Robert Silverberg: We Know Who We Are

“Perhaps. Perhaps. But I can’t. Look—they’re all watching us. You see them, here in the shadows? Everybody in Shining City is here! How could I go in? How could I do something so filthy when all of them—”

“I feel so sorry for you,” she said softly. “To be afraid of love—to pull back from knowledge—”

“I can’t help myself.”

Gently she said, “Skagg, I’m going back in, and this time I’m going to ask for the most they can give. If there’s any love in your soul, come in after me. I’ll wait in there for you. And afterward we’ll go off together—we’ll visit every city in the world together—”

He shook his head.

She came close to him. He jumped away, as if afraid she would seize him and haul him into the machine, but she went to him and kissed him, a light brushing of lips on lips, and then she turned and went back into the machine.

He did not follow, but he did not leave.

The moons crossed in the sky, and the rain-sphere passed over the city, and the birds of night followed it, and a Riding Machine came to him and offered to take him to his home, and the red light of the morning sun began to streak the sky, and still the door of the Knowing Machine did not open, and still Fa Sol La stayed within. Skagg was alone in the plaza now.

“I’ll wait in there for you,” she had said.

The others, his friends, his neighbors, had gone home to sleep. He was alone. At sunrise he went forward into the Zone of Peril and stayed there awhile, and after an hour he entered the Zone of Impiety, and as the full morning heat descended he found himself going up the steps quite calmly and opening the door of the Knowing Machine.

“Welcome to Therapeutic Center Seven,” a deep voice said from above, speaking in Language but using an accent even less familiar than the girl’s. “Please move to your left for elementary sensory expansion treatment. You will find helmets on the wall. Place a helmet snugly on your head and—”

“Where’s the girl?” he asked.

The voice continued to instruct him. Skagg ignored it, and went to his right, along a corridor that curved to circle the column. He found her just around the bend. She wore a helmet and her eyes were open, but she leaned frozen against the wall, strangely pale, strangely still. He put his ear between her breasts and heard nothing. He touched her skin and it seemed already to be growing cold. She did not close her eyes when his fingertip neared them.

There was on her face an expression of such joy that he could hardly bear to look at it.

The voice said, “In the early stages of therapy, a low level of stimulation is recommended. Therefore we request that you do not attempt to draw a greater degree of intensification than you are able at this stage to—”

Skagg took the helmet from her head. He lifted her in his arms and found that she weighed almost nothing. Carefully he set her down. Then, taking another helmet from the rack, he held it with both hands for a long time, listening to the instructions and hearing once more the girl’s talk of ecstasy and soaring, and comparing all that he saw here to the things that everyone always had said about the Knowing Machine. After a while he put the helmet back in the rack without using it, and picked up the girl again, and carried her body out of the machine.

As he went down the steps, he saw that the others had gathered again and were gaping at him.

“You were in the machine?” Simit asked.

“I was in the machine,” said Skagg.

“It killed her but not you?” Derk wanted to know.

“She used it. I didn’t. First she used it a little, and then she used it too much, and the second time it killed her.” Skagg kept walking as he spoke. They followed him.

“It is death simply to go inside the machine,” Prewger said.

“This is wrong,” said Skagg. “You can enter safely. Death comes only from using the machine. From using it wrongly.”

“She was a fool,” said Glorr. “She was punished.”

“Maybe so,” Skagg said. “But the machine gives us love. The machine gives us goodness.”

He put the girl on the ground and summoned a Service Machine. Skagg gave it the girl’s pack, asking that it be outfitted with a Water Machine and a Food Machine and a Shelter Machine. The Service Machine went away and came back a short while later. After inspecting the pack, Skagg strapped it over his shoulder. Then he picked up the girl again and began to walk.

“Where are you going with her?” Glorr asked.

“Out of the city. I will find a place for her body to rest in the desert.”

“When you return, will you go into the Knowing Machine again?” Simit asked.

“I won’t return for a long time,” said Skagg. “I have some traveling to do. First to River City, and then to other places, maybe. And then, when I’ve found my courage, when I know who I really am and what I really want to be, I’ll come back here and go into the machine and use it as it was meant to be used. And nothing will ever be the same in Shining City again.”

He walked more quickly away from them, out toward the Empty Buildings, toward the plain of purple sand. He wondered how long it would take him to reach that other city beside the River Without Fish, and whether he would meet anyone like Fa Sol La when he got there.

His friends stood watching him until he was out of sight.

“He has become a madman,” said Prewger.

“A dangerous madman,” Glorr said.

“Would you do such a thing?” Simit asked.

“Do you mean, go into the machine, or go to another city?” said Derk.

“Either one.”

“Of course not,” said Derk.

“Of course not,” said Glorr as well. “I know who I am. I know what I want to be.”

“Yes,” Simit said, shuddering. “Why should we do such things? We know who we are.”

“We know what we want to be,” said Prewger.