Robert Silverberg: We Know Who We Are

“Alone.”

“Why did you come here?” Prewger asked.

She said, “To see the Knowing Machine,” and they moved as if she had proclaimed herself to be the goddess of death.

“The Knowing Machine is dangerous,” said Prewger.

“No one may get close to it,” said Simit.

“We fear it,” said Glorr.

“It will kill you,” said Derk.

Fa Sol La said, “Where is the Knowing Machine?”

They backed away from her. Derk summoned a Soothing Machine and had a drink from it. Prewger stepped into a Shelter Machine. Simit went among the others who had gathered, whispering her answers to them. Glorr turned his face away and bowed his head.

“Why are you so afraid?” she asked.

Skagg said, “When the city was built, the builders used the Knowing Machine to make themselves like gods. And the gods killed them. They came out of the machine full of hate, and took weapons against one another, until only a few were left. And those who remained said that no one ever again would enter the Machine.”

“How long ago was that?”

“How should I know?” said Skagg.

“Show me the machine.”

He hesitated. He spoke a few faltering syllables of refusal.

She pressed herself close against him and rubbed her body against his. She put her teeth lightly on the lobe of his ear. She ran her fingers along the strong muscles of his back.

“Show me the machine,” she said. “I love you, Skagg. Can you refuse me the machine?”

He quivered. Her strangeness attracted him powerfully. He was eight no-suns old, and he knew every woman in Shining City all too well, and though he feared this girl he also was irresistibly drawn to her.

“Come,” he whispered.

They walked down sleek boulevards and glowing skyways, crossed brooks and ponds and pools, passed spiky statues and dancing beacons. It was a handsome city, the finest in the world, and Fa Sol La trilled and sighed at every beautiful thing in it.

“They say that those who live here never go anywhere else,” she said. “Now I begin to understand why. Have you ever been to another city, Skagg?”

“Never.”

“But you go outside sometimes?”

“To walk in the desert, yes. Most of the others never even do that.”

“But outside—there are so many cities, Skagg, so many different kinds of people! A dozen cities, a whole world! Don’t you ever want to see them?”

“We like it here. We know what we want.”

“It’s lovely here. But it isn’t right for you to stay in one place forever. It isn’t human. How would people ever have come to this world in the first place, if our ancestors had done as you folk do?”

“I don’t concern myself with that. Shining City cares for us, and we prefer not to go out. Obviously most others stay close to their cities too, since you are the first visitor I can remember.”

“Shining City is too remote from other cities,” Fa Sol La said. “Many dream of coming here, but few dare, and fewer succeed. But we travel everywhere else. I have been in seven cities besides my own, Skagg.”

The idea of that disturbed him intensely.

She went on, “Traveling opens the mind. It teaches you things about yourself that you never realized.”

“We know who we are,” he said.

“You only think you do.”

He glared at her, turned, pointed. “This is the Knowing Machine,” he said, glad to shift subjects.

They stood in the center of the great cobbled plaza before the machine. Two hundred strides to the east rose the glossy black column, flanked by the protective columns of shimmering white metal. The door-opening was faintly visible. Around the brow of the column the colors flickered and leaped, making the range of the spectrum as they had done for at least a thousand years.

“Where do I go in?” she asked.

“No one goes in.”

“I’m going in. I want you to come in with me, Skagg.”

He laughed. “Those who enter die.”

“No. No. The machine teaches love. It opens you to the universe. It awakens your mind. We have books about it. We know.”

“The machine kills.”

“It’s a lie, Skagg, made up by people whose souls were full of hate. They didn’t want anyone to experience the goodness that the machine brings. It isn’t the first time that men have prohibited goodness out of the fear of love.”

Skagg smiled. “I have a fear of death, girl, not of love. Go into the machine, if you like. I’ll wait here.”

Fury and contempt sparkled in her eyes. Without another word she strode across the plaza. He watched, admiring the trimness of her body, the ripple of her muscles. He did not believe she would enter the machine. She passed the Zone of Respect and the Zone of Obeisance and the Zone of Contemplation, and went into the Zone of Approach, and did not halt there, but entered the Zone of Peril, and as she walked on into the Zone of Impiety he cursed and started to run after her, shouting for her to halt.

Now she was on the gleaming steps. Now she was ascending. Now she had her hand on the sliding door.

“Wait!” he screamed. “No! I love you!”

“Come in with me, then.”

“It will kill us!”

“Then farewell,” she said, and went into the Knowing Machine.

Skagg collapsed on the rough red cobblestones of the Zone of Approach and lay there sobbing, face down, clutching at the stones with his fingers, remembering how vulnerable and fragile she had looked, and yet how strong and sturdy she was, remembering her small breasts and lean thighs, and remembering too the strangeness about her that he loved. Why had she chosen to kill herself this way?

After a long while he stood up and started to leave. Night had come and the first moons were out. The taste of loss was bitter in mouth.

“Skagg?” she called.

She was on the steps of the Knowing Machine. She ran toward him, seemingly floating, and her face was flushed and her eyes were radiant.

“You lived?” he muttered. “You came out?”

“They’ve been lying, Skagg. The machine doesn’t kill. It’s there to help. It was marvelous, Skagg.”

“What happened?”

“Voices speak to you, and tell you what to do. And you put a metal thing on your head, and fire shoots through your brain, and you see, Skagg, you see everything for the first time.”

“Everything? What everything?”

“Life. Love. Stars. The connections that hold people together. It’s all there. Ecstasy. It feels like having a whole planet making love to you. You see the patterns of life, and when you come out you want everybody else to see them too, so they don’t have to walk around crippled and cut off all the time. I just tried a little bit. You can take it mild, strong, any level you like. And when you take it, you begin to understand. You’re in tune at last. You receive signals from the universe. It opens you, Skagg. Oh, come inside with me, won’t you? I want to go in and take it stronger. And I want you to share it with me.”

He eluded her grasping hand. “I’m afraid.”

‘Don’t be. I went in. I came out.”

“It’s forbidden.”

“Because it’s good, Skagg. People have always been forbidding other people to have anything this good. And once you’ve had it, you’ll know why. You’ll see the kind of power that hate and bitterness have—and you’ll know how to soar to the sky and escape that power.”

She tugged at him. He moved back.

“I can’t go in,” he said.

“Are you that afraid of dying?”

“They tell us that the machine makes people monstrous.”

“Am I a monster?”

“They tell us that there are certain things we must never know.”

“Anybody who says that is the true monster, Skagg.”