The Totems of Abydos Read online

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

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

  “Never,” said Brenner.

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

  “Of course,” said Brenner.

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

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

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

  “No,” said Brenner.

  “Why not?” asked Rodriguez.

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

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

  Brenner was silent.

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

  Brenner said nothing, but was angry.

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

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

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

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

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

  “Yes,” said Brenner, angrily.

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

  “Yes, said Brenner, in fury.

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

  “It seems not,” said Brenner.

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

  Brenner said nothing, but was furious.

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

  “Perhaps,” said Brenner.

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

  “I do not understand,” said Brenner.

  “Good night,” said Rodriguez.

  “About the directress,” said Brenner.

  “Yes?” said Rodriguez.

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

  “I do not understand,” said Rodriguez.

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

  “Oh,” said Rodriguez.

  “I really feel you should apologize.”

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

  “Yes?” said Brenner, puzzled, complying.

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

  Brenner, startled, stared down at the plating.

  “Is she in chains?” asked Rodriguez.

  “Yes,” said Brenner, hesitantly.

  Rodriguez laughed.

  Brenner reddened, angrily.

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

  “Stop!” said Brenner.

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

  “Stop! Stop!” said Brenner.

  “What is wrong?” asked Rodriguez.

  “I will not have you uttering such words!”

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

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

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

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

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

  “No,” wept Brenner.

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

  “No!” said Brenner.

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

  “No, no!” said Brenner.

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

  “Yes!” said Brenner.

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

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

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

  “No,” said Brenner. “No!”

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

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

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

  “Monster,” said Brenner.

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

  “Monster, monster!” said Brenner.

  Rodriguez spun lightly about, preparing to leave.

  “Rodriguez!” called Brenner.

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

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

  “You know what I mean!” said Brenner.

  “Slaves, female slaves?” asked Rodriguez.

  “Yes!” said Brenner.

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

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

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

  Brenner regarded him.

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

  “Impossible!” said Brenner.

  “Kept secretly, of course,” said Rodriguez.

  “Impossible,” insisted Brenner.

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

  “Impossible,” repeated Brenner.

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

&nb
sp; “What are slaves like?” asked Brenner.

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

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

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

  Brenner regarded him, aghast.

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

  “Please,” protested Brenner.

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

  “Stop!” said Brenner.

  “Dream of the directress,” smiled Rodriguez.

  “No!” said Brenner.

  “Or others,” said Rodriguez.

  “No, no!” said Brenner.

  But then Rodriguez had left.

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

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