Robert Silverberg - Nightwings

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 fancies. 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 was extraordinarily heavy, it appeared. Olmayne and I speculated on how long it might take us to gain access to the waters of renewal at such a time.

“You’ve never been renewed before?” she asked.

“Never.”

“Nor I. 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 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 renewal 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?

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, corne!”

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 crystallization 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 expect renewal if your soul is so deficient in grace?”

“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 suddenly 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 millennia. 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 Earth-born; but from the worlds of the Spear came this ailment, carried by alien tourists, 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 without 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 entirely, 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 rubbery, 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, separating 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 dissolves, 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 unable 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 arching 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 metamorphosis, the result of thousands of years of evolution toward a symbiotic relationship. Unfortunately, among the Earthborn, the evolutionary preparation did not take place, and the agent of change invariably brings its subject to a fatal outcome.