its task. She
leaned toward him, her breasts swaying like fleshy bells, and he
kissed her, here, here, there, and they sank to the veranda floor, to
the cold smooth stone.
Her eyes remained open, and colder than the floor, colder than
the shifting light of the moons, even at the moment when he en-
tered her.
But there was nothing cold about her embrace. Their bodies
thrashed and tangled, and her skin was soft and her kiss was hun-
gry, and the years rolled away until it was the old time again, the
happy time. At the highest moment he was dimly aware of that
strange grunting sound once more. He clasped her fiercely and let
his eyes close.

Downward to the Earth 427
Afterward they lay side by side, wordless in the moonslight,
until the brilliant fifth moon had completed its voyage across the
sky and the Night of the Five Moons had become as any other
night.

TEN
He slept by himself in one of the guest rooms on the topmost
level of the station. Awakening unexpectedly early, he watched
the sunrise coming over the gorge, and went down to walk through
the gardens, which still were glistening with dew. He strolled as
far as the edge of the river, looking for his nildoror companions;
but they were not to be seen. For a long time he stood beside the
river watching the irresistible downward sweep of that immense
volume of water. Were there fish in the river here, he wondered?
How did they avoid being carried over the brink? Surely anything
once caught up in that mighty flow would have no choice but to
follow the route dictated for it, and be swept toward the terrible
drop.
He went back finally to the station. By the light of morning
Seena's garden seemed less sinister to him. Even the plants and
animals of the plateau appeared merely strange, not menacing;
each geographical district of this world had its own typical fauna
and flora, that was all, and it was not the fault of the plateau's
creatures that man had not chosen to make himself at ease among
them.
A robot met him on the first veranda and offered him breakfast.
"I'll wait for the woman," Gundersen said.
"She will not appear until much later in the morning."
"That's odd. She never used to sleep that much."
"She is with the man," the robot volunteered. "She stays with
him and comforts him at this hour."
"What man?"
"The man Kurtz, her husband."
Gundersen said, amazed, "Kurtz is here at the station?"
"He lies ill in his room."
She said he was away somewhere, Gundersen thought. She
didn't know when he'd be coming back.
Gundersen said, "Was he in his room last night?"
"He was."

Downward to the Earth 429
"How long has he been back from his last journey away from
here?"
"One year at the solstice," the robot said. "Perhaps you should
consult the woman on these matters. She will be with you after a
while. Shall I bring breakfast?"
"Yes," Gundersen said.
But Seena was not long in arriving. Ten minutes after he had
finished the juices, fruits, and fried fish that the robot had brought
him, she appeared on the veranda, wearing a filmy white wrap
through which the contours of her body were evident. She seemed
to have slept well. Her skin was clear and glowing, her stride was
vigorous, her dark hair streamed buoyantly in the morning breeze;
but yet the curiously rigid and haunted expression of her eyes was
unchanged, and clashed with the innocence of the new day.
He said, "The robot told me not to wait breakfast for you. It
said you wouldn't be down for a long while."
"That's all right. I'm not usually down this early, it's true.
Come for a swim?"
"In the river?"
"No, silly!" She stripped away her wrap and ran down the steps
into the garden. He sat frozen a moment, caught up in the rhythms
of her swinging arms, her jouncing buttocks; then he followed her.
At a twist in the path that he had not noticed before she turned to
the left and halted at a circular pool that appeared to have been
punched out of the living rock on the river's flank. As he reached
it, she launched herself in a fine arching dive, and appeared to
hang suspended a moment, floating above the dark water, her
breasts drawn into a startling roundness by gravity's pull. Then
she went under. Before she came up for breath, Gundersen was
naked and in the pool beside her. Even in this mild climate the
water was bitterly cold.
"It comes from an underground spring," she told him. "Isn't it
wonderful? Like a rite of purification."
A gray tendril rose from the water behind her, tipped with rub-
bery claws. Gundersen could find no words to warn her. He
pointed with short stabbing motions of two fingers and made hol-
low chittering noises of horror. A second tendril spiraled out of
the depths and hovered over her. Smiling, Seena turned, and
seemed to fondle some large creature; there was a thrashing in the
water and then the tendrils slipped out of view.
"What was that?"

430 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"The monster of the pool," she said. "Ced Cullen brought it for
me as a birthday present two years ago. It's a plateau medusa.
They live in lakes and sting things."
"How big is it?"
"Oh, the size of a big octopus, I'd say. Very affectionate. I
wanted Ced to catch me a mate for it, but he didn't get around to
it before he went north, and I suppose I'll have to do it myself be-
fore long. The monster's lonely." She pulled herself out of the
pool and sprawled out on a slab of smooth black rock to dry in
the sun. Gundersen followed her. From this side of the pool, with
the light penetrating the water at just the right angle, he was able
to see a massive many-limbed shape far below. Seena's birthday
present.
He said, "Can you tell me where I can find Ced now?"
"In the mist country."
"I know. That's a big place. Any particular part?"
She rolled over onto her back and flexed her knees. Sunlight
made prisms of the droplets of water on her breasts. After a long
silence she said, "Why do you want to find him so badly?"
"I'm making a sentimental journey to see old friends. Ced and I
were very close, once. Isn't that reason enough for me to go look-
ing for him?"
"It's no reason to betray him, is it?"
He stared at her. The fierce eyes now were closed; the heavy
mounds of her breasts rose and fell slowly, serenely. "What do
you mean by that?" he asked.
"Didn't the nildoror put you up to going after him?"
"What kind of crazy talk is that?" he blurted, not sounding con-
vincingly indignant even to himself.
"Why must you pretend?" she said, still speaking from within
that impregnable core of total assurance. "The nildoror want him
brought back from there. By treaty they're prevented from going
up there and getting him themselves. The sulidoror don't feel like
extraditing him. Certainly none of the Earthmen living on this
planet will fetch him. Now, as an outsider you need nildoror per-
mission to enter the mist country, and since you're a stickler for
the rules you probably applied for such permission, and there's no
special reason why the nildoror should grant favors to you unless
you agree to do something for them in return. Eh? Q.E.D."
"Who told you all this?"
"Believe me, I worked it all out for myself."

Downward to the Earth 431
He propped his head on his hand and reached out admiringly
with the other hand to touch her thigh. Her skin was dry and warm
now. He let his hand rest lightly, and then not so lightly, on the
firm flesh. Seena showed no reaction. Softly he said, "Is it too late
for us to make a treaty?"
"What kind?"
"A nonaggression pact. We've been fencing since I got here.
Let's end the hostilities. I've been hiding things from you, and
you've been hiding things from me, and what good is it? Why can't
we simply help one another? We're two human beings on a world
that's much stranger and more dangerous than most people sus-
pect, and if wq can't supply a little mutual aid and comfort, what
are the ties of humanity worth?"
She said quietly,
"Ah, love, let us be true
To one another: for the world, which seems
To he before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new—"
The words of the old poem flowed up from the well of his mem-
ory. His voice cut in:
"—Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight
Where—where—"
" 'Where ignorant armies clash by night,'" she finished for him.
"Yes. How like you it is, Edmund, to fumble your lines just at the
crucial moment, just at the final climax."
"Then there's to be no nonaggression pact?"
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that." She turned toward him,
took his hand from her thigh, pressed it tenderly between her
breasts, brushed her lips against it. "All right, we've been playing
little games. They're over, and now we'll speak only truth, but
you go first. Did the nildoror ask you to bring Ced Cullen out of
the mist country?"
"Yes," Gundersen said. "It was the condition of my entry."
"And you promised you'd do it?"
"I made certain reservations and qualifications, Seena. If he
won't go willingly, I'm not bound by honor to force him. But I do
have to find him, at least. That much I've pledged. So I ask you
again to tell me where I should look."

432 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"I don't know," she said. "I have no idea. He could be any-
where at all up there."
"Is this the truth?"
"The truth," she said, and for a moment the harshness was
gone from her eyes, and her voice was the voice of a woman and
not that of a cello.
"Can you tell me, at least, why he fled, why they want him so
eagerly?"
She was slow in replying. Finally she said, "About a year ago,
he went down into the central plateau on one of his regular col-
lecting trips. He was planning to get me another medusa, he said.
Most of the time I went with him into the plateau, but this time
Kurtz was ill and I had to stay behind. Ced went to a part of the
plateau we had never visited before, and there he found a group of
nildoror taking part in some kind of religious ceremony. He stum-
bled right into them and evidently he profaned the ritual."
"Rebirth?" Gundersen asked.
"No, they do rebirth only in the mist country. This was some-
thing else, something almost as serious, it seems. The nildoror
were furious. Ced barely escaped alive. He came back here and
said he was in great trouble, that the nildoror wanted him, that he
had committed some sort of sacrilege and had to take sanctuary.
Then he went north, with a posse of nildoror chasing him right to
the border. I haven't heard anything since. I have no contact with
the mist country. And that's all I can tell you."
"You haven't told me what sort of sacrilege he committed,"
Gundersen pointed out.
"I don't know it. I don't know what kind of ritual it was, or
what he did to interrupt it. I've told you only as much as he told
me. Will you believe that?"
"I'll believe it," he said. He smiled. "Now let's play another
game, and this time I'll take the lead. Last night you told me that
Kurtz was off on a trip, that you hadn't seen him for a long time
and didn't know when he'd be back. You also said he'd been sick,
but you brushed over that pretty quickly. This morning, the robot
who brought me breakfast said that you'd be late coming down,
because Kurtz was ill and you were with him in his room, as you
were every morning at this time. Robots don't ordinarily lie."
"The robot wasn't lying. I was."
"Why?"
"To shield him from you," Seena said. "He's in very bad shape,

Downward to the Earth 433
and I don't want him to be disturbed. And I knew that if I told
you he was here, you'd want to see him. He isn't strong enough
for visitors. It was an innocent lie, Edmund."
"What's wrong with him?"
"We aren't sure. You know, there isn't much of a medical serv-
ice left on this planet. I've got a diagnostat, but it gave me no use-
ful data when I put him through it. I suppose I could describe his
disease as a kind of cancer. Only cancer isn't what he has."
"Can you describe the symptoms?"
"What's the use? His body began to change. He became some-
thing strange and ugly and frightening, and you don't need to
know the details. If you thought that what had happened to Dyk-
stra and Pauleen was horrible, you'd be rocked to your roots by
Kurtz. But I won't let you see him. It's as much to shield you from
him as the other way around. You'll be better off not seeing him."
Seena sat up, cross-legged on the rock, and began to untangle the
wet snarled strands of her hair. Gundersen thought he had never
seen her looking as beautiful as she looked right at this moment,
clothed only in alien sunlight, her flesh taut and ripe and glowing,
her body supple, full-blown, mature. And the fierceness of her
eyes, the one jarring discordancy? Had that come from viewing,
each morning, the horror that Kurtz now was? She said after a
long while, "Kurtz is being punished for his sins."
"Do you really believe that?"
"I do," she said. "I believe that there are such things as sins,
and that there is retribution for sin."
"And that an old man with a white beard is up there in the sky,
keeping score on everyone, running the show, tallying up an adul-
tery here, a lie there, a spot of gluttony, a little pride?"
"I have no idea who runs the show," said Seena. "I'm not even
sure that anyone does. Don't mislead yourself, Edmund: I'm not
trying to import medieval theology to Belzagor. I won't give you
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and say that all over the
universe certain fundamental principles hold true. I simply say
that here on Belzagor we live in the presence of certain moral ab-
solutes, native to this planet, and if a stranger comes to Belzagor
and transgresses against those absolutes, he'll regret it. This world
is not ours, never was, never will be, and we who live here are in a
constant state of peril, because we don't understand the basic
rules."
"What sins did Kurtz commit?"

434 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"It would take me all morning to name them," she said. "Some
were sins against the nildoror, and some were sins against his own
spirit."
"We all committed sins against the nildoror," Gundersen said.
"In a sense, yes. We were proud and foolish, and we failed to
see them for what they were, and we used them unkindly. That's a
sin, yes, of course, a sin that our ancestors committed all over
Earth long before we went into space. But Kurtz had a greater ca-
pacity for sin than the rest of us, because he was a greater man.
Angels have farther to fall, once they fall."
"What did Kurtz do to the nildoror? Kill them? Dissect them?
Whip them?"
"Those are sins against their bodies," said Seena. "He did
worse."
"Tell me."
"Do you know what used to go on at the serpent station, south
of the spaceport?"
"I was there for a few weeks with Kurtz and Salamone," Gun-
dersen said. "Long ago, when I was very new here, when you were
still a child on Earth. I watched the two of them call serpents out
of the jungle, and milk the raw venom from them, and give the
venom to nildoror to drink. And drink the venom themselves."
"And what happened then?"
He shook his head. "I've never been able to understand it.
When I tried it with them, I had the illusion that the three of us
were turning into nildoror. And that three nildoror had turned
into us. I had a trunk, four legs, tusks, spines. Everything looked
different; I was seeing through nildoror eyes. Then it ended, and I
was in my own body again, and I felt a terrible rush of guilt, of
shame. I had no way of knowing whether it had been a real bodily
metamorphosis or just hallucination."
"It was hallucination," Seena told him. "The venom opened
your mind, your soul, and enabled you to enter the nildor con-
sciousness, at the same time that the nildor was entering yours.
For a little while that nildor thought he was Edmund Gundersen.
Such a dream is great ecstasy to a nildor."
"Is this Kurtz's sin, then? To give ecstasy to nildoror?"
"The serpent venom," Seena said, "is also used in the rebirth
ceremony. What you and Kurtz and Salamone were doing down
there in the jungle was going through a very mild—very mild—ver-
sion of rebirth. And so were the nildoror. But it was blasphemous

Downward to the Earth 435
rebirth for them, for many reasons. First, because it was held in
the wrong place. Second, because it was done without the proper
rituals. Third, because the celebrants who guided the nildoror
were men, not sulidoror, and so the entire thing became a wicked
parody of the most sacred act this planet has. By giving those nil-
doror the venom, Kurtz was tempting them to dabble in something
diabolical, literally diabolical. Few nildoror can resist that tempta-
tion. He found pleasure in the act—both in the hallucinations that
the venom gave him, and in the tempting of the nildoror. I think
that he enjoyed the tempting even more than the hallucinations,
and that was his worst sin, for through it he led innocent nildoror
into what passes for damnation on this planet. In twenty years on
Belzagor he inveigled hundreds, perhaps thousands, of nildoror
into sharing a bowl of venom with him. Finally his presence be-
came intolerable, and his own hunger for evil became the source
of his destruction. And now he lies upstairs, neither living nor
dead, no longer a danger to anything on Belzagor."
"You think that staging the local equivalent of a Black Mass is
what brought Kurtz to whatever destiny it is that you're hiding
from me?"
"I know it," Seena replied. She got to her feet, stretched volup-
tuously, and beckoned to him. "Let's go back to the station now."
As though this were time's first dawn they walked naked
through the garden, close together, the warmth of the sun and the
warmth of her body stirring him and raising a fever in him. Twice
he considered pulling her to the ground and taking her amidst
these alien shrubs, and twice he held back, not knowing why.
When they were a dozen meters from the house he felt desire
climb again, and he turned to her and put his hand on her breast.
But she said, "Tell me one more thing, first."
"If I can."
"Why have you come back to Belzagor? Really. What draws
you to the mist country?"
He said, "If you believe in sin, you must believe in the possi-
bility of redemption from sin."
"Yes."
"Well, then, I have a sin on my conscience, too. Perhaps not as
grave a sin as the sins of Kurtz, but enough to trouble me, and
I've come back here as an act of expiation."
"How have you sinned?" she asked.
"I sinned against the nildoror in the ordinary Earthman way, by

436 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
collaborating in their enslavement, by patronizing them, by failing
to credit their intelligence and their complexity. In particular I
sinned by preventing seven nildoror from reaching rebirth on time.
Do you remember, when the Monroe dam broke, and I comman-
deered those pilgrims for a labor detail? I used a fusion torch to
make them obey, and on my account they missed rebirth. I didn't
know that if they were late for rebirth they'd lose their turn, and if
I had known I wouldn't have thought it mattered. Sin within sin
within sin. I left here feeling stained. Those seven nildoror both-
ered me in my dreams. I realized that I had to come back and try
to cleanse my soul."
"What kind of expiation do you have in mind?" she asked.
His eyes had difficulty meeting hers. He lowered them, but that
was worse, for the nakedness of her unnerved him even more, as
they stood together in the sunlight outside the station. He forced
his glance upward again.
He said, "I've determined to find out what rebirth is, and to
take part in it. I'm going to offer myself to the sulidoror as a can-
didate."
"No."
"Seena, what's wrong? You—"
She trembled. Her cheeks were blazing, and the rush of scarlet
spread even to her breasts. She bit her lip, spun away from him,
and turned back. "It's insanity," she said. "Rebirth isn't something
for Earthmen. Why do you think you can possibly expiate any-
thing by getting yourself mixed up in an alien religion, by surren-
dering yourself to a process none of us knows anything about,
by-"
"I have to, Seena."
"Don't be crazy."
"It's an obsession. You're the first person I've ever spoken to
about it. The nildoror I'm traveling with aren't aware of it. I can't
stop. I owe this planet a life, and I'm here to pay. I have to go, re-
gardless of the consequences."
She said, "Come inside the station with me." Her voice was flat,
mechanical, empty.
"Why?"
"Come inside."
He followed her silently in. She led him to the middle level of
the building, and into a corridor blocked by one of her robot
guardians. At a nod from her the robot stepped aside. Outside a

Downward to the Earth 437
room at the rear she paused and put her hand to the door's
scanner. The door rolled back. Seena gestured to him to walk in
with her.
He heard the grunting, snorting sound that he had heard the
night before, and now there was no doubt in his mind that it had
been a cry of terrible throttled pain.
"This is the room where Kurtz spends his time," Seena said.
She drew a curtain that had divided the room. "And this is
Kurtz," she said.
"It isn't possible," Gundersen murmured. "How—how—"
"How did he get that way?"
"Yes." •
"As he grew older he began to feel remorse for the crimes he
had committed. He suffered greatly in his guilt, and last year he
resolved to undertake an act of expiation. He decided to travel to
the mist country and undergo rebirth. This is what they brought
back to me. This is what a human being looks like, Edmund, when
he's undergone rebirth."

ELEVEN
What Gundersen beheld was apparently human, and probably it
had once even been Jeff Kurtz. The absurd length of the body was
surely Kurtzlike, for the figure in the bed seemed to be a man and
a half long, as if an extra section of vertebrae and perhaps a sec-
ond pair of femurs had been spliced in. The skull was plainly
Kurtz's too: mighty white dome, jutting brow-ridges. The ridges
were even more prominent than Gundersen remembered. They
rose above Kurtz's closed eyes like barricades guarding against
some invasion from the north. But the thick black brows that had
covered those ridges were gone. So were the lush, almost feminine
eyelashes.
Below the forehead the face was unrecognizable.
It was as if everything had been heated in a crucible and al-
lowed to melt and run. Kurtz's fine high-bridged nose was now a
rubbery smear, so snoutlike that Gundersen was jolted by its re-
semblance to a sulidor's. His wide mouth now had slack, pen-
dulous lips that drooped open, revealing toothless gums. His chin
sloped backward in pithecanthropoid style. Kurtz's cheekbones
were flat and broad, wholly altering the planes of his face.
Seena drew the coverlet down to display the rest. The body in
the bed was utterly hairless, a long boiled-looking pink thing like
a giant slug. All superfluous flesh was gone, and the skin lay like a
shroud over plainly visible ribs and muscles. The proportions of
the body were wrong. Kurtz's waist was an impossibly great dis-
tance from his chest, and his legs, though long, were not nearly as
long as they should have been; his ankles seemed to crowd his
knees. His toes had fused, so that his feet terminated in bestial
pads. Perhaps by compensation, his fingers had added extra joints
and were great spidery things that flexed and clenched in irregular
rhythms. The attachment of his arms to his torso appeared
strange, though it was not until Gundersen saw Kurtz slowly ro-
tate his left arm through a 360-degree twist that he realized the
armpit must have been reconstructed into some kind of versatile
ball-and-socket arrangement.

Downward to the Earth 439
Kurtz struggled desperately to speak, blurting words in a lan-
guage Gundersen had never heard. His eyeballs visibly stirred be-
neath his lids. His tongue slipped forth to moisten his lips. Some-
thing like a three-lobed Adam's apple bobbed in his throat. Briefly
he humped his body, drawing the skin tight over curiously broad-
ened bones. He continued to speak. Occasionally an intelligible
word in English or nildororu emerged, embedded in a flow of gib-
berish: "River . . . death . . . lost . . . horror . . . river . . .
cave . . . warm . . . lost . , . warm . . . smash . . . black . . .
go. . . god. . . horror. . . born. . . lost. . . born. . .
"What is he saying?" Gundersen asked.
"No one knows. Even when we can understand the words, he
doesn't make sense. And mostly we can't even understand the
words. He speaks the language of the world where he must live
now. It's a very private language."
"Has he been conscious at all since he's been here?"
"Not really," Seena said. "Sometimes his eyes are open, but he
never responds to anything around him. Come. Look." She went
to the bed and drew Kurtz's eyelids open. Gundersen saw eyes
that had no whites at all. From rim to rim their shining surfaces
were a deep, lustrous black, dappled by random spots of light
blue. He held three fingers up before those eyes and waved his
hand from side to side. Kurtz took no notice. Seena released the
lids, and the eyes remained open, even when the tips of Gunder-
sen's fingers approached quite closely. But as Gundersen withdrew
his hand, Kurtz lifted his right hand and seized Gundersen's wrist.
The grotesquely elongated fingers encircled the wrist completely,
met, and coiled halfway around it again. Slowly and with tremen-
dous strength Kurtz pulled Gundersen down until he was kneeling
beside the bed.
Now Kurtz spoke only in English. As before he seemed to be in
desperate anguish, forcing the words out of some nightmare re-
cess, with no perceptible accenting or punctuation: "Water sleep
death save sleep sleep fire love water dream cold sleep plan rise
fall rise fall rise rise rise." After a moment he added, "Fall." Then
the flow of nonsense syllables returned and the fingers relin-
quished their fierce grip on Gundersen's wrist.
Seena said, "He seemed to be telling us something. I never
heard him speak so many consecutive intelligible words."
"But what was he saying?"
"I can't tell you that. But a meaning was there."

440 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
Gundersen nodded. The tormented Kurtz had delivered his tes-
tament, his blessing: Sleep plan rise fall rise fall rise rise rise. Fall.
Perhaps it even made sense.
"And he reacted to your presence," Seena went on. "He saw
you, he took your arm! Say something to him. See if you can get
his attention again."
"Jeff?" Gundersen whispered, kneeling. "Jeff, do you remember
me? Edmund Gundersen. I've come back, Jeff. Can you hear any-
thing I'm saying? If you understand me, Jeff, raise your right hand
again."
Kurtz did not raise his hand. He uttered a strangled moan, low
and appalling; then his eyes slowly closed and he lapsed into a
rigid silence. Muscles rippled beneath his altered skin. Beads of
acrid sweat broke from his pores. Gundersen got to his feet
shortly and walked away.
"How long was he up there?" he asked.
"Close to half a year. I thought he was dead. Then two suli-
doror brought him back, on a kind of stretcher."
"Changed like this?"
"Changed. And here he lies. He's changed much more than you
imagine," Seena said. "Inside, everything's new and different. He's
got almost no digestive tract at all. Solid food is impossible for
him; I give him fruit juices. His heart has extra chambers. His
lungs are twice as big as they should be. The diagnostat couldn't
tell me a thing, because he didn't correspond to any of the param-
eters for a human body."
"And this happened to him in rebirth?"
"In rebirth, yes. They take a drug, and it changes them. And it
works on humans too. It's the same drug they use on Earth for
organ regeneration, the venom, but here they use a stronger dose
and the body runs wild. If you go up there, Edmund, this is
what'll happen to you."
"How do you know it was rebirth that did this to him?"
"I know."
"How?"
"That's what he said he was going up there for. And the suli-
doror who brought him back said he had undergone rebirth."
"Maybe they were lying. Maybe rebirth is one thing, a
beneficial thing, and there's another thing, a harmful thing, which
they gave to Kurtz because he had been so evil."

Downward to the Earth 441
"You're deceiving yourself," Seena said. "There's only one
process, and this is its result."
"Possibly different people respond differently to the process,
then. If there is only one process. But I still say you can't be sure
that it was rebirth that actually did this to him."
"Don't talk nonsense!"
"I mean it. Maybe something within Kurtz made him turn out
like this, and I'd turn out another way. A better way."
"Do you want to be changed, Edmund?"
"I'd risk it."
"You'd cease to be human!"
"I've tri.ed being human for quite a while. Maybe it's time to try
something else."
"I won't let you go," Seena said.
"You won't? What claim do you have on me?"
"I've already lost Jeff to them. If you go up there too—"
"Yes?"
She faltered. "All right. I've got no way to threaten you. But
don't go."
"I have to."
"You're just like him! Puffed up with the importance of your
own supposed sins. Imagining the need for some kind of ghastly
redemption. It's sick, don't you see? You just want to hurt your-
self, in the worst possible way." Her eyes glittered even more
brightly. "Listen to me. If you need to suffer, I'll help you. You
want me to whip you? Stamp on you? If you've got to play mas-
ochist, I'll play sadist for you. I'll give you all the torment you
want. You can wallow in it. But don't go up mist country. That's
carrying a game too far, Edmund."
"You don't understand, Seena."
"Do you?"
"Perhaps I will, when I come back from there."
"You'll come back like him!" she screamed. She rushed toward
Kurtz's bed. "Look at him! Look at those feet! Look at his eyes!
His mouth, his nose, his fingers, his everything! He isn't human any
more. Do you want to lie there like him—muttering nonsense, liv-
ing in some weird dream all day and all night?"
Gundersen wavered. Kurtz was appalling; was the obsession so
strong on him that he wanted to undergo the same trans-
formation?
"I have to go," he said, less firmly than before.

442 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"He's living in hell," Seena said. "You'll be there too."
She came to Gundersen and pressed herself against him. He felt
the hot tips of her breasts grazing his skin; her hands clawed his
back desperately; her thighs touched his. A great sadness came
over him, for all that Seena once had meant to him, for all that
she had been, for what she had become, for what her life must be
like with this monster to care for. He was shaken by a vision of
the lost and irrecoverable past, of the dark and uncertain present,
of the bleak, frightening future. Again he wavered. Then he gently
pushed her away from him. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm going."
"Why? Why? What a waste!" Tears trickled down her cheeks.
"If you need a religion," she said, "pick an Earth religion. There's
no reason why you have to—"
"There is a reason," Gundersen said. He drew her close to him
again and very lightly kissed her eyelids, and then her lips. Then he
kissed her between the breasts and released her. He walked over to
Kurtz and stood for a moment looking down, trying to come to
terms with the man's bizarre metamorphosis. Now he noticed
something he had not observed earlier: the thickened texture of
the skin of Kurtz's back, as if dark little plaques were sprouting on
both sides of his spine. No doubt there were many other changes
as well, apparent only on a close inspection. Kurtz's eyes opened
once again, and the black glossy orbs moved, as if seeking to meet
Gundersen's eyes. He stared down at them, at the pattern of blue
speckles against the shining solid background. Kurtz said, amidst
many sounds Gundersen could not comprehend, "Dance . . • live
. . . seek. . . die. . . die."
It was time to leave.
Walking past the motionless, rigid Seena, Gundersen went out
of the room. He stepped onto the veranda and saw that his five
nildoror were gathered outside the station, in the garden, with a
robot uneasily watching lest they begin ripping up the rarities for
fodder. Gundersen called out, and Srin'gahar looked up.
"I'm ready," Gundersen said. "We can leave as soon as I have
my things."
He found his clothes and prepared to depart. Seena came to
him again: she was dressed in a clinging black robe, and her slider
was wound around her left arm. Her face was bleak. He said, "Do
you have any messages for Ced Cullen, if I find him?"
"I have no messages for anyone."

Downward to the Earth 443
"All right. Thanks for the hospitality, Seena. It was good to see
you again."
"The next time I see you," she said, "you won't know who I
am. Or who you are."
"Perhaps."
He left her and went to the nildoror. Srin'gahar silently ac-
cepted the burden of him. Seena stood on the veranda of the sta-
tion, watching them move away. She did not wave, nor did he. In
a little while he could no longer see her. The procession moved
out along the bank of the river, past the place where Kurtz had
danced all night with the nildoror so many years ago.
Kurtz. Closing his eyes, Gundersen saw the glassy blind stare,
the lofty forehead, the flattened face, the wasted flesh, the twisted
legs, the deformed feet. Against that he placed his memories of the
old Kurtz, that graceful and extraordinary-looking man, so tall
and slender, so self-contained. What demons had driven Kurtz, in
the end, to surrender his body and his soul to the priests of re-
birth? How long had the reshaping of Kurtz taken, and had he felt
any pain during the process, and how much awareness did he now
have of his own condition? What had Kurtz said? I am Kurtz who
toyed with your souls, and now I offer you my own? Gundersen
had never heard Kurtz speak in any tone but that of sardonic de-
tachment; how could Kurtz have displayed real emotion, fear,
remorse, guilt? I am Kurtz the sinner, take me and deal with me as
you wish. I am Kurtz the fallen. I am Kurtz the damned. I am
Kurtz, and I am yours. Gundersen imagined Kurtz lying in some
misty northern valley, his bones softened by the elixirs of the
sulidoror, his body dissolving, becoming a pink jellied lump which
now was free to seek a new form, to strive toward an altered
kurtzness that would be cleansed of its old satanic impurities. Was
it presumptuous to place himself in the same class as Kurtz, to
claim the same spiritual shortcomings, to go forward to meet that
same terrible destiny? Was Seena not right, that this was a game,
that he was merely playing at masochistic self-dramatization,
electing himself the hero of a tragic myth, burdened by the obses-
sion to undertake an alien pilgrimage? But the compulsion seemed
real enough to him, and not at all a pretense. I will go, Gundersen
told himself. I am not Kurtz, but I will go, because I must go. In
the distance, receding but yet powerful, the roar and throb of the
waterfall still sounded, and as the rushing water hurtled down the

444 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
face of the cliff it seemed to drum forth the words of Kurtz, the
warning, the blessing, the threat, the prophecy, the curse: water
sleep death save sleep sleep fire love water dream cold sleep plan
rise fall rise fall rise rise rise.
Fall.

TWELVE
For administrative purposes, the Earthmen during their years of
occupation of Holman's World had marked off boundaries arbi-
trarily here and here and here, choosing this parallel of latitude,
that meridian of longitude, to encompass a district or sector. Since
Belzagor itself knew nothing of parallels of latitude nor of other
human measures and boundaries, those demarcations by now
existed only in the archives of the Company and in the memories
of the dwindling human population of the planet. But one bound-
ary was far from arbitrary, and its power still held: the natural
line dividing the tropics from the mist country. On one side of that
line lay the tropical highlands, sunbathed, fertile, forming the
upper limit of the central band of lush vegetation that stretched
down to the torrid equatorial jungle. On the other side of that line,
only a few kilometers away, the clouds of the north came rolling
in, creating the white world of the mists. The transition was sharp
and, for a newcomer, even terrifying. One could explain it pro-
saically enough in terms of Belzagor's axial tilt and the effect that
had on the melting of polar snows; one could speak learnedly of
the huge icecaps in which so much moisture was locked, icecaps
that extended so far into the temperate zones of the planet that the
warmth of the tropics was able to nibble at them, liberating great
masses of water-vapor that swirled upward, curved poleward, and
returned to the icecaps as regenerating snow; one could talk of the
clash of climates and of the resulting marginal zones that were
neither hot nor cold, and forever shrouded in the dense clouds
born of that clash. But even these explanations did not prepare
one for the initial shock of crossing the divide. One had a few
hints: stray tufts of fog that drifted across the boundary and blot-
ted out broad patches of the tropical highlands until the midday
sun burned them away. Yet the actual change, when it came, was
so profound, so absolute, that it stunned the spirit. On other
worlds one grew accustomed to an easy transition from climate to
climate, or else to an unvarying global climate; one could not eas-

446 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
ily accept the swiftness of the descent from warmth and ease to
chill and bleakness that came here.
Gundersen and his nildoror companions were still some kilome-
ters short of that point of change when a party of sulidoror came
out of the bush and stopped them. They were border guards, he
knew. There was no formal guard system, nor any other kind of
governmental or quasi-governmental organization; but sulidoror
nevertheless patrolled the border and interrogated those who
wished to cross it. Even in the time of the Company the juris-
diction of the sulidoror had been respected, after a fashion: it
might have cost too much effort to override it, and so the few
Earthmen bound for the mist-country stations obligingly halted
and stated their destinations before going on.
Gundersen took no part in the discussion. The nildoror and the
sulidoror drew to one side, leaving him alone to contemplate the
lofty banks of white mist on the northern horizon. There seemed
to be trouble. One tall, sleek young sulidor pointed several times
at Gundersen and spoke at length; Srin'gahar replied in a few syl-
lables, and the sulidor appeared to grow angry, striding back and
forth and vehemently knocking bark from trees with swipes of his
huge claws. Srin'gahar spoke again, and then some agreement was
reached; the angry sulidor stalked off into the forest and Srin'ga-
har beckoned to Gundersen to remount. Guided by the two suli-
doror who remained, they resumed the northward march.
"What was the argument about?" Gundersen asked.
"Nothing."
"But he seemed very angry."
"It did not matter," said Srin'gahar.
"Was he trying to keep me from crossing the boundary?"
"He felt you should not go across," Srin'gahar admitted.
"Why? I have a many-born's permission."
"This was a personal grudge, friend of my journey. The sulidor
claimed that you had offended him in time past. He knew you
from the old days."
"That's impossible," Gundersen said. "I had hardly any contact
at all with sulidoror back then. They never came out of the mist
country and I scarcely ever went into it. I doubt that I spoke a
dozen words to sulidoror in eight years on this world."
"The sulidor was not wrong in remembering that he had had
contact with you," said Srin'gahar gently. "I must tell you that
there are reliable witnesses to the event."

Downward to the Earth 447
"When? Where?"
"It was a long time ago," Srin'gahar said. The nildor appeared
content with that vague answer, for he offered no other details.
After a few moments of silence he added, "The sulidor had good
reason to be unhappy with you, I think. But we told him that you
meant to atone for all of your past deeds, and in the end he
yielded. The sulidoror often are a stubborn and vindictive race."
"What did I do to him?" Gundersen demanded.
"We do not need to talk of such things," replied Srin'gahar.
Since the nildor then retreated into impermeable silence, Gun-
dersen had ample time to ponder the grammatical ambiguities of
that last sentence. On the basis of its verbal content alone, it might
have meant "It is useless to talk of such things," or "It would be
embarrassing to me to talk of such things," or "It is improper to
talk of such things," or "It is tasteless to talk of such things."
Only with the aid of the supplementary gestures, the movements
of the crest-spines, the trunk, the ears, could the precise meaning
be fathomed, and Gundersen had neither the skill nor the right po-
sition for detecting those gestures. He was puzzled, for he had no
recollection of ever having given offense to a sulidor, and could
not comprehend how he might have done it even indirectly or
unknowingly; but after a while he concluded that Srin'gahar was
deliberately being cryptic, and might be speaking in parables too
subtle or too alien for an Earthman's mind to catch. In any case
the sulidor had withdrawn his mysterious objections to Gunder-
sen's journey, and the mist country was only a short distance
away. Already the foliage of the jungle trees was more sparse than
it had been a kilometer or two back, and the trees themselves were
smaller and more widely spaced. Pockets of heavy fog now were
more frequent. In many places the sandy yellow soil was wholly
exposed. Yet the air was warm and clear and the underbrush
profuse, and the bright golden sun was reassuringly visible; this
was still unmistakably a place of benign and even commonplace
climate.
Abruptly Gundersen felt a cold wind out of the north, signaling
change. The path wound down a slight incline, and when it rose
on the far side he looked over a hummock into a broad field of
complete desolation, a nothing's-land between the jungle and the
mist country. No tree, no shrub, no moss grew here; there was
only the yellow soil, covered with a sprinkling of pebbles. Beyond
this sterile zone Gundersen was confronted by a white palisade

448 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
fiercely glittering with reflected sunlight; seemingly it was a cliff of
ice hundreds of meters high that barred the way as far as he could
see. In the extreme distance, behind and above this white wall,
soared the tip of a high-looming mountain, pale red in color,
whose rugged spires and peaks and parapets stood forth sharply
and strangely against an iron-gray sky. Everything appeared larger
than life, massive, monstrous, excessive.
"Here you must walk by yourself," said Srin'gahar. "I regret
this, but it is the custom. I can carry you no farther."
Gundersen clambered down. He was not unhappy about the
change; he felt that he should go to rebirth under his own power,
and he had grown abashed at sitting astride Srin'gahar for so
many hundreds of kilometers. But unexpectedly he found himself
panting after no more than fifty meters of walking beside the five
nildoror. Their pace was slow and stately, but the air here, evi-
dently, was thinner than he knew. He forced himself to hide his
distress. He would go on. He felt light-headed, oddly buoyant, and
he would master the pounding in his chest and the throbbing in his
temples. The new chill in the air was invigorating in its austerity.
They were halfway across the zone of emptiness, and Gundersen
now could clearly tell that what had appeared to be a solid white
barrier stretching across the world was in fact a dense wall of mist
at ground level. Outlying strands of that mist kissed his face. At
its clammy touch images of death stirred in his mind, skulls and
tombs and coffins and veils, but they did not dismay him. He
looked toward the rose-red mountain dominating the land far to
the north, and as he did so the clouds that lay over the mist coun-
try parted, permitting the sun to strike the mountain's highest
peak, a snowy dome of great expanse, and it seemed to him then
that the face of Kurtz, transfigured, serene, looked down at him
out of that smooth rounded peak.
From the whiteness ahead emerged the figure of a giant old
sulidor: Na-sinisul, keeping the promise he had made to be their
guide. The sulidoror who had accompanied them this far ex-
changed a few words with Na-sinisul and trudged off back toward
the jungle belt. Na-sinisul gestured. Walking alongside Srin'gahar,
Gundersen went forward.
In a few minutes the procession entered the mist.
He did not find the mist so solid once he was within it. Much of
the time he could see for twenty or thirty or even fifty meters in
any direction. There were occasional inexplicable vortices of fog

Downward to the Earth 449
that were much thicker in texture, and in which he could barely
make out the green bulk of Srin'gahar beside him, but these were
few and quickly traversed. The sky was gray and sunless; at mo-
ments the solar ball could be discerned as a vague glow behind the
clouds. The landscape was one of raw rock, bare soil, and low
trees—practically a tundra, although the air was merely chilly and
not really cold. Many of the trees were of species also found in the
south, but here they were dwarfed and distorted, sometimes not
having the form of trees at all, but running along the ground like
woody vines. Those trees that stood upright were no taller than
Gundersen, and gray moss draped every branch. Beads of mois-
ture dotted their leaves, their stems, the outcroppings of rock, and
everything else.
No one spoke. They marched for perhaps an hour, until Gun-
dersen's back was bowed and his feet were numb. The ground
sloped imperceptibly upward; the air seemed to grow steadily thin-
ner; the temperature dropped quite sharply as the day neared its
end. The dreary envelope of low-lying fog, endless and all-en-
gulfing, exacted a toll on Gundersen's spirit. When he had seen
that band of mist from outside, glittering brilliantly in the sunlight,
it had stirred and excited him, but now that he was inside it he felt
small cheer. All color and warmth had drained from the universe.
He could not even see the glorious rose-red mountain from here.
Like a mechanical man, he went onward, sometimes even forc-
ing himself into a trot to keep up with the others. Na-sinisul set a
formidable pace, which the nildoror had no difficulty in meeting,
but which pushed Gundersen to his limits. He was shamed by the
loudness of his own gasps and grunts, though no one else took no-
tice of them. His breath hung before his face, fog within fog. He
wanted desperately to rest. He could not bring himself to ask the
others to halt a while and wait for him, though. This was their pil-
grimage; he was merely the self-invited guest.
A dismal dusk began to descend. The grayness grew more gray,
and the faint hint of sunlight that had been evident now di-
minished. Visibility lessened immensely. The air became quite
cold. Gundersen, dressed for jungle country, shivered. Something
that had never seemed important to him before now suddenly per-
turbed him: the alienness of the atmosphere. Belzagor's air, not
only in the mist country but in all regions, was not quite the
Earthnorm mix, for there was a trifle too much nitrogen and just a
slight deficiency in oxygen; and the residual impurities were

450 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
different as well. But only a highly sensitive olfactory system
would notice anything amiss. Gundersen, conditioned to Bel-
zagor's air by his years of service here, had had no awareness of a
difference. Now he did. His nostrils reported a sinister metallic
tang; the back of his throat, he believed, was coated with some
dark grime. He knew it was a foolish illusion born of fatigue. Yet
for a few minutes he found himself trying to reduce his intake of
breath, as though it was safest to let as little of the dangerous stuff
as possible into his lungs.
He did not stop fretting over the atmosphere and other discom-
forts until the moment when he realized he was alone.
The nildoror were nowhere to be seen. Neither was Na-sinisul.
Mist engulfed everything. Stunned, Gundersen rolled back the
screen of his memory and saw that he must have been separated
from his companions for several minutes, without regarding it as
in any way remarkable. By now they might be far ahead of him on
some other road.
He did not call out.
He yielded first to the irresistible and dropped to his knees to
rest. Squatting, he pressed his hands to his face, then put his
knuckles to the cold ground and let his head loll forward while he
sucked in air. It would have been easy to sprawl forward alto-
gether and lose consciousness. They might find him sleeping in the
morning. Or frozen in the morning. He struggled to rise, and suc-
ceeded on the third attempt.
"Srin'gahar?" he said. He whispered it, making only a private
appeal for help.
Dizzy with exhaustion, he rushed forward, stumbling, sliding,
colliding with trees, catching his feet in the undergrowth. He saw
what was surely a nildor to his left and ran toward it, but when he
clutched its flank he found it wet and icy, and he realized that he
was grasping a boulder. He flung himself away from it. Just be-
yond, a file of massive shapes presented themselves: the nildoror
marching past him? "Wait?" he called, and ran, and felt the shock
at his ankles as he plunged blindly into a shallow frigid rivulet. He
fell, landing on hands and knees in the water. Grimly he crawled
to the far bank and lay there, recognizing the dark blurred shapes
now as those of low, broad trees whipped by a rising wind. All
right, he thought. I'm lost. I'll wait right here until morning. He
huddled into himself, trying to wring the cold water from his
clothes.

Downward to the Earth 451
The night came, blackness in place of grayness. He sought
moons overhead and found none. A terrible thirst consumed him,
and he tried to creep back to the brook, but he could not even find
that. His fingers were numb; his lips were cracking. But he discov-
ered an island of calm within his discomfort and fear, and clung to
it, telling himself that none of what was happening was truly peril-
ous and that all of it was somehow necessary.
Unknown hours later, Srin'gahar and Na-sinisul came to him.
First Gundersen felt the soft probing touch of Srin'gahar's trunk
against his cheek. He recoiled and flattened himself on the ground,
relaxing slowly as he realized what it was that had brushed his
skin. Far above, the nildor said, "Here he is."
"Alive?" Na-sinisul asked, dark voice coming from worlds
away, swaddled in layers of fog.
"Alive. Wet and cold. Edmundgundersen, can you stand up?"
"Yes. I'm all right, I think." Shame flooded his spirit. "Have
you been looking for me all this time?"
"No," said Na-sinisul blandly. "We continued on to the village.
There we discussed your absence. We could not be sure if you
were lost or had separated yourself from us with a purpose. And
then Srin'gahar and I returned. Did you intend to leave us?"
"I got lost," Gundersen said miserably.
Even now he was not permitted to ride the nildor. He staggered
along between Srin'gahar and Na-sinisul, now and then clutching
the sulidor's thick fur or grasping the nildor's smooth haunch,
steadying himself whenever he felt his strength leaving him or
whenever the unseen footing grew difficult. In time lights glim-
mered in the dark, a pale lantern glow coming milkily through the
fogbound blackness. Dimly Gundersen saw the shabby huts of a
sulidor village. Without waiting for an invitation he lurched into
the nearest of the ramshackle log structures. It was steep-walled,
musty-smelling, with strings of dried flowers and the bunched
skins of animals suspended from the rafters. Several seated suli-
doror looked at him with no show of interest. Gundersen warmed
himself and dried his clothing; someone brought him a bowl of
sweet, thick broth, and a little while afterward he was offered
some strips of dried meat, which were difficult to bite and chew
but extraordinarily well flavored. Dozens of sulidoror came and
went. Once, when the flap of hide covering the door was left open,
he caught sight of his nildoror sitting just outside the hut. A tiny
fierce-faced animal, fog-white and wizened, skittered up to him

452 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
and inspected him with disdain: some northern beast, he sup-
posed, that the sulidoror favored as pets. The creature plucked at
Gundersen's still soggy clothing and made a cackling sound. Its
tufted ears twitched; its sharp little fingers probed his sleeve; its
long prehensile tail curled and uncurled. Then it leaped into Gun-
dersen's lap, seized his arm with quick claws, and nipped his flesh.
The bite was no more painful than the pricking of a mosquito, but
Gundersen wondered what hideous alien infection he would now
contract. He made no move to push the little animal away, how-
ever. Suddenly a great sulidor paw descended, claws retracted, and
knocked the beast across the room with a sweeping swing. The
massive form of Na-sinisul lowered itself into a crouch next to
Gundersen; the ejected animal chattered its rage from a far corner.
Na-sinisul said, "Did the munzor bite you?"
"Not deeply. Is it dangerous?"
"No harm will come to you," said the sulidor. "We will punish
the animal."
"I hope you won't. It was only playing."
"It must learn that guests are sacred," said Na-sinisul firmly.
He leaned close. Gundersen was aware of the sulidor's fishy
breath. Huge fangs gaped in the deep-muzzled mouth. Quietly Na-
sinisul said, "This village will house you until you are ready to go
on. I must leave with the nildoror, and continue to the mountain
of rebirth."
"Is that the big red mountain north of here?"
"Yes. Their time is very close, and so is mine. I will see them
through their rebirths, and then my turn will come."
"Sulidoror undergo rebirth too, then?"
Na-sinisul seemed surprised. "How else could it be?"
"I don't know. I know so little about all of this."
"If sulidoror were not reborn," said Na-sinisul, "then nildoror
could not be reborn. One is inseparable from the other."
"In what way?"
"If there were no day, could there be night?"
That was too cryptic. Gundersen attempted to press for an ex-
planation, but Na-sinisul had come to speak of other matters.
Avoiding the Earthman's questions, the sulidor said, "They tell
me that you have come to our country to speak with a man of
your own people, the man Cullen. Is that so?"
"It is. It's one of the reasons I'm here, anyway."
"The man Cullen lives three villages north of here, and one

Downward to the Earth 453
village to the west. He has been informed that you have arrived,
and he summons you. Sulidoror of this village will conduct you to
him when you wish to leave."
"I'll leave in the morning," Gundersen said.
"I must declare one thing to you first. The man Cullen has
taken refuge among us, and so he is sacred. There can be no hope
of removing him from our country and delivering him to the nil-
doror."
"I ask only to speak with him."
"That may be done. But your treaty with the nildoror is known
to us. You must remember that you can fulfill that treaty only by
a breach of-our hospitality."
Gundersen made no reply. He did not see how he could prom-
ise anything of this nature to Na-sinisul without at the same time
forswearing his promise to the many-born Vol'himyor. So he
clung to his original inner treaty: he would speak with Cedric
Cullen, and then he would decide how to act. But it disturbed him
that the sulidoror were already aware of his true purpose in seek-
ing Cullen.
Na-sinisul left him. Gundersen attempted to sleep, and for a
while he achieved an uneasy doze. But the lamps flickered all
night in the sulidor hut, and lofty sulidoror strode back and forth
noisily around and about him, and the nildoror just outside the
building engaged in a long debate of which Gundersen could catch
only a few meaningless syllables. Once Gundersen awoke to find
the little long-eared munzor sitting on his chest and cackling.
Later in the night three sulidoror hacked up a bloody carcass just
next to the place where Gundersen huddled. The sounds of the
rending of flesh awakened him briefly, but he slipped back into his
troubled sleep, only to wake again when a savage quarrel erupted
over the division of the meat. When the bleak gray dawn came,
Gundersen felt more tired than if he had not slept at all.
He was given breakfast. Two young sulidoror, Se-holomir and
Yi-gartigok, announced that they had been chosen to escort him
to the village where Cullen was staying. Na-sinisul and the five nil-
doror prepared to leave for the mountain of rebirth. Gundersen
made his farewells to his traveling companions.
"I wish you joy of your rebirth," he said, and watched as the
huge shapes moved off into the mist.
Not long afterward he resumed his own journey. His new guides

454 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
were taciturn and aloof: just as well, for he wanted no conver-
sation as he struggled through this hostile country. He needed to
think. He was not sure at all what he would do after he had seen
Cullen; his original plan of undergoing rebirth, which had seemed
so noble in the abstract, now struck him as the highest folly—not
only because of what Kurtz had become, but because he saw it as
a trespass, an unspontaneous and self-conscious venture into the
rites of an alien species. Go to the rebirth mountain, yes. Satisfy
your curiosity. But submit to rebirth? For the first time he was
genuinely unsure whether he would, and more than half suspicious
that in the end he would draw back, unreborn.
The tundra of the border zone was giving way now to forest
country which seemed a curious inversion to him: trees growing
larger here in higher latitudes. But these were different trees. The
dwarfed and twisted shrubs to his rear were natives of the jungle,
making an unhappy adaptation to the mist; here, deeper in the
mist country, true northern trees grew. They were thick-boled and
lofty, with dark corrugated bark and tiny sprays of needle-like
leaves. Fog shrouded their upper branches. Through this cold and
misty forest too there ran lean, straggly animals, long-nosed and
bony, which erupted from holes in the ground and sped up the
sides of trees, evidently in quest of bough-dwelling rodents and
birds. Broad patches of ground were covered with snow here, al-
though summer was supposedly approaching in this hemisphere.
On the second night northward there came a hailstorm when a
dense and tossing cloud of ice rode roward them on a thin whining
wind. Mute and glum, Gundersen's companions marched on
through it, and so did he, not enjoying it.
Generally now the mist was light at ground level, and often
there was none at all for an hour or more, but it congealed far
overhead as an unbroken veil, hiding the sky. Gundersen became
accustomed to the barren soil, the angular branches of so many
bare trees, the chilly penetrating dampness that was so different
from the jungle's humidity. He came to find beauty in the
starkness. When fleecy coils of mist drifted like ghosts across a
wide gray stream, when furry beasts sprinted over glazed fields of
ice, when some hoarse ragged cry broke the incredible stillness,
when the marchers turned an angle in the path and came upon a
white tableau of harsh wintry emptiness, Gundersen responded
with a strange kind of delight. In the mist country, he thought, the

Downward to the Earth 455
hour is always the hour just after dawn, when everything is clean
and new.
On the fourth day Se-holomir said, "The village you seek lies
behind the next hill."

THIRTEEN
It was a substantial settlement, forty huts or more arranged in
two rows, flanked on one side by a grove of soaring trees and on
the other by a broad silvery-surfaced lake. Gundersen approached
the village through the trees, with the lake shining beyond. A light
fall of snowflakes wandered through the quiet air. The mists were
high just now, thickening to an impenetrable ceiling perhaps five
hundred meters overhead.
"The man Cullen—?" Gundersen asked.
Cullen lay in a hut beside the lake. Two sulidoror guarded the
entrance, stepping aside at a word from Yi-gartigok; two sulidoror
more stood at the foot of the pallet of twigs and hides on which
Cullen rested. They too stepped aside, revealing a burned-out
husk of a man, a remnant, a cinder.
"Are you here to fetch me?" Cullen asked. "Well, Gundy,
you're too late."
Cullen's golden hair had turned white and gone coarse; it was a
tangled snowy mat through which patches of pale blotched scalp
showed. His eyes, once a gentle liquid green, now were muddy
and dull, with angry bloodshot streaks in the yellowed whites. His
face was a mask of skin over bones, and the skin was flaky and
rough. A blanket covered him from the chest down, but the severe
emaciation of his arms indicated that the rest of his body probably
was similarly eroded. Of the old Cullen little seemed to remain ex-
cept the mild, pleasant voice and the cheerful smile, now gro-
tesque emerging from the ravaged face. He looked like a man of a
hundred years.
"How long have you been this way?" Gundersen demanded.
"Two months. Three, I don't know. Time melts here, Gundy.
But there's no going back for me now. This is where I stop. Ter-
minal. Terminal."
Gundersen knelt by the sick man's pallet. "Are you in pain?
Can I give you something?"
"No pain," Cullen said. "No drugs. Terminal."
"What do you have?" Gundersen asked, thinking of Dykstra

Downward to the Earth 457
and his woman lying gnawed by alien larvae in a pool of muck,
thinking of Kurtz anguished and transformed at Shangri-la Falls,
thinking of Seena's tale of Gio' Salamone turned to crystal. "A na-
tive disease? Something you picked up around here?"
"Nothing exotic," said Cullen. "I'd guess it's the old inward rot,
the ancient enemy. The crab, Gundy. The crab. In the gut. The
crab's pincers are in my gut."
"Then you are in pain?"
"No," Cullen said. "The crab moves slowly. A nip here, a nip
there. Each day there's a little less of me. Some days I feel that
there's nothing left of me at all. This is one of the better days."
"Listen," .Gundersen said, "I could get you downriver to
Seena's place in a week. She's bound to have a medical kit, a
spare tube of anticarcin for you. You aren't so far gone that we
couldn't manage a remission if we act fast, and then we could ship
you to Earth for template renewal, and—"
"No. Forget it."
"Don't be absurd! We aren't living in the Middle Ages, Ced.
A case of cancer is no reason for a man to lie down in a filthy hut
and wait to die. The sulidoror will set up a litter for you. I can ar-
range it in five minutes. And then—"
"I wouldn't ever reach Seena's, and you know it," Cullen said
softly. "The nildoror would pick me up the moment I came out of
the mist country. You know that, Gundy. You have to know
that."
"Well-"
"I don't have the energy to play these games. You're aware,
aren't you, that I'm the most wanted man on this planet?"
"I suppose so."
"Were you sent here to fetch me?"
"The nildoror asked me to bring you back," Gundersen admit-
ted. "I had to agree to it in order to get permission to come up
here."
"Of course." Bitterly.
"But I stipulated that I wouldn't bring you out unless you'd
come willingly," Gundersen said. "Along with certain other stipu-
lations. Look, Ced, I'm not here as Judas. I'm traveling for rea-
sons of my own, and seeing you is strictly a side-venture. But I
want to help you. Let me bring you down to Seena's so you can
get the treatment that you have to—"

458 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"I told you," Cullen said, "the nildoror would grab me as soon
as they had a chance."
"Even if they knew you were mortally ill and being taken down
to the falls for medical care?"
"Especially so. They'd love to save my soul as I lay dying. I
won't give them the satisfaction, Gundy. I'm going to stay here,
safe, beyond their reach, and wait for the crab to finish with me. It
won't be long now. Two days, three, a week, perhaps even tonight.
I appreciate your desire to rescue me. But I won't go."
"If I got a promise from the nildoror to let you alone until you
were able to undergo treat—"
"I won't go. You'd have to force me. And that's outside the
scope of your promise to the nildoror, isn't it?" Cullen smiled for
the first time in some minutes. "There's a flask of wine in the
corner there. Be a good fellow."
Gundersen went to get it. He had to walk around several suli-
doror. His colloquy with Cullen had been so intense, so private,
that he had quite forgotten that the hut was full of sulidoror: his
two guides, Cullen's guards, and at least half a dozen others. He
picked up the wine and carried it to the pallet. Cullen, his hand
trembling, nevertheless managed not to spill any. When he had
had his fill, he offered the flask to Gundersen, asking him so in-
sistently to drink that Gundersen could not help but accept. The
wine was warm and sweet.
"Is it agreed," Cullen said, "that you won't make any attempt
to take me out of this village? I know you wouldn't seriously con-
sider handing me over to the nildoror. But you might decide to get
me out of here for the sake of saving my life. Don't do that either,
because the effect would be the same: the nildoror would get me. I
stay here. Agreed?"
Gundersen was silent a while. "Agreed," he said finally.
Cullen looked relieved. He lay back, face toward the wall, and
said, "I wish you hadn't wasted so much of my energy on that one
point. We have so much more to talk about. And now I don't
have the strength."
"I'll come back later. Rest, now."
"No. Stay here. Talk to me. Tell me where you've been all
these years, why you came back here, who you've seen, what
you've done. Give me the whole story. I'll rest while I'm listening.
And afterward—and afterward—"
Cullen's voice faded. It seemed to Gundersen that he had

Downward to the Earth 459
slipped into unconsciousness, or perhaps merely sleep. Cullen's
eyes were closed; his breath was slow and labored. Gundersen
remained silent. He paced the hut uneasily, studying the hides
tacked to the walls, the crude furniture, the debris of old meals.
The sulidoror ignored him. Now there were eight in the hut, keep-
ing their distance from the dying man and yet focusing all their at-
tention on him. Momentarily Gundersen was unnerved by the
presence of these giant two-legged beasts, these nightmare crea-
tures with fangs and claws and thick tails and drooping snouts,
who came and went and moved about as though he were less than
nothing to them. He gulped more wine, though he found the tex-
ture and flavor of it unpleasant.
Cullen said, eyes still shut, "I'm waiting. Tell me things."
Gundersen began to speak. He spoke of his eight years on
Earth, collapsing them into six curt sentences. He spoke of the
restlessness that had come over him on Earth, of his cloudy and
mystifying compulsion to return to Belzagor, of the sense of a
need to find a new structure for his life now that he had lost the
scaffolding that the Company had been for him. He spoke of his
journey through the forest to the lakeside encampment, and of
how he had danced among the nildoror, and how they had wrung
from him the qualified promise to bring them Cullen. He spoke of
Dykstra and his woman in their forest ruin, editing the tale some-
what in respect for Cullen's own condition, though he suspected
that such charity was unnecessary. He spoke of being with Seena
again on the Night of Five Moons. He spoke of Kurtz and how he
had been changed through rebirth. He spoke of his pilgrimage into
the mist country.
He was certain at least three times that Cullen had fallen
asleep, and once he thought that the sick man's breathing had
ceased altogether. Each time Gundersen paused, though, Cullen
gave some faint indication—a twitch of the mouth, a flick of the
fingertips—that he should go on. At the end, when Gundersen had
nothing left to say, he stood in silence a long while waiting for
some new sign from Cullen, and at last, faintly, Cullen said,
"Then?"
"Then I came here."
"And where do you go after here?"
"To the mountain of rebirth," said Gundersen quietly.
Cullen's eyes opened. With a nod he asked that his pillows be

460 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
propped up, and he sat forward, locking his fingers into his cover-
let. "Why do you want to go there?" he asked.
"To find out what kind of thing rebirth is."
"You saw Kurtz?"
"Yes."
"He also wanted to learn more about rebirth," Cullen said. "He
already understood the mechanics of it, but he had to know its in-
wardness as well. To try it for himself. It wasn't just curiosity, of
course. Kurtz had spiritual troubles. He was courting self-immola-
tion because he'd persuaded himself he needed to atone for his
whole life. Quite true, too. Quite true. So he went for rebirth. The
sulidoror obliged him. Well, behold the man. I saw him just before
I came north."
"For a while I thought I might try rebirth also," said Gunder-
sen, caught unawares by the words surfacing in his mind. "For the
same reasons. The mixture of curiosity and guilt. But I think I've
given the idea up now. I'll go to the mountain to see what they do,
but I doubt that I'll ask them to do it to me."
"Because of the way Kurtz looks?"
"Partly. And also because my original plan looks too—well, too
willed. Too unspontaneous. An intellectual choice, not an act of
faith. You can't just go up there and volunteer for rebirth in a
coldly scientific way. You have to be driven to it."
"As Kurtz was?" Cullen asked.
"Exactly."
"And as you aren't?"
"I don't know any longer," Gundersen said. "I thought I was
driven, too. I told Seena I was. But somehow, now that I'm so
close to the mountain, the whole quest has started to seem
artificial to me."
"You're sure you aren't just afraid to go through with it?"
Gundersen shrugged. "Kurtz wasn't a pretty sight."
"There are good rebirths and bad rebirths," Cullen said. "He
had a bad rebirth. How it turns out depends on the quality of
one's soul, I gather, and on a lot of other things. Give us some
more wine, will you?"
Gundersen extended the flask. Cullen, who appeared to be gain-
ing strength, drank deeply.
"Have you been through rebirth?" Gundersen asked.
"Me? Never. Never even tempted. But I know a good deal

Downward to the Earth 461
about it. Kurtz wasn't the first of us to try it, of course. At least a
dozen went before him."
"Who?"
Cullen mentioned some names. They were Company men, all of
them from the list of those who had died while on field duty. Gun-
dersen had known some of them; others were figures out of the far
past, before he or Cullen had ever come to Holman's World.
Cullen said, "And there were others. Kurtz looked them up in
the records, and the nildoror gave him the rest of the story. None
of them ever returned from the mist country. Four or five of them
turned out like Kurtz—transformed into monsters."
"And the others?"
"Into archangels, I suppose. The nildoror were vague about it.
Some sort of transcendental merging with the universe, an evolu-
tion to the next bodily level, a sublime ascent—that kind of thing.
All that's certain is that they never came back to Company terri-
tory. Kurtz was hoping on an outcome like that. But unfortunately
Kurtz was Kurtz, half angel and half demon, and that's how he
was reborn. And that's what Seena nurses. In a way it's a pity
you've lost your urge, Gundy. You might just turn out to have one
of the good rebirths. Can you call Hor-tenebor over? I think I
should have some fresh air, if we're going to talk so much. He's
the sulidor leaning against the wall there. The one who looks after
me, who hauls my old bones around. He'll carry me outside."
"It was snowing a little while ago, Ced."
"So much the better. Shouldn't a dying man see some snow?
This is the most beautiful place in the universe," Cullen said.
"Right here, in front of this hut. I want to see it. Get me Hor-
tenebor."
Gundersen summoned the sulidor. At a word from Cullen, Hor-
tenebor scooped the fragile, shrunken invalid into his immense
arms and bore him through the door-flap of the hut, setting him
down on a cradle-like framework overlooking the lake. Gundersen
followed. A heavy mist had descended on the village, concealing
even the huts closest at hand, but the lake itself was clearly visible
under the gray sky. Fugitive wisps of mist hung just above the
lake's dull surface. A bitter chill was in the air, but Cullen,
wrapped only in a thin hide, showed no discomfort. He held forth
his hand, palm upraised, and watched with the wonder of a child
as snowflakes struck it.
At length Gundersen said, "Will you answer a question?"

462 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"If I can."
"What was it you did that got the nildoror so upset?"
"They didn't tell you when they sent you after me?"
"No," Gundersen said. "They said that you would, and that in
any case it didn't really matter to them whether I knew or not.
Seena didn't know either. And I can't begin to guess. You were
never the kind who went in for killing or torturing intelligent spe-
cies. You couldn't have been playing around with the serpent
venom the way Kurtz was—he was doing that for years and they
never tried to grab him. So what could you possibly have done
that caused so much—"
"The sin of Actaeon," said Cullen.
"Pardon?"
"The sin of Actaeon, which was no sin at all, but really just an
accident. In Greek myth he was a huntsman who blundered upon
Diana bathing, and saw what he shouldn't have seen. She changed
him into a stag and he was torn to pieces by his own hounds."
"I don't understand what that has to do with—"
Cullen drew a long breath. "Did you ever go up on the central
plateau?" he asked, his voice low but firm. "Yes. Yes, of course
you did. I remember, you crash-landed there, you and Seena, on
your way back to Fire Point after a holiday on the coast, and you
were stranded a little while and weird animals bothered you and
that was when Seena first started to hate the plateau. Right? Then
you know what a strange and somehow mysterious place it is, a
place apart from the rest of this planet, where not even the nil-
doror like to go. All right. I started to go there, a year or two after
relinquishment. It became my private retreat. The animals of the
plateau interested me, the insects, the plants, everything. Even the
air had a special taste—sweet, clean. Before relinquishment, you
know, it would have been considered a little eccentric for anybody
to visit the plateau on his free time, or at any other time. After-
ward nothing mattered to anyone. The world was mine. I made a
few plateau trips. I collected specimens. I brought some little odd-
ities to Seena, and she got to be fond of them before she realized
they were from the plateau, and little by little I helped her over-
come her irrational fear of the plateau. Seena and I went there
often together, sometimes with Kurtz also. There's a lot of flora
and fauna from the plateau at Shangri-la Station; maybe you no-
ticed it. Right? We collected all that. The plateau came to seem
like any other place to me, nothing supernatural, nothing eerie,

Downward to the Earth 463
merely a neglected backwoods region. And it was my special
place, where I went whenever I felt myself growing empty or
bored or stale. A year ago, maybe a little less than a year, I went
into the plateau. Kurtz had just come back from his rebirth, and
Seena was terribly depressed by what had happened to him, and I
wanted to get her a gift, some animal, to cheer her up. This time I
came down a little to the southwest of my usual landing zone, over
in a part of the plateau I had never seen before, where two rivers
meet. One of the first things I noticed was how ripped up the
shrubbery was. Nildoror! Plenty nildoror! An immense area had
been grazed, and you know how nildoror graze. It made me curi-
ous. Once in 3 while I had seen an isolated nildor on the plateau,
always at a distance, but never a whole herd. So I followed the
line of devastation. On and on it went, this scar through the forest,
with broken branches and trampled underbrush, all the usual
signs. Night came, and I camped, and it seemed to me I heard
drums in the night. Which was foolish, since nildoror don't use
drums; I realized after a while that I heard them dancing, pound-
ing the ground, and these were reverberations carried through the
soil. There were other sounds, too: screams, bellows, the cries of
frightened animals. I had to know what was happening. So I broke
camp in the middle of the night and crept through the jungle,
hearing the noise grow louder and louder, until finally I reached
the edge of the trees, where the jungle gave way to a kind of broad
savanna running down to the river, and there in the open were
maybe five hundred nildoror. Three moons were up, and I had
no trouble seeing. Gundy, would you believe that they had painted
themselves? Like savages, like something out of a nightmare.
There were three deep pits in the middle of the clearing. One of
the pits was filled with a kind of wet red mud, and the other two
contained branches and berries and leaves that the nildoror had
trampled to release dark pigments, one black, one blue. And I
watched the nildoror going down to these pits, and first they'd roll
in the pit of red mud and come up plastered with it, absolutely
scarlet; and then they'd go to the adjoining pits and give each
other dark stripes over the red, hosing it on with their trunks. A
barbaric sight: all that color, all that flesh. When they were prop-
erly decorated, they'd go running—not strolling, running—across
the field to the place of dancing, and they'd begin that four-step
routine. You know it: boom boom boom boom, But infinitely
more fierce and frightening now, on account of the war-paint. An

464 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
army of wild-looking nildoror, stamping their feet, nodding their
tremendous heads, lifting their trunks, bellowing, stabbing their
tusks into the ground, capering, singing, flapping their ears.
Frightening, Gundy, frightening. And the moonslight on their
painted bodies—
"Keeping well back in the forest, I circled around to the west to
get a better view. And saw something on the far side of the
dancers that was even stranger than the paint. I saw a corral with
log walls, huge, three or four times the size of this village. The nil-
doror couldn't have built it alone; they might have uprooted trees
and hauled them with their trunks, but they must have needed
sulidoror to help pile them up and shape them. Inside the corral
were plateau animals, hundreds of them, all sizes and shapes. The
big leaf-eating ones with giraffe necks, and the kind like rhinos
with antlers, and timid ones like gazelles, and dozens that I'd
never even seen before, all crowded together as if in a stockyard.
There must have been sulidoror hunters out beating the bush for
days, driving that menagerie together. The animals were restless
and scared. So was I. I crouched in the darkness, waiting, and
finally all the nildoror were properly painted, and then a ritual
started in the midst of the dancing group. They began to cry out,
mostly in their ancient language, the one we can't understand, but
also they were talking in ordinary nildororu, and eventually I
understood what was going on. Do you know who these painted
beasts were? They were sinning nildoror, nildoror who were in
disgrace! This was the place of atonement and the festival of
purification. Any nildor who had been tinged with corruption in
the past year had to come here and be cleansed. Gundy, do you
know what sin they had committed? They had taken the venom
from Kurtz. The old game, the one everybody used to play down
at the serpent station, give the nildoror a swig, take one yourself,
let the hallucinations come? These painted prancing nildoror here
had all been led astray by Kurtz. Their souls were stained. The
Earthman-devil had found their one vulnerable place, the one area
of temptation they couldn't resist. So here they were, trying to
cleanse themselves. The central plateau is the nildoror purgatory.
They don't live there because they need it for their rites, and obvi-
ously you don't set up an ordinary encampment in a holy place.
"They danced, Gundy, for hours. But that wasn't the rite of
atonement. It was only the prelude to the rite. They danced until I
was dizzy from watching them, the red bodies, the dark stripes,

Downward to the Earth 465
the boom of their feet, and then, when no moons were left in the
sky, when dawn was near, the real ceremony started. I watched it,
and I looked right down into the darkness of the race, into the real
nildoror soul. Two old nildoror approached the corral and started
kicking down the gate. They broke an opening maybe ten meters
wide, and stepped back, and the penned-up animals came rushing
out onto the plain. The animals were terrified from all the noise
and dancing, and from being imprisoned, and they ran in circles,
not knowing what to do or where to go. And the rest of the nil-
doror charged into them. The peaceful, noble, nonviolent nildoror,
you know? Snorting. Trampling. Spearing with their tusks. Lifting
animals with their trunks and hurling them into trees. An orgy of
slaughter. I became sick, just watching. A nildor can be a terri-
ble machine of death. All that weight, those tusks, the trunk, the
big feet—everything berserk, all restraints off. Some of the animals
escaped, of course. But most were trapped right in the middle of
the chaos. Crushed bodies everywhere, rivers of blood, scav-
engers coming out of the forest to have dinner while the killing
was still going on. That's how the nildoror atone: sin for sin.
That's how they purge themselves. The plateau is where they loose
their violence, Gundy. They put aside all their restraints and let
out the beast that's within them. I've never felt such horror as
when I watched how they cleansed their souls. You know how
much respect I had for the nildoror. Still have. But to see a thing
like that, a massacre, a vision of hell—Gundy, I was numb with
despair. The nildoror didn't seem to enjoy the killing, but they
weren't hesitant about it, either; they just went on and on, because
it had to be done, because this was the form of the ceremony, and
they thought nothing more of it than Socrates would think of
sacrificing a lamb to Zeus, a cock to Aesculapius. That was the
real horror, I think. I watched the nildoror destroying life for the
sake of their souls, and it was like dropping through a trapdoor,
entering a new world whose existence I had never even suspected,
a dark new world beneath the old. Then dawn came. The sun
rose, lovely, golden, light glistening on the trampled corpses, and
the nildoror were sitting calmly in the midst of the devastation,
resting, calm, purged, all their inner storms over. It was amazingly
peaceful. They had wrestled with their demons, and they had won.
They had come through all the night's horror, all the ghastliness,
and—I don't know how—they really were purged and purified. I
can't tell you how to find salvation through violence and destruc-

466 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
tion. It's alien to me and probably to you. Kurtz knew, though. He
took the same road as the nildoror. He fell and fell and fell,
through level after level of evil, enjoying his corruption, glorying
in depravity, and then in the end he was still able to judge himself
and find himself wanting, and recoil at the darkness he found in-
side himself, and so he went and sought rebirth, and showed that
the angel within him wasn't altogether dead. This finding of purity
by passing through evil—you'll have to come to terms with it by
yourself, Gundy. I can't help you. All I can do is tell you of the
vision I had at sunrise that morning beside the field of blood. I
looked into an abyss. I peered over the edge, and saw where Kurtz
had gone, where these nildoror had gone. Where perhaps you'll
go. I couldn't follow.
"And then they almost caught me.
"They picked up my scent. While the frenzy was on them, I
guess they hadn't noticed—especially with hundreds of animals
giving off fear-smells in the corral. But they began to sniff. Trunks
started to rise and move around like periscopes. The odor of
sacrilege was on the air. The reek of a blaspheming spying Earth-
man. Five, ten minutes they sniffed, and I stood in the bushes still
wrapped in my vision, not even remotely realizing they were
sniffing me, and suddenly it dawned on me that they knew I was
there, and I turned and began to slip away through the forest, and
they came after me. Dozens. Can you imagine what it's like to be
chased through the jungle by a herd of angry nildoror? But I could
fit through places too small for them. I gave them the slip. I ran
and ran and ran, until I fell down dizzy in a thicket and vomited,
and I rested, and then I heard them bashing along on my trail, and
I ran some more. And came to a swamp, and jumped in, hoping
they'd lose my scent. And hid in the reeds and marshes, while
things I couldn't see nipped at me from below. And the nildoror
ringed the entire region. We know you're in there, they called to
me. Come out. Come out. We forgive you and we wish to purify
you. They explained it all quite reasonably to me. I had inadvert-
ently—oh, of course, inadvertently, they were diplomatic!—seen a
ceremony that no one but a nildor was allowed to see, and now it
would be necessary to wipe what I had seen from my mind, which
could be managed by means of a simple technique that they didn't
bother to describe to me. A drug, I guess. They invited me to
come have part of my mind blotted out. I didn't accept. I didn't
say anything. They went right on talking, telling me that they held

Downward to the Earth 467
no malice, that they realized it obviously hadn't been my intention
to watch their secret ceremony, but nevertheless since I had seen it
they must now take steps, et cetera, et cetera. I began to crawl
downstream, breathing through a hollow reed. When I surfaced
the nildoror were still calling to me, and now they sounded more
angry, as far as it's possible to tell such a thing. They seemed an-
noyed that I had refused to come out. They didn't blame me for
spying on them, but they did object that I wouldn't let them purify
me. That was my real crime: not that I hid in the bushes and
watched them, but declining afterward to undergo the treatment.
That's what they still want me for. I stayed in the creek all day,
and when it got dark I slithered out and picked up the vector-beep
of my beetle, which turned out to be about half a kilometer away.
I expected to find it guarded by nildoror, but it wasn't, and I got
in and cleared out fast and landed at Seena's place by midnight. I
knew I didn't have much time. The nildoror would be after me
from one side of the continent to the other. I told her what had
happened, more or less, and I collected some supplies, and I took
off for the mist country. The sulidoror would give me sanctuary.
They're jealous of their sovereignty; blasphemy or not, I'd be safe
here. I came to this village. I explored the mist country a good bit.
Then one day I felt the crab in my gut and I knew it was all over.
Since then I've been waiting for the end, and the end isn't far
away."
He fell silent.
Gundersen, after a pause, said, "But why not risk going back?
Whatever the nildoror want to do to you can't be as bad as sitting
on the porch of a sulidor hut and dying of cancer."
Cullen made no reply.
"What if they give you a memory-wiping drug?" Gundersen
asked. "Isn't it better to lose a bit of your past than to lose your
whole future? If you'll only come back, Ced, and let us treat your
disease—"
"The trouble with you, Gundy, is that you're too logical," Cul-
len said. "Such a sensible, reasonable, rational chap! There's an-
other flask of wine inside. Would you bring it out?"
Gundersen walked past the crouching sulidoror into the hut,
and prowled the musty darkness a few moments, looking for the
wine. As he searched, the solution to the Cullen situation pre-
sented itself: instead of bringing Cullen to the medicine, he would
bring the medicine to Cullen. He would abandon his journey to-

468 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
ward the rebirth mountain at least temporarily and go down to
Shangri-la Falls to get a dose of anticarcin for him. It might not be
too late to check the cancer. Afterward, restored to health, Cullen
could face the nildoror or not, as he pleased. What happens be-
tween him and the nildoror, Gundersen told himself, will not be a
matter that concerns me. I regard my treaty with VoPhimyor as
nullified. I said I would bring Cullen forth only with his consent,
and clearly he won't go willingly. So my task now is just to save
his life. Then I can go to the mountain.
He located the wine and went outside with it.
Cullen leaned backward on the cradle, his chin on his chest, his
eyes closed, his breath slow, as if his lengthy monologue had
exhausted him. Gundersen did not disturb him. He put the wine
down and walked away, strolling for more than an hour, thinking,
reaching no conclusion. Then he returned. Cullen had not moved.
"Still asleep?" Gundersen asked the sulidoror.
"It is the long sleep," one of them replied.

FOURTEEN
The mist came in close, bringing jewels of frost that hung from
every tree, every hut; and by the brink of the leaden lake Gunder-
sen cremated Cullen's wasted body with one long fiery burst of
the fusion torch, while sulidoror looked on, silent, solemn. The
soil sizzled a while when he was done, and the mist whirled wildly
as cold air'rushed in to fill the zone of warmth his torch had
made. Within the hut were a few unimportant possessions. Gun-
dersen searched through them, hoping to find a journal, a memoir,
anything with the imprint of Cedric Cullen's soul and personality.
But he found only some rusted tools* and a box of dried insects
and lizards, and faded clothing. He left these things where he
found them.
The sulidoror brought him a cold dinner. They let him eat un-
disturbed, sitting on the wooden cradle outside Cullen's hut. Dark-
ness came, and he retreated into the hut to sleep. Se-holomir and
Yi-gartigok posted themselves as guards before the entrance, al-
though he had not asked them to stay there. He said nothing to
them. Early in the evening he fell asleep.
He dreamed, oddly, not of the newly dead Cullen but of the still
living Kurtz. He saw Kurtz trekking through the mist country, the
old Kurtz, not yet metamorphosed to his present state: infinitely
tall, pale, eyes burning in the domed skull, glowing with strange
intelligence. Kurtz carried a pilgrim's staff and strode tirelessly
forward into the mist. Accompanying him, yet not really with him,
was a procession of nildoror, their green bodies stained bright red
by pigmented mud; they halted whenever Kurtz halted, and knelt
beside him, and from time to time he let them drink from a
tubular canteen he was carrying. Whenever Kurtz offered his can-
teen to the nildoror, he and not they underwent a transformation.
His lips joined in a smooth sealing; his nose lengthened; his eyes,
his fingers, his toes, his legs changed and changed again. Fluid,
mobile, Kurtz kept no form for long. At one stage in the journey
he became a sulidor in all respects but one: his own high-vaulted
bald head surmounted the massive hairy body. Then the fur

470 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
melted from him, the claws shrank, and he took on another form,
a lean loping thing, rapacious and swift with double-jointed
elbows and long spindly legs. More changes followed. The nil-
doror sang hymns of adoration, chanting in thick monotonous
skeins of gray sound. Kurtz was gracious. He bowed, he smiled, he
waved. He passed around his canteen, which never needed replen-
ishing. He rippled through cycle upon cycle of dizzy metamor-
phosis. From his backpack he drew gifts that he distributed among
the nildoror: torches, knives, books, message cubes, computers,
statues, color organs, butterflies, flasks of wine, sensors, transport
modules, musical instruments, beads, old etchings, holy medal-
lions, baskets of flowers, bombs, flares, shoes, keys, toys, spears.
Each gift fetched ecstatic sighs and snorts and moos of gratitude
from the nildoror; they frolicked about him, lifting their new
treasures in their trunks, excitedly displaying them to one another.
"You see?" Kurtz cried. "I am your benefactor. I am your friend.
I am the resurrection and the life." They came now to the place of
rebirth, not a mountain in Gundersen's dream but rather an abyss,
dark and deep, at the rim of which the nildoror gathered and
waited. And Kurtz, undergoing so many transformations that his
body flickered and shifted from moment to moment, now wearing
horns, now covered with scales, now clad in shimmering flame,
walked forward while the nildoror cheered him, saying to him,
"This is the place, rebirth will be yours," and he stepped into the
abyss, which enfolded him in absolute night. And then from the
depths of the pit came a single prolonged cry, a shrill wail of ter-
ror and dismay so awful that it awakened Gundersen, who lay
sweating and shivering for hours waiting for dawn.
In the morning he shouldered his pack and made signs of de-
parting. Se-holomir and Yi-gartigok came to him; and one of the
sulidoror said, "Where will you go now?"
"North."
"Shall we go with you?"
"I'll go alone," Gundersen said.
It would be a difficult journey, perhaps a dangerous one, but
not impossible. He had direction-finding equipment, food concen-
trates, a power supply, and other such things. He had the neces-
sary stamina. He knew that the sulidoror villages along the way
would extend hospitality to him if he needed it. But he hoped not
to need it. He had been escorted long enough, first by Srin'gahar,

Downward to the Earth 471
then by various sulidoror; he felt he should finish this pilgrimage
without a guide.
Two hours after sunrise he set out.
It was a good day for beginning such an endeavor. The air was
crisp and cool and clear and the mist was high; he could see sur-
prisingly far in all directions. He went through the forest back of
the village and emerged on a fair-sized hill from the top of which
he was able to gauge the landscape ahead. He saw rugged, heavily
forested country, much broken by rivers and streams and lakes;
and he succeeded in glimpsing the tip of the mountain of rebirth, a
jagged sentinel in the north. That rosy peak on the horizon seemed
close enough.to grasp. Just reach out; just extend the fingers. And
the fissures and hillocks and slopes that separated him from his
goal were no challenge; they could be traversed in a few quick
bounds. His body was eager for the attempt: heartbeat steady, vi-
sion exceptionally keen, legs moving smoothly and tirelessly. He
sensed an inward soaring of the soul, a restrained but ecstatic up-
sweep toward life and power; the phantoms that had veiled him for
so many years were dropping away; in this chill zone of mist and
snow he felt annealed, purified, tempered, ready to accept what-
ever must be accepted. A strange energy surged through him. He
did not mind the thinness of the air, nor the cold, nor the
bleakness of the land. It was a morning of unusual clarity, with
bright sunlight cascading through the lofty covering of fog and im-
parting a dreamlike brilliance to the trees and the bare soil. He
walked steadily onward.
The mist closed in at midday. Visibility dwindled until Gunder-
sen could see only eight or ten meters ahead. The giant trees be-
came serious obstacles; their gnarled roots and writhing buttresses
now were traps for unwary feet. He picked his way with care.
Then he entered a region where large fiat-topped boulders jutted
at shallow angles from the ground, one after another, slick mist-
slippery slabs forming stepping-stones to the land beyond. He had
to crawl over them, blindly feeling along, not knowing how
much of a drop he was likely to encounter at the far end of each
boulder. Jumping off was an act of faith; one of the drops turned
out to be about four meters, and he landed hard, so that his ankles
tingled for fifteen minutes afterward. Now he felt the first fatigue
of the day spreading through his thighs and knees. But yet the
mood of controlled ecstasy, sober and nevertheless jubilant, re-
mained with him.

472 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
He made a late lunch beside a small, flawlessly circular pond,
mirror-bright, rimmed by tall narrow-trunked trees and hemmed
in by a tight band of mist. He relished the privacy, the solitude of
the place; it was like a spherical room with walls of cotton, within
which he was perfectly isolated from a perplexing universe. Here
he could shed the tensions of his journey, after so many weeks of
traveling with nildoror and sulidoror, worrying all the while that
he would give offense in some unknown but unforgivable way. He
was reluctant to leave.
As he was gathering his belongings, an unwelcome sound punc-
tured his seclusion: the drone of an engine not far overhead.
Shading his eyes against the glare of the mist, he looked up, and
after a moment caught a glimpse of an airborne beetle flying just
below the cloud-ceiling. The little subnosed vehicle moved in a
tight circle, as if looking for something. For me, he wondered?
Automatically he shrank back against a tree to hide, though he
knew it was impossible for the pilot to see him here even in the
open. A moment later the beetle was gone, vanishing in a bank of
fog just to the west. But the magic of the afternoon was shattered.
That ugly mechanical droning noise in the sky still reverberated in
Gundersen's mind, shattering his newfound peace.
An hour's march onward, passing through a forest of slender
trees with red gummy-looking bark, Gundersen encountered three
sulidoror, the first he had seen since parting from Yi-gartigok and
Se-holomir that morning. Gundersen was uneasy about the meet-
ing. Would they permit him free access here? These three evi-
dently were a hunting party returning to a nearby village; two of
them carried, lashed to a pole slung from shoulder to shoulder,
the trussed-up carcass of some large four-legged grazing animal
with velvety black skin and long recurved horns. He felt a quick
instinctive jolt of fear at the sight of the three gigantic creatures
coming toward him among the trees; but to his surprise the fear
faded almost as rapidly as it came. The sulidoror, for all their fe-
rocious mien, simply did not hold a threat. True, they could kill
him with a slap, but what of that? They had no more reason to at-
tack him than he did to burn them with his torch. And here in
their natural surroundings, they did not even seem bestial or sav-
age. Large, yes. Powerful. Mighty of fang and claw. But natural,
fitting, proper, and so not terrifying.
"Does the traveler journey well?" asked the lead sulidor, the

Downward to the Earth 473
one who bore no part of the burden of the kill. He spoke in a soft
and civil tone, using the language of the nildoror.
"The traveler journeys well," said Gundersen. He improvised a
return salutation: "Is the forest kind to the huntsmen?"
"As you see, the huntsmen have fared well. If your path goes
toward our village, you are welcome to share our kill this night."
"I go toward the mountain of rebirth."
"Our village lies in that direction. Will you come?"
He accepted the offer, for night was coming on, and a harsh
wind was slicing through the trees now. The sulidoror village was
a small one, at the foot of a sheer cliff half an hour's walk to the
northeast. .Gundersen passed a pleasant night there. The villagers
were courteous though aloof, in a manner wholly free of any hos-
tility; they gave him a corner of a hut, supplied him with food
and drink, and left him alone. He had no sense of being a mem-
ber of a despised race of ejected conquerors, alien and un-
wanted. They appeared to look upon him merely as a wayfarer in
need of shelter, and showed no concern over his species. He found
that refreshing. Of course, the sulidoror did not have the same
reasons for resentment as the nildoror, since these forest folk had
never actually been turned into slaves by the company; but he had
always imagined a seething, sizzling rage within the sulidoror, and
their easygoing kindness now was an agreeable departure from that
image, which Gundersen now suspected might merely have been a
projection of his own guilts. In the morning they brought him
fruits and fish, and then he took his leave.
The second day of his journey alone was not as rewarding as
the first. The weather was bad, cold and damp and frequently
snowy, with dense mist hanging low nearly all the time. He wasted
much of a morning by trapping himself in a cul-de-sac, with a
long ridge of hills to his right, another to his life, and, unex-
pectedly, a broad and uncrossable lake appearing in front of him.
Swimming it was unthinkable; he might have to pass several hours
in its frigid water, and he would not survive the exposure. So he
had to go on a wearying eastward detour over the lesser ridge of
hills, which swung him about so that by midday he was in no
higher a latitude than he had been the night before. The sight of
the fog-wreathed rebirth mountain drew him on, though, and for
two hours of the afternoon he had the illusion that he was making
up for the morning's delay, only to discover that he was cut off by
a swift and vast river flowing from west to east, evidently the one

474 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
that fed the lake that had blocked him earlier. He did not dare to
swim this, either; the current would sweep him into the distant
deeps before he had reached the farther bank. Instead he con-
sumed more than an hour following the river upstream, until he
came to a place where he might ford it. It was even wider here
than below, but its bed looked much more shallow, and some
geological upheaval had strewn a line of boulders across it like a
necklace, from bank to bank. A dozen of the boulders jutted up,
with white water swirling around them; the others, though sub-
merged, were visible just below the surface. Gundersen started
across. He was able to hop from the top of one boulder to the
next, keeping dry until he had gone nearly a third of the way.
Then he had to scramble in the water, wading shin-deep, slipping
and groping. The mist enveloped him. He might have been alone
in the universe, with nothing ahead but billows of whiteness, noth-
ing to the rear but the same. He could see no trees, no shore, not
even the boulders awaiting him. He concentrated rigidly on keep-
ing his footing and staying to his path. Putting one foot down
awry, he slid and toppled, landing in a half-crouch in the river,
drenched to the armpits, buffeted by the current, and so dizzied
for a moment that he could not rise. All his energy was devoted to
clinging to the angular mass of rock beneath him. After a few
minutes he found the strength to get to his feet again, and tottered
forward, gasping, until he reached a boulder whose upper face
stood half a meter above the water; he knelt on it, chilled, soaked,
shivering, trying to shake himself dry. Perhaps five minutes
passed. With the mist clinging close, he got no drier, but at least
he had his breath again, and he resumed his crossing. Experi-
mentally reaching out the tip of a boot, he found another dry-
topped boulder just ahead. He went to it. There was still another
beyond it. Then came another. It was easy, now: he would make
it to the far side without another soaking. His pace quickened, and
he traversed another pair of boulders. Then, through a rift in the
mist, he was granted a glimpse of the shore.
Something seemed wrong.
The mist sealed itself; but Gundersen hesitated to go on without
some assurance that all was as it should be. Carefully he bent low
and dipped his left hand in the water. He felt the thrust of the cur-
rent coming from the right and striking his open palm. Wearily,
wondering if cold and fatigue had affected his mind, he worked
out the topography of his situation several times and each time

Downward to the Earth 475
came to the same dismaying conclusion: if I am making a north-
ward crossing of a river that flows from west to east, I should feel
the current coming from my left. Somehow, he realized, he had
turned himself around while scrambling for purchase in the water,
and since then he had with great diligence been heading back to-
ward the southern bank of the river.
His faith in his own judgment was destroyed. He was tempted
to wait here, huddled on this rock, for the mist to clear before
going on; but then it occurred to him that he might have to wait
through the night, or even longer. He also realized belatedly that
he was carrying gear designed to cope with just such problems.
Fumbling, in his backpack, he pulled out the small cool shaft of
his compass and aimed it at the horizon, sweeping his arm in an
arc that terminated where the compass emitted its north-indicating
beep. It confirmed his conclusions about the current, and he
started across the river again, shortly coming to the place of the
submerged stepping-stones where he had fallen. This time he had
no difficulties.
On the far shore he stripped and dried his clothing and himself
with the lowest-power beam of his fusion torch. Night now was
upon him. He would not have regretted another invitation to a
sulidoror village, but today no hospitable sulidoror appeared. He
spent an uncomfortable night huddled under a bush.
The next day was warmer and less misty. Gundersen went war-
ily forward, forever fearing that his hours of hard hiking might be
wasted when he came up against some unforeseen new obstacle,
but all went well, and he was able to cope with the occasional
streams or rivulets that crossed his path. The land here was ridged
and folded as though giant hands, one to the north and one to the
south, had pushed the globe together; but as Gundersen was going
down one slope and up the next, he was also gaining altitude con-
stantly, for the entire continent sloped upward toward the mighty
plateau upon which the rebirth mountain was reared.
In early afternoon the prevailing pattern of east-west folds in
the land subsided; here the landscape was skewed around so that
he found himself walking parallel to a series of gentle north-south
furrows, which opened into a wide circular meadow, grassy but
treeless. The large animals of the north, whose names Gundersen
did not know, grazed here in great numbers, nuzzling in the lightly
snow-covered ground. There seemed to be only four or five spe-
cies—something heavy-legged and humpbacked, like a badly de-

476 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
signed cow, and something in the style of an oversized gazelle, and
several others—but there were hundreds or even thousands of each
kind. Far to the east, at the very border of the plain, Gundersen
saw what appeared to be a small sulidoror hunting-party rounding
up some of the animals.
He heard the drone of the engine again.
The beetle he had seen the other day now returned, passing
quite low overhead. Instinctively Gundersen threw himself to the
ground, hoping to go unnoticed. About him the animals milled
uneasily, perplexed at the noise, but they did not bolt. The beetle
drifted to a landing about a thousand meters north of him. He de-
cided that Seena must have come after him, hoping to intercept
him before he could submit himself to the sulidoror of the moun-
tain of rebirth. But he was wrong. The hatch of the beetle opened,
and Van Beneker and his tourists began to emerge.
Gundersen wriggled forward until he was concealed behind a
tall stand of thistle-like plants on a low hummock. He could not
abide the thought of meeting that crew again, not at this stage in
his pilgrimage, when he had been purged of so many vestiges of
the Gundersen who had been.
He watched them.
They were walking up to the animals, photographing them,
even daring to touch some of the more sluggish beasts. Gundersen
heard their voices and their laughter cracking the congealed si-
lence; isolated words drifted randomly toward him, as meaningless
as Kurtz's flow of dream-fogged gibberish. He heard, too, Van
Beneker's voice cutting through the chatter, describing and ex-
plaining and expounding. These nine humans before him on the
meadow seemed as alien to Gundersen as the sulidoror. More so,
perhaps. He was aware that these last few days of mist and chill,
this solitary odyssey through a world of whiteness and quiet, had
worked a change in him that he barely comprehended. He felt
lean of soul, stripped of the excess baggage of the spirit, a simpler
man in all respects, and yet more complex.
He waited an hour or more, still hidden, while the tourist party
finished touring the meadow. Then everyone returned to the bee-
tle. Where now? Would Van take them north to spy on the moun-
tain of rebirth? No. No. It wasn't possible. Van Beneker himself
dreaded the whole business of rebirth, like any good Earthman; he
wouldn't dare to trespass on that mysterious precinct.
When the beetle took off, though, it headed toward the north.

Downward to the Earth All
Gundersen, in his distress, shouted to it to turn back. As though
heeding him, the gleaming little vehicle veered round as it gained
altitude. Van Beneker must have been trying to catch a tailwind,
nothing more. Now the beetle made for the south. The tour was
over, then. Gundersen saw it pass directly above him and disap-
pear into a lofty bank of fog. Choking with relief, he rushed for-
ward, scattering the puzzled herds with wild loud whoops.
Now all obstacles seemed to be behind him. Gundersen crossed
the valley, negotiated a snowy divide without effort, forded a
shallow brook, pushed his way through a forest of short, thick,
tightly packed trees with narrow pointed crowns. He slipped into
an easy rhythm of travel, paying no heed any longer to cold, mist,
damp, altitude, or fatigue. He was tuned to his task. When he
slept, he slept soundly and well; when he foraged for food to sup-
plement his concentrates, he found that which was good; when he
sought to cover distance, he covered it. The peace of the misty
forest inspired him to do prodigies. He tested himself, searching
for the limits of his endurance, finding them, exceeding them at
the next opportunity.
Through this phase of the journey he was wholly alone. Some-
times he saw sulidoror tracks in the thin crust of snow that cov-
ered much of the land, but he met no one. The beetle did not re-
turn. Even his dreams were empty; the Kurtz phantom that had
plagued him earlier was absent now, and he dreamed only blank
abstractions, forgotten by the time of awakening.
He did not know how many days had elapsed since the death of
Cedric Cullen. Time had flowed and melted in upon itself. He felt
no impatience, no weariness, no sense of wanting it all to be over.
And so it came as a mild surprise to him when, as he began to as-
cend a wide, smooth, shelving ledge of stone, about thirty meters
wide, bordered by a wall of icicles and decorated in places by tufts
of grass and scraggly trees, he looked up and realized that he had
commenced the scaling of the mountain of rebirth.

FIFTEEN
From afar, the mountain had seemed to rise dramatically from
the misty plain in a single sweeping thrust. But now that Gunder-
sen was actually upon its lower slopes, he saw that at close range
the mountain dissolved into a series of ramps of pink stone, one
atop another. The totality of the mountain was the sum of that
series, yet from here he had no sense of a unified bulk. He could
not even see the lofty peaks and turrets and domes that he knew
must hover thousands of meters above him. A layer of clinging
mist severed the mountain less than halfway up, allowing him to
see only the broad, incomprehensible base. The rest, which had
guided him across hundreds of kilometers, might well have never
been.
The ascent was easy. To the right and to the left Gundersen saw
sheer faces, impossible spires, fragile bridges of stone linking ledge
to ledge; but there was also a switchback path, evidently of natu-
ral origin, that gave the patient climber access to the higher
reaches. The dung of innumerable nildoror littered this long stone
ramp, telling him that he must be on the right route. He could not
imagine the huge creatures going up the mountain any other way.
Even a sulidor would be taxed by those precipices and gullies.
Chattering munzoror leaped from ledge to ledge, or walked
with soft, shuffling steps across terrifying abysses spanned by
strands of vines. Goat-like beasts, white with diamond-shaped
black markings, capered in graveled pockets of unreachable
slopes, and launched booming halloos that echoed through the af-
ternoon. Gundersen climbed steadily. The air was cold but in-
vigorating; the mists were wispy at this level, giving him a clear
view before and behind. He looked back and saw the fog-
shrouded lowlands suddenly quite far below him. He imagined
that he was able to see all the way to the open meadow where the
beetle had landed.
He wondered when some sulidor would intercept him.
This was, after all, the most sacred spot on this planet. Were

Downward to the Earth 479
there no guardians? No one to stop him, to question him, to turn
him back?
He came to a place about two hours' climb up the mountain-
side where the upward slope diminished and the ramp became a
long horizontal promenade, curving off to the right and vanishing
beyond the mass of the mountain. As Gundersen followed it, three
sulidoror appeared, coming around the bend. They glanced briefly
at him and went past, taking no other notice, as though it were
quite ordinary that an Earthman should be going up the mountain
of rebirth.
Or, Gundersen thought strangely, as though he were expected.
After a while the ramp turned upward again. Now an overhang-
ing stone le'dge formed a partial roof for the path, but it was no
shelter, for the little cackling wizen-faced munzoror nested up
there, dropping pebbles and bits of chaff and worse things down.
Monkeys? Rodents? Whatever they were, they introduced a sacri-
legious note to the solemnity of this great peak, mocking those
who went up. They dangled by their prehensile tails; they twitched
their long tufted ears; they spat; they laughed. What were they
saying? "Go away, Earthman, this is no shrine of yours!" Was
that it? How about, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!"
He camped for the night beneath that ledge. Munzoror several
times scrambled across his face. Once he woke to what sounded
like the sobbing of a woman, deep and intense, in the abyss below.
He went to the edge and found a bitter snowstorm raging. Soaring
through the storm, rising and sinking, rising and sinking, were
sleek bat-like things of the upper reaches, with tubular black bod-
ies and great rubbery yellow wings; they went down until they
were lost to his sight, and sped upward again toward their eyries
clasping chunks of raw meat in their sharp red beaks. He did not
hear the sobbing again. When sleep returned, he lay as if drugged
until a brilliant dawn crashed like thunder against the side of the
mountain.
He bathed in an ice-rimmed stream that sped down a smooth
gully and intersected the path. Then he went upward, and in the
third hour of his morning's stint he overtook a party of nildoror
plodding toward rebirth. They were not green but pinkish-gray,
marking them as members of the kindred race, the nildoror of the
eastern hemisphere. Gundersen had never known whether these
nildoror enjoyed rebirth facilities in their own continent, or came
to undergo the process here. That was answered now. There were

480 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
five of them, moving slowly and with extreme effort. Their hides
were cracked and ridged, and their trunks—thicker and longer than
those of western nildoror—drooped limply. It wearied him just to
look at them. They had good reason to be tired, though: since nil-
doror had no way of crossing the ocean, they must have taken the
land route, the terrible northeastward journey across the dry bed
of the Sea of Dust. Occasionally, during his tour of duty there,
Gundersen had seen eastern nildoror dragging themselves through
that crystalline wasteland, and at last he understood what their
destination had been.
"Joy of your rebirth!" he called to them as he passed, using the
terse eastern inflection.
"Peace be on your journey," one of the nildoror replied
calmly.
They, too, saw nothing amiss in his presence here. But he did.
He could not avoid thinking of himself as an intruder, an in-
terloper. Instinctively he began to lurk and skulk, keeping to the
inside of the path as though that made him less conspicuous. He
anticipated his rejection at any moment by some custodian of the
mountain, stepping forth suddenly to block his climb.
Above him, another two or three spirals of the path overhead,
he spied a scene of activity.
Two nildoror and perhaps a dozen sulidoror were in view up
there, standing at the entrance to some dark chasm in the moun-
tainside. He could see them only by taking up a precarious posi-
tion at the rim of the path. A third nildor emerged from the cav-
ern; several sulidoror went in. Some way-station, maybe, on the
road to rebirth? He craned his neck to see, but as he continued
along his path he reached a point from which that upper level was
no longer visible.
It took him longer than he expected to reach it. The switchback
path looped out far to one side in order to encircle a narrow jut-
ting spiky tower of rock sprouting from the great mountain's flank,
and the detour proved to be lengthy. It carried Gundersen well
around to the northeastern face. By the time he was able to see
the level of the chasm again, a sullen twilight was falling, and the
place he sought was still somewhere above him.
Full darkness came before he was on its level. A heavy blanket
of fog sat close upon things now. He was perhaps midway up the
peak. Here the path spread into the mountain's face, creating a
wide plaza covered with brittle flakes of pale stone, and against

Downward to the Earth 481
the vaulting wall of the mountain Gundersen saw a black slash, a
huge inverted V, the opening of what must be a mighty cavern.
Three nildoror lay sleeping to the left of this entrance, and five
sulidoror, to its right, seemed to be conferring.
He hung back, posting himself behind a convenient boulder and
allowing himself wary peeps at the mouth of the cavern. The
sulidoror went within, and for more than an hour nothing hap-
pened. Then he saw them emerge, awaken one of the nildoror,
and lead it inside. Another hour passed before they came back for
the second. After a while they fetched the third. Now the night
was well advanced. The mist, the constant companion here, ap-
proached and clung. The big-beaked bat-creatures, like mario-
nettes on strings, swooped down from higher zones of the moun-
tain, shrieking past and vanishing in the drifting fog below,
returning moments later in equally swift ascent. Gundersen was
alone. This was his moment to peer into the cavern, but he could
not bring himself to make the inspection. He hesitated, shivering,
unable to go forward. His lungs were choked with mist. He could
see nothing in any direction now; even the bat-beasts were invisi-
ble, mere dopplering blurts of sound as they rose and fell. He
struggled to recapture some of the jauntiness he had felt on that
first day after Cullen's death, setting out unaccompanied through
this wintry land. With a conscious effort he found a shred of that
vigor at last.
He went to the mouth of the cavern.
He saw only darkness within. Neither sulidoror nor nildoror
were evident at the entrance. He took a cautious step inward. The
cavern was cool, but it was a dry coolness far more agreeable than
the mist-sodden chill outside. Drawing his fusion torch, he risked
a quick flash of light and discovered that he stood in the center of
an immense chamber, the lofty ceiling of which was lost in the
shadows overhead. The walls of the chamber were a baroque fan-
tasy of folds and billows and buttresses and fringes and towers, all
of stone, polished and translucent, gleaming like convoluted glass
during the instant that the light was upon them. Straight ahead,
flanked by two rippling wings of stone that were parted like frozen
curtains, lay a passageway, wide enough for Gundersen but proba-
bly something of a trial for the bulky nildoror who had earlier
come this way.
He went toward it.
Two more brief flashes from the torch got him to it. Then he

482 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
proceeded by touch, gripping one side of the opening and feeling
his way into its depths. The corridor bent sharply to the left and,
about twenty paces farther on, angled just as sharply the other
way. As Gundersen came around the second bend a dim light
greeted him. Here a pale green fungoid growth lining the ceiling
afforded a minimal sort of illumination. He felt relieved and yet
suddenly vulnerable, for, while he now could see, he could also be
seen.
The corridor was about twice a nildor's width and three times a
nildor's height, rising to the peaked vault in which the fungoids
dwelled. It stretched for what seemed an infinite distance into the
mountain. Branching off it on both sides, Gundersen saw, were
secondary chambers and passages.
He advanced and peered into the nearest of these chambers.
It held something that was large and strange and apparently
alive. On the floor of a bare stone cell lay a mass of pink flesh,
shapeless and still. Gundersen made out short thick limbs and a
tail curled tightly over broad flanks; he could not see its head, nor
any distinguishing marks by which he could associate it with a
species he knew. It might have been a nildor, but it did not seem
quite large enough. As he watched, it swelled with the intake of a
breath, and slowly subsided. Many minutes passed before it took
another breath. Gundersen moved on.
In the next cell he found a similar sleeping mound of uni-
dentifiable flesh. In the third cell lay another. The fourth cell, on
the opposite side of the corridor, contained a nildor of the western
species, also in deep slumber. The cell beside it was occupied by a
sulidor lying oddly on its back with its limbs poking rigidly up-
ward. The next cell held a sulidor in the same position, but other-
wise quite startlingly different, for it had shed its whole thick coat
of fur and lay naked, revealing awesome muscles beneath a gray,
slick-looking skin. Continuing, Gundersen came to a chamber that
housed something even more bizarre: a figure that had a nildor's
spines and tusks and trunk but a sulidor's powerful arms and legs
and a sulidor's frame. What nightmare composite was this?
Gundersen stood awed before it for a long while, trying to com-
prehend how the head of a nildor might have been joined to the
body of a sulidor. He realized that no such joining could have oc-
curred; the sleeper here simply partook of the characteristics of
both races in a single body. A hybrid? A genetic mingling?
He did not know. But he knew now that this was no mere way-

Downward to the Earth 483
station on the road toward rebirth. This was the place of rebirth
itself.
Far ahead, figures emerged from one of the subsidiary corridors
and crossed the main chamber: two sulidoror and a nildor. Gun-
dersen pressed himself against the wall and remained motionless
until they were out of sight, disappearing into some distant room.
Then he continued inward.
He saw nothing but miracles. He was in a garden of fantasies
where no natural barriers held.
Here was a round spongy mass of soft pink flesh with just one
recognizable feature sprouting from it: a sulidor's huge tail.
Here w.as a sulidor, bereft of fur, whose arms were foreshort-
ened and pillar-like, like the limbs of a nildor, and whose body
had grown round and heavy and thick.
Here was a sulidor in full fur with a nildor's trunk and ears.
Here was raw meat that was neither nildor nor sulidor, but alive
and passive, a mere thing awaiting a sculptor's shaping hand.
Here was another thing that resembled a sulidor whose bones
had melted.
Here was still another thing that resembled a nildor who had
never had bones.
Here were trunks, spines, tusks, fangs, claws, tails, paws. Here
was fur, and here was smooth hide. Here was flesh flowing at will
and seeking new shapes. Here were dark chambers, lit only by
flickering fungoid-glow, in which no firm distinction of species
existed.
Biology's laws seemed suspended here. This was no trifling
gene-tickling that he saw, Gundersen knew. On Earth, any skilled
helix-parlor technician could redesign an organism's gene-plasm
with some cunning thrusts of a needle and a few short spurts of
drugs; he could make a camel bring forth a hippopotamus, a cat
bring forth a chipmunk, or, for that matter, a woman bring forth a
sulidor. One merely enhanced the desired characteristics within
sperm and ovum, and suppressed other characteristics, until one
had a reasonable facsimile of the creature to be reproduced. The
basic genetic building-blocks were the same for every life-form; by
rearranging them, one could create any kind of strange and mon-
strous progeny. But that was not what was being done here.
On Earth, Gundersen knew, it was also possible to persuade
any living cell to play the part of a fertilized egg, and divide, and
grow, and yield a full organism. The venom from Belzagor was

484 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
one catalyst for that process; there were others. And so one could
induce the stump of a man's arm to regrow that arm; one could
scrape a bit of skin from a frog and generate an army of frogs with
it; one could even rebuild an entire human being from the shards
of his own ruined body. But that was not what was being done
here.
What was being done here, Gundersen realized, was a transmu-
tation of species, a change worked not upon ova but upon adult
organisms. Now he understood Na-sinisul's remark, when asked if
sulidoror also underwent rebirth: "If there were no day, could
there be night?" Yes. Nildor into sulidor. Sulidor into nildor. Gun-
dersen shivered in shock. He reeled, clutching at a wall. He was
plunged into a universe without fixed points. What was real? What
was enduring?
He comprehended now what had happened to Kurtz in this
mountain.
Gundersen stumbled into a cell in which a creature lay midway
in its metamorphosis. Smaller than a nildor, larger than a sulidor;
fangs, not tusks; trunk, not snout; fur, not hide; flat footpads, not
claws; body shaped for walking upright.
"Who are you?" Gundersen whispered. "What are you? What
were you? Which way are you heading?"
Rebirth. Cycle upon cycle upon cycle. Nildoror bound upon a
northward pilgrimage, entering these caves, becoming . . . suli-
doror? Was it possible?
If this is true, Gundersen thought, then we have never really
known anything about this planet. And this is true.
He ran wildly from cell to cell, no longer caring whether he
might be discovered. Each cell confirmed his guess. He saw nil-
doror and sulidoror in every stage of metamorphosis, some almost
wholly nildoror, some unmistakably sulidoror, but most of them
occupying intermediate positions along that journey from pole to
pole; more than half were so deep in transformation that it was
impossible for him to tell which way they were heading. All slept.
Before his eyes flesh flowed, but nothing moved. In these cool
shadowy chambers change came as a dream.
Gundersen reached the end of the corridor. He pressed his
palms against cold, unyielding stone. Breathless, sweat-drenched,
he turned toward the last chamber in the series and plunged into
it.
Within was a sulidor not yet asleep, standing over three of the

Downward to the Earth 485
sluggish serpents of the tropics, which moved in gentle coils about
him. The sulidor was huge, age-grizzled, a being of unusual pres-
ence and dignity.
"Na-sinisul?" Gundersen asked.
"We knew that in time you must come here, Edmundgun-
dersen."
"I never imagined—I didn't understand—" Gundersen paused,
struggling to regain control. More quietly he said, "Forgive me if I
have intruded. Have I interrupted your rebirth's beginning?"
"I have several days yet," the sulidor said. "I merely prepare
the chamber now."
"And you'll come forth from it as a nildor."
"Yes," sa'id Na-sinisul.
"Life goes in a cycle here, then? Sulidor to nildor to sulidor to
nildor to-"
"Yes. Over and over, rebirth after rebirth."
"All nildoror spend part of their lives as sulidoror? All suli-
doror spend part of their lives as nildoror?"
"Yes. All."
How had it begun, Gundersen wondered? How had the des-
tinies of these two so different races become entangled? How had
an entire species consented to undergo such a metamorphosis? He
could not begin to understand it. But he knew now why he had
never seen an infant nildor or sulidor. He said, "Are young ones
of either race ever born on this world?"
"Only when needed as replacements for those who can be re-
born no more. It is not often. Our population is stable."
"Stable, yet constantly changing."
"Through a predictable pattern of change," said Na-sinisul.
"When I emerge, I will be Fi'gontor of the ninth birth. My people
have waited for thirty turnings for me to rejoin them; but circum-
stances required me to remain this long in the forest of the mists."
"Is nine rebirths unusual?"
"There are those among us who have been here fifteen times.
There are some who wait a hundred turnings to be called once.
The summons comes when the summons comes; and for those
who merit it, life will have no end."
"No-end-"
"Why should it?" Na-sinisul asked. "In this mountain we are
purged of the poisons of age, and elsewhere we purge ourselves of
the poisons of sin."

486 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
"On the central plateau, that is."
"I see you have spoken with the man Cullen."
"Yes," Gundersen said. "Just before his—death."
"I knew also that his life was over," said Na-sinisul. "We learn
things swiftly here."
Gundersen said, "Where are Srin'gahar and Luu'khamin and
the others I traveled with?"
"They are here, in cells not far away."
"Already in rebirth?"
"For some days now. They will be sulidoror soon, and will live
in the north until they are summoned to assume the nildor form
again. Thus we refresh our souls by undertaking new lives."
"During the sulidor phase, you keep a memory of your past life
as a nildor?"
"Certainly. How can experience be valuable if it is not re-
tained? We accumulate wisdom. Our grasp of truth is heightened
by seeing the universe now through a nildor's eyes, now through a
sulidor's. Not in body alone are the two forms different. To un-
dergo rebirth is to enter a new world, not merely a new life."
Hesitantly Gundersen said, "And when someone who is not of
this planet undergoes rebirth? What effect is there? What kind of
changes happen?"
"You saw Kurtz?"
"I saw Kurtz," said Gundersen. "But I have no idea what Kurtz
has become."
"Kurtz has become Kurtz," the sulidor said. "For your kind
there can be no true transformation, because you have no comple-
mentary species. You change, yes, but you become only what you
have the potential to become. You liberate such forces as already
exist within you. While he slept, Kurtz chose his new form him-
self. No one else designed it for him. It is not easy to explain this
with words, Edmundgundersen."
"If I underwent rebirth, then, I wouldn't necessarily turn into
something like Kurtz?"
"Not unless your soul is as Kurtz's soul, and that is not pos-
sible."
"What would I become?"
"No one may know these things before the fact. If you wish to
discover what rebirth will do to you, you must accept rebirth."
"If I asked for rebirth, would I be permitted to have it?"
"I told you when we first met," said Na-sinisul, "that no one on

Downward to the Earth 487
this world will prevent you from doing anything. You were not
stopped as you ascended the mountain of rebirth. You were not
stopped when you explored these chambers. Rebirth will not be
denied you if you feel you need to experience it."
Easily, serenely, instantly, Gundersen said, "Then I ask for
rebirth."

SIXTEEN
Silently, unsurprised, Na-sinisul leads him to a vacant cell and
gestures to him to remove his clothing. Gundersen strips. His
fingers fumble only slightly with the snaps and catches. At the
sulidor's direction, Gundersen lies on the floor, as all other candi-
dates for rebirth have done. The stone is so cold that he hisses
when his bare skin touches it. Na-sinisul goes out. Gundersen
looks up at the glowing fungoids in the distant vault of the ceiling.
The chamber is large enough to hold a nildor comfortably; to
Gundersen, on the floor, it seems immense.
Na-sinisul returns, bearing a bowl made from a hollow log. He
offers it to Gundersen. The bowl contains a pale blue fluid.
"Drink," says the sulidor softly.
Gundersen drinks.
The taste is sweet, like sugar-water. This is something he has
tasted before, and he knows when it was: at the serpent station,
years ago. It is the forbidden venom. He drains the bowl, and Na-
sinisul leaves him.
Two sulidoror whom Gundersen does not know enter the cell.
They kneel on either side of him and begin a low, mumbling
chant, some sort of ritual. He cannot understand any of it. They
knead and stroke his body; their hands, with the fearful claws re-
tracted, are strangely soft, like the pads of a cat. He is tense, but
the tension ebbs. He feels the drug taking effect now: a thickness
at the back of his head, a tightness in his chest, a blurring of his
vision. Na-sinisul is in the room again, although Gundersen did
not see him enter. He carries a bowl.
"Drink," he says, and Gundersen drinks.
It is another fluid entirely, or perhaps a different distillate of the
venom. Its flavor is bitter, with undertastes of smoke and ash. He
has to force himself to get to the bottom of the bowl, but Na-
sinisul waits, silently insistent, for him to finish it. Again the old
sulidor leaves. At the mouth of the cell he turns and says some-
thing to Gundersen, but the words are overgrown with heavy blue
fur, and will not enter Gundersen's ears. "What did you say?" the

Downward to the Earth 489
Earthman asks. "What? What?" His own words sprout leaden
weights, teardrop-shaped, somber. They fall at once to the floor
and shatter. One of the chanting sulidoror sweeps the broken
words into a corner with a quick motion of his tail.
Gundersen hears a trickling sound, a glittering spiral of noise,
as of water running into his cell. His eyes are closed, but he feels
the wetness swirling about him. It is not water, though. It has a
more solid texture. A sort of gelatin, perhaps. Lying on his back,
he is several centimeters deep in it, and the level is rising. It is
cool but not cold, and it insulates him nicely from the chill rock of
the floor. He is aware of the faint pink odor of the inflowing gela-
tin, and of its#firm consistency, like the tones of a bassoon in its
deepest register. The sulidoror continue to chant. He feels a tube
sliding into his mouth, a sleek piccolo-shriek of a tube, and
through its narrow core there drips yet another substance, thick,
oily, emitting the sound of muted kettledrums as it hits his palate.
Now the gelatin has reached the lower curve of his jaw. He wel-
comes its advance. It laps gently at his chin. The tube is with-
drawn from his mouth just as the flow of gelatin covers his lips.
"Will I be able to breathe?" he asks. A sulidor answers him in
cryptic Sumerian phrases, and Gundersen is reassured.
He is wholly sealed in the gelatin. It covers the floor of the
chamber to a depth of one meter. Light dimly penetrates it. Gun-
dersen knows that its upper surface is smooth and flawless, form-
ing a perfect seal where it touches the walls of the cell. Now he
has become a chrysalis. He will be given nothing more to drink.
He will lie here, and he will be reborn.
One must die in order that one may be reborn, he knows.
Death comes to him and enfolds him. Gently he slides into a
dark abyss. The embrace of death is tender. Gundersen floats
through a realm of trembling emptiness. He hovers suspended in
the black void. Bands of scarlet and purple light transfix him,
buffeting him like bars of metal. He tumbles. He spins. He soars.
He encounters death once more, and they wrestle, and he is
defeated by death, and his body is shivered into splinters, and a
shower of bright Gundersen-fragments scatters through space.
The fragments seek one another. They solemnly circle one an-
other. They dance. They unite. They take on the form of Edmund
Gundersen, but this new Gundersen glows like pure, transparent
glass. He is glistening, a transparent man through whom the light
of the great sun at the core of the universe passes without resist-

490 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
ance. A spectrum spreads forth from his chest. The brilliance of
his body illuminates the galaxies.
Strands of color emanate from him and link him to all who pos-
sess g'rakh in the universe.
He partakes of the biological wisdom of the cosmos.
He tunes his soul to the essence of what is and what must be.
He is without limits. He can reach out and touch any soul. He
reaches toward the soul of Na-sinisul, and the sulidor greets him
and admits him. He reaches toward Srin'gahar, toward Vol'himyor
the many-born, toward Luu'khamin, Se-holomir, Yi-gartigok, to-
ward the nildoror and sulidoror who lie in the caves of metamor-
phosis, and toward the dwellers in the misty forests, and toward
the dwellers in the steaming jungles, and toward those who dance
and rage in the forlorn plateau, and to all others of Belzagor who
share in g'rakh.
And he comes now to one that is neither nildor nor sulidor, a
sleeping soul, a veiled soul, a soul of a color and a timbre and a
texture unlike the others. It is an Earthborn soul, the soul of
Seena, and he calls softly to her, saying, Awaken, awaken, I love
you, I have come for you. She does not awaken. He calls to her, I
am new, I am reborn, I overflow with love. Join me. Become part
of me. Seena? Seena? Seena? And she does not respond.
He sees the souls of the other Earthmen now. They have
g'rakh, but rationality is not enough; their souls are blind and si-
lent. Here is Van Beneker; here are the tourists; here are the
lonely keepers of solitary outposts in the jungle. Here is the
charred gray emptiness where the soul of Cedric Cullen belongs.
He cannot reach any of them.
He moves on, and a new soul gleams beyond the mist. It is the
soul of Kurtz. Kurtz comes to him, or he to Kurtz, and Kurtz is
not asleep.
Now you are among us, Kurtz says, and Gundersen says, Yes,
here I am at last. Soul opens to soul and Gundersen looks down
into the darkness that is Kurtz, past the pearl-gray curtain that
shrouds his spirit, into a place of terror where black figures shuttle
with many legs along ridged webs. Chaotic forms cohere, expand,
dissolve within Kurtz. Gundersen looks beyond this dark and dis-
mal zone, and beyond it he finds a cold hard bright light shining
whitely out of the deepest place, and then Kurtz says, See? Do you
see? Am I a monster? I have goodness within me.
You are not a monster, Gundersen says.

Downward to the Earth 491
But I have suffered, says Kurtz.
For your sins, Gundersen says.
I have paid for my sins with my suffering, and I should now be
released.
You have suffered, Gundersen agrees.
When will my suffering end, then?
Gundersen replies that he does not know, that it is not he who
sets the limits of such things.
Kurtz says, I knew you. Nice young fellow, a little slow. Seena
speaks highly of you. Sometimes she wishes things had worked out
better for you and her. Instead she got me. Here I lie. Here lie we.
Why won't yoy release me?
What can I do, asks Gundersen?
Let me come back to the mountain. Let me finish my rebirth.
Gundersen does not know how to respond, and he seeks along
the circuit of g'rakh, consulting Na-sinisul, consulting Vol'himyor,
consulting all the many-born ones, and they join, they join, they
speak with one voice, they tell Gundersen in a voice of thunder
that Kurtz is finished, his rebirth is over, he may not come back to
the mountain.
Gundersen repeats this to Kurtz, but Kurtz has already heard.
Kurtz shrivels. Kurtz shrinks back into darkness. He becomes
enmeshed in his own webs.
Pity me, he calls out to Gundersen across a vast gulf. Pity me,
for this is hell, and I am in it.
Gundersen says, I pity you. I pity you. I pity you. I pity you.
The echo of his own voice diminishes to infinity. All is silent.
Out of the void, suddenly, comes Kurtz's wordless reply, a shrill
and deafening crescendo blast of rage and hatred and malevo-
lence, the scream of a flawed Prometheus flailing at the beak that
pierces him. The shriek reaches a climax of shattering intensity. It
dies away. The shivering fabric of the universe grows still again. A
soft violet light appears, absorbing the lingering disharmonies of
that one terrible outcry.
Gundersen weeps for Kurtz.
The cosmos streams with shining tears, and on that salty river
Gundersen floats, traveling without will, visiting this world and
that, drifting among the nebulae, passing through clouds of cosmic
dust, soaring over strange suns.
He is not alone. Na-sinisul is with him, and Srin'gahar, and
Vol'himyor, and all the others.

492 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
He becomes aware of the harmony of all things g'rakh. He sees,
for the first time, the bonds that bind g'rakh to g'rakh. He, who
lies in rebirth, is in contact with them all, but also they are each in
contact with one another, at any time, at every time, every soul on
the planet joined in wordless communication.
He sees the unity of all g'rakh, and it awes and humbles him.
He perceives the complexity of this double people, the rhythm
of its existence, the unending and infinite swing of cycle upon
cycle of rebirth and new creation, above all the union, the one-
ness. He perceives his own monstrous isolation, the walls that cut
him off from other men, that cut off man from man, each a pris-
oner in his own skull. He sees what it is like to live among people
who have learned to liberate the prisoner in the skull.
That knowledge dwindles and crushes him. He thinks, We made
them slaves, we called them beasts, and all the time they were
linked, they spoke in their minds without words, they transmitted
the music of the soul one to one to one. We were alone, and they
were not, and instead of kneeling before them and begging to
share the miracle, we gave them work to do.
Gundersen weeps for Gundersen.
Na-sinisul says, This is no time for sorrow, and Srin'gahar says,
The past is past, and Vorhimyor says, Through remorse you are
redeemed, and all of them speak with one voice and at one time,
and he understands. He understands.
Now Gundersen understands all.
He knows that nildor and sulidor are not two separate species
but merely forms of the same creature, no more different than cat-
erpillar and butterfly, though he cannot tell which is the cater-
pillar, which the butterfly. He is aware of how it was for the nil-
doror when they were still in their primeval state, when they were
born as nildoror and died helplessly as nildoror, perishing when
the inevitable decay of their souls came upon them. And he knows
the fear and the ecstasy of those first few nildoror who accepted
the serpent's temptation and drank the drug of liberation, and be-
came things with fur and claws, misshapen, malformed, trans-
muted. And he knows their pain as they were driven out, even into
the plateau where no being possessing g'rakh would venture.
And he knows their sufferings in that plateau.
And he knows the triumph of those first sulidoror, who, sur-
mounting their isolation, returned from the wilderness bearing a
new creed. Come and be changed, come and be changed! Give up

Downward to the Earth 493
this flesh for another! Graze no more, but hunt and eat flesh! Be
reborn, and live again, and conquer the brooding body that drags
the spirit to destruction!
And he sees the nildoror accepting their destiny and giving
themselves up joyfully to rebirth, a few, and then more, and then
more, and then whole encampments, entire populations, going
forth, not to hide in the plateau of purification, but to live in the
new way, in the land where mist rules. They cannot resist, because
with the change of body comes the blessed liberation of soul, the
unity, the bond of g'rakh to g'rakh.
He understands now how it was for these people when the
Earthmen came, the eager, busy, ignorant, pitiful, short-lived
Earthmen, who were beings of g'rakh yet who could not or would
not enter into the oneness, who dabbled with the drug of libera-
tion and did not taste it to the fullest, whose minds were sealed
one against the other, whose roads and buildings and pavements
spread like pockmarks over the tender land. He sees how little the
Earthmen knew, and how little they were capable of learning, and
how much was kept from them since they would misunderstand it,
and why it was necessary for the sulidoror to hide in the mists all
these years of occupation, giving no clue to the strangers that they
might be related to the nildoror, that they were the sons of the nil-
doror and the fathers of the nildoror as well. For if the Earthmen
had known even half the truth they would have recoiled in fright,
since their minds are sealed one against the other, and they would
not have it any other way, except for the few who dared to learn,
and too many of those were dark and demon-ridden, like Kurtz.
He feels vast relief that the time of pretending is over on this
world and that nothing need be hidden any longer, that sulidoror
may go down into the lands of the nildoror and move freely about,
without fear that the secret and the mystery of rebirth may acci-
dentally be revealed to those who could not withstand such knowl-
edge.
He knows joy that he has come here and survived the test and
endured his liberation. His mind is open now, and he has been
reborn.
He descends, rejoining his body. He is aware once more that he
lies embedded in congealed gelatin on the cold floor of a dark cell
abutting a lengthy corridor within a rose-red mountain wreathed
in white mist on a strange world. He does not rise. His time is not
yet come.

494 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
He yields to the tones and colors and odors and textures that
flood the universe. He allows them to carry him back, and he
floats easily along the time-line, so that now he is a child peering
at the shield of night and trying to count the stars, and now he is
timidly sipping raw venom with Kurtz and Salamone, and now he
enrolls in the Company and tells a personnel computer that his
strongest wish is to foster the expansion of the human empire, and
now he grasps Seena on a tropic beach under the light of several
moons, and now he meets her for the first time, and now he sifts
crystals in the Sea of Dust, and now he mounts a nildor, and now
he runs laughing down a childhood street, and now he turns his
torch on Cedric Cullen, and now he climbs the rebirth mountain,
and now he trembles as Kurtz walks into a room, and now he
takes the wafer on his tongue, and now he stares at the wonder of
a white breast filling his cupped hand, and now he steps forth into
mottled alien sunlight, and now he crouches over Henry Dykstra's
swollen body, and now, and now, and now, and now. . . .
He hears the tolling of mighty bells.
He feels the planet shuddering and shifting on its axis.
He smells dancing tongues of flame.
He touches the roots of the rebirth mountain.
He feels the souls of nildoror and sulidoror all about him.
He recognizes the words of the hymn the sulidoror sing, and he
sings with them.
He grows. He shrinks. He burns. He shivers. He changes.
He awakens.
"Yes," says a thick, low voice. "Come out of it now. The time
is here. Sit up. Sit up."
Gundersen's eyes open. Colors surge through his dazzled brain.
It is a moment before he is able to see.
A sulidor stands at the entrance to his cell.
"I am Ti-munilee," the sulidor says. "You are born again."
"I know you," Gundersen says. "But not by that name. Who
are you?"
"Reach out to me and see," says the sulidor.
Gundersen reaches out.
"I knew you as the nildor Srin'gahar," Gundersen says.

SEVENTEEN
Leaning on the sulidor's arm, Gundersen walked unsteadily out
of the chamber of rebirth. In the dark corridor he asked, "Have I
been changed?"
"Yes, very much," Ti-munilee said.
"How? In what way?"
"You do not £now?"
Gundersen held a hand before his eyes. Five fingers, yes, as be-
fore. He looked down at his naked body and saw no difference in
it. Obscurely he experienced disappointment; perhaps nothing had
really happened in that chamber. His legs, his feet, his loins, his
belly—everything as it had been.
"I haven't changed at all," he said.
"You have changed greatly," the sulidor replied.
"I see myself, and I see the same body as before."
"Look again," advised Ti-munilee.
In the main corridor Gundersen caught sight of himself dimly
reflected in the sleek glassy walls by the light of the glowing fun-
goids. He drew back, startled. He had changed, yes; he had out-
kurtzed Kurtz in his rebirth. What peered back at him from the
rippling sheen of the walls was scarcely human. Gundersen stared
at the mask-like face with hooded slots for eyes, at the slitted
nose, the gill-pouches trailing to his shoulders, the many-jointed
arms, the row of sensors on the chest, the grasping organs at the
hips, the cratered skin, the glow-organs in the cheeks. He looked
down again at himself and saw none of those things. Which was
the illusion?
He hurried toward daylight.
"Have I changed, or have I not changed?" he asked the sulidor.
"You have changed."
"Where?"
"The changes are within," said the former Srin'gahar.
"And the reflection?"
"Reflections sometimes lie. Look at yourself through my eyes,
and see what you are."

496 A Robert Silverberg Omnibus
Gundersen reached forth again. He saw himself, and it was his
old body he saw, and then he flickered and underwent a phase
shift and he beheld the being with sensors and slots, and then he
was himself again.
"Are you satisfied?" Ti-munilee asked.
"Yes," said Gundersen. He walked slowly toward the lip of the
plaza outside the mouth of the cavern. The seasons had changed
since he had entered that cavern; now an iron winter was on the
land, and the mist was piled deep in the valley, and where it broke
he saw the heavy mounds of snow and ice. He felt the presence of
nildoror and sulidoror about him, though he saw only Ti-munilee.
He was aware of the soul of old Na-sinisul within the mountain,
passing through the final phases of a rebirth. He touched the soul
of Vol'himyor far to the south. He brushed lightly over the soul of
tortured Kurtz. He sensed suddenly, startlingly, other Earthborn
souls, as free as his, open to him, hovering nearby.
"Who are you?" he asked.
And they answered, "You are not the first of your kind to come
through rebirth intact."
Yes. He remembered. Cullen had said that there had been
others, some transformed into monsters, others simply never heard
from again.
"Where are you?" he asked them.
They told him, but he did not understand, for what they said
was that they had left their bodies behind. "Have I also left my
body behind?" he asked. And they said, no, he was still wearing
his flesh, for so he had chosen, and they had chosen otherwise.
Then they withdrew from him.
"Do you feel the changes?" Ti-munilee asked.
"The changes are within me," said Gundersen.
"Yes. Now you are at peace."
And, surprised by joy, he realized that that was so. The fears,
the conflicts, the tensions, were gone. Guilt was gone. Sorrow was
gone. Loneliness was gone.
Ti-munilee said, "Do you know who I was, when I was Srin'ga-
har? Reach toward me."
Gundersen reached. He said, in a moment, "You were one of
those seven nildoror whom I would not allow to go to their re-
birth, many years ago."
"Yes."

Downward to the Earth 497
"And yet you carried me on your back all the way to the mist
country."
"My time had come again," said Ti-munilee, "and I was happy.
I forgave you. Do you remember, when we crossed into the mist
country, there was an angry sulidor at the border?"
"Yes," Gundersen said.
"He was another of the seven. He was the one you touched
with your torch. He had had his rebirth finally, and still he hated
you. Now he no longer does. Tomorrow, when you are ready,
reach toward him, and he will forgive you. Will you do that?"
"I will," said Gundersen. "But will he really forgive?"
"You are feborn. Why should he not forgive?" Ti-munilee said.
Then the sulidor asked, "Where will you go now?"
"South. To help my people. First to help Kurtz, to guide him
through a new rebirth. Then the others. Those who are willing to
be opened."
"May I share your journey?"
"You know that answer."
Far off, the dark soul of Kurtz stirred and throbbed. Wait, Gun-
dersen told it. Wait. You will not suffer much longer.
A blast of cold wind struck the mountainside. Sparkling flakes
of snow whirled into Gundersen's face. He smiled. He had never
felt so free, so light, so young. A vision of a mankind transformed
blazed within him. I am the emissary, he thought. I am the bridge
over which they shall cross. I am the resurrection and the life. I
am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in
darkness, but shall have the light of life. A new commandment I
give unto you, that ye love one another.
He said to Ti-munilee, "Shall we go now?"
"I am ready when you are ready."
"Now."
"Now," said the sulidor, and together they began to descend the
windswept mountain.