Robert Silverberg - Getting Across

One, the tallest of the group, catches our wrists and says, “What is your business in Kingston?”

“I come to purchase books,” Holly declares.

“I come to find my month-wife Silena,” say I.

“Silena! Silena! Silena!” Her name becomes a jubilant incantation on their lips. “His month-wife! Silena! His month-wife! Silena! Silena! Silena!”

The tall one thrusts his face against mine and says, “We offer you a choice. Come and make prayer with us, or die on the spot.”

“We choose to pray,” I tell him.

They tug at our arms, urging us impatiently onward. Down street after street until at last we arrive at holy ground: a garden plot, insignificant in area, planted with unfamiliar bushes and flowers, tended with evident care. They push us inside.

“Kneel,” they say.

“Kiss the sacred earth.”

“Adore the things that grow in it, strangers.”

“Give thanks to God for the breath you have just drawn.”

“And for the breath you are about to draw.”

“Sing!”

“Weep!”

“Laugh!”

“Touch the soil!”

“Worship!”

Silena’s room is cool and quiet, in the upper story of a residence overlooking the university grounds. She wears a soft green robe of coarse texture, no jewelery, no face paint. Her demeanor is calm and self-assured. I had forgotten the delicacy of her features, the cool malicious sparkle of her dark eyes.

“The master program?” she says, smiling. “I destroyed it!”

The depth of my love for her unmans me. Standing before her, I feel my knees turning to water. In my eyes she is bathed in a glittering aura of sensuality. I struggle to control myself. “You destroyed nothing,” I say. “Your voice betrays the lie.”

“You think I still have the program?”

“I know you do.”

“Well, yes,” she admits coolly. “I do.”

My fingers tremble. My throat parches. An adolescent foolishness seeks to engulf me.

“Why did you steal it?” I ask.

“Out of love of mischief.”

“I see the lie in your smile. What was the true reason?”

“Does it matter?”

“The district is paralyzed, Silena. Thousands of people suffer. We are at the mercy of raiders from adjoining districts. Many have already died of the heat, the stink of garbage, the failure of the hospital equipment. Why did you take the program?”

“Perhaps I had political reasons.”

“Which were?”

“To demonstrate to the people of Ganfield how utterly dependent on these machines they have allowed themselves to become.”

“We knew that already,” I say. “If you meant only to dramatize our weaknesses, you were pressing the obvious. What was the point of crippling us? What could you gain from it?”

“Amusement?”

“Something more than that. You’re not that shallow, Silena.”

“Something more than that, then. By crippling Ganfield I help to change things. That’s the purpose of any political act. To display the need for change, so that change may come about.”

“Simply displaying the need is not enough.”

“It’s a place to begin.”

“Do you think stealing our program was a rational way to bring change, Silena?”

“Are you happy?” she retorts. “Is this the kind of world you want?”

“It’s the world we have to live in whether we like it or not. And we need that program in order to go on coping. Without it we are plunged into chaos.”

“Fine. Let chaos come. Let everything fall apart, so we can rebuild it.”

“Easy enough to say, Silena. What about the innocent victims of your revolutionary zeal, though?”

She shrugs. “There are always innocent victims in any revolution.” In a sinuous movement she rises and approaches me. The closeness of her body is dazzling and maddening. With exaggerated voluptuousness she croons, “Stay here. Forget Ganfield. Life is good here. These people are building something worth having.”

“Let me have the program,” I say.

“They must have replaced it by now.”

“Replacing it is impossible. The program is vital to Ganfield, Silena. Let me have it.”

She emits an icy laugh.

“I beg you, Silena.”

“How boring you are!”

“I love you.”

“You love nothing but the status quo. The shape of things as they are gives you great joy. You have the soul of a bureaucrat.”

“If you have always had such contempt for me, why did you become my month-wife?”

She laughs again. “For sport, perhaps.”

Her words are like knives. Suddenly, to my own astonishment, I am brandishing the heat-pistol. “Give me the program or I’ll kill you!” I cry.

She is amused. “Go. Shoot. Can you get the program from a dead Silena?”

“Give it to me.”

“How silly you look holding that gun!”

“I don’t have to kill you,” I tell her. “I can merely wound you. This pistol is capable of inflicting light burns that scar the skin. Shall I give you blemishes, Silena?”

“Whatever you wish. I’m at your mercy.”

I aim the pistol at her thigh. Silena’s face remains expressionless. My arm stiffens and begins to quiver. I struggle with the rebellious muscles, but I succeed in steadying my aim only for a moment before the tremors return. An exultant gleam enters her eyes. A flush of excitement spreads over her face. “Shoot,” she says defiantly. “Why don’t you shoot me?”

She knows me too well. We stand in a frozen tableau for an endless moment outside time—a minute, an hour, a second?—and then my arm sags to my side. I put the pistol away. It never would have been possible for me to fire it. A powerful feeling assails me of having passed through some subtle climax: it will all be downhill from here for me, and we both know it. Sweat drenches me. I feel defeated, broken.

Silena’s features reveal intense scorn. She has attained some exalted level of consciousness in these past few moments where all acts become gratuitous, where love and hate and revolution and betrayal and loyalty are indistinguishable from one another. She smiles the smile of someone who has scored the winning point in a game, the rules of which will never be explained to me.

“You little bureaucrat,” she says calmly. “Here!”

From a closet she brings forth a small parcel which she tosses disdainfully to me. It contains a drum of computer film. “The program?” I ask. “This must be some joke. You wouldn’t actually give it to me, Silena.”

“You hold the master program of Ganfield in your hand.”

“Really, now?”

“Really, really,” she says. “The authentic item. Go on. Go. Get out. Save your stinking Ganfield.”

“Silena—”

“Go.”

The rest is tedious but simple. I locate Holly Borden, who has purchased a load of books. I help her with them, and we return via tube to Hawk Nest. There I take refuge beneath the bookshop once more while a call is routed through Old Grove, Parley Close, the Mill, and possibly some other districts to the district captain of Ganfield. It takes two days to complete the circuit, since district rivalries make a roundabout relay necessary. Ultimately I am connected and convey my happy news: I have the program, though I have lost my passport and am forbidden to cross Conning Town. Through diplomatic channels a new passport is conveyed to me a few days later, and I take the tube home the long way, via Budleigh, Cedar Mall, and Morton Court. Ganfield is hideous, all filth and disarray, close to the point of irreversible collapse; its citizens have lapsed into a deadly stasis and await their doom placidly. But I have returned with the program.

The captain praises my heroism. I will be rewarded, he says. I will have promotion to the highest ranks of the civil service, with hope of ascent to the district council.