Robert Silverberg - Downward to the Earth

Gundersen frowned. “You won’t tell me the nature of his crime?”

“Does it matter? We want him. Our reasons are not trifling ones. We request you to bring him to us.”

“You’re asking one Earthman to seize another and turn him in for punishment,” said Gundersen. “How am I to know where justice lies in this affair?”

“Under the treaty of relinquishment, are we not the arbiters of justice on this world?” asked one nildor.

Gundersen admitted that this was so.

“Then we hold the right to deal with Cullen as he deserves,” Vol’himyor said.

That did not, of course, make it proper for Gundersen to act as catspaw in handing his old comrade over to the nildoror. But Vol’himyor’s implied threat was clear: do as we wish, or we grant you no favors.

Gundersen said, “What punishment will Cullen get if he falls into your custody?”

“Punishment? Punishment? Who speaks of punishment?”

“If the man’s a criminal—”

“We wish to purify him,” said the many-born one. “We desire to cleanse his spirit. We do not regard that as punishment.”

“Will you injure him physically in any way?”

“It is not to be thought.”

“Will you end his life?”

“Can you mean such a thing? Of course not.”

“Will you imprison him?”

“We will keep him in custody,” said Vol’himyor, “for however long the rite of purification takes. I do not think it will take long. He will swiftly be freed, and he will be grateful to us.”

“I ask you once more to tell me the nature of his crime.”

“He will tell you that himself,” the nildor said. “It is not necessary for me to make his confession for him.”

Gundersen considered all aspects of the matter. Shortly he said, “I agree to our treaty, many-born one, but only if I may add several clauses.”

“Go on.”

“If Cullen will not tell me the nature of his crime, I am released from my obligation to hand him over.”

“Agreed.”

“If the sulidoror object to my taking Cullen out of the mist country, I am released from my obligation also.”

“They will not object. But agreed.”

“If Cullen must be subdued by violence in order to bring him forth, I am released.”

The nildor hesitated a moment. “Agreed,” he said finally.

“I have no other conditions to add.”

“Then our treaty is made,” Vol’himyor said. “You may begin your northward journey today. Five of our once-born ones must also travel to the mist country, for their time of rebirth has come, and if you wish they will accompany you and safeguard you along the way. Among them is Srin’gahar, whom you already know.”

“Will it be troublesome for them to have me with them?”

“Srin’gahar has particularly requested the privilege of serving as your guardian,” said Vol’himyor. “But we would not compel you to accept his aid, if you would rather make your journey alone.”

“It would be an honor to have his company,” Gundersen said.

“So be it, then.”

A senior nildor summoned Srin’gahar and the four others who would be going toward rebirth. Gundersen was gratified at this confirmation of the existing data: once more the frenzied dance of the nildoror had preceded the departure of a group bound for rebirth.

It pleased him, too, to know that he would have a nildoror escort on the way north. There was only one dark aspect to the treaty, that which involved Cedric Cullen. He wished he had not sworn to barter another Earthman’s freedom for his own safe-conduct pass. But perhaps Cullen had done something really loathsome, something that merited punishment — or purification, as Vol’himyor put it. Gundersen did not understand how that normally sunny man could have become a criminal and a fugitive, but Cullen had lived on this world a long time, and the strangeness of alien worlds ultimately corroded even the brightest souls. In any case, Gundersen felt that he had opened enough honorable exits for himself if he needed to escape from his treaty with Vol’himyor.

Srin’gahar and Gundersen went aside to plan their route. “Where in the mist country do you intend to go?” the nildor asked.

“It does not matter. I just want to enter it. I suppose I’ll have to go wherever Cullen is.”

“Yes. But we do not know exactly where he is, so we will have to wait until we are there to learn it. Do you have special places to visit on the way north?”

“I want to stop at the Earthman stations,” Gundersen said. “Particularly at Shangri-la Falls. So my idea is that we’ll follow Madden’s River northwestward, and—”

“These names are unknown to me.”

“Sorry. I guess they’ve all reverted back to nildororu names. And I don’t know those. But wait—” Seizing a stick, Gundersen scratched a hasty but serviceable map of Belzagor’s western hemisphere in the mud. Across the waist of the disk he drew the thick swath of the tropics. At the right side he gouged out a curving bite to indicate the ocean; on the left he outlined the Sea of Dust. Above and below the band of the tropics he drew the thinner lines representing the northern and southern mist zones, and beyond them he indicated the gigantic icecaps. He marked the spaceport and the hotel at the coast with an X, and cut a wiggly line up from there, clear across the tropics into the northern mist country, to show Madden’s River. At the midway point of the river he placed a dot to mark Shangri-la Falls. “Now,” said Gundersen, “if you follow the tip of my stick—”

“What are those marks on the ground?” asked Srin’gahar.

A map of your planet, Gundersen wanted to say. But there was no nildororu word in his mind for “map.” He found that he also lacked words for “image,” picture,” and similar concepts. He said lamely, “This is your world. This is Belzagor, or at least half of it. See, this is the ocean, and the sun rises here, and—”

“How can this be my world, these marks, when my world is so large?”

“This is like your world. Each of these lines, here, stands for a place on your world. You see, here, the big river that runs out of the mist country and comes down to the coast, where the hotel is, yes? And this mark is the spaceport. These two lines are the top and the bottom of the northern mist country. The—”

“It takes a strong sulidor a march of many days to cross the northern mist country. said Srin’gahar. “I do not understand how you can point to such a small space and tell me it is the northern mist country. Forgive me, friend of my journey. I am very stupid.”

Gundersen tried again, attempting to communicate the nature of the marks on the ground. But Srin’gahar simply could not comprehend the idea of a map, nor could he see how scratched lines could represent places. Gundersen considered asking Vol’himyor to help him, but rejected that plan when he realized that Vol’himyor, too, might not understand; it would be tactless to expose the many-born one’s ignorance in any area. The map was a metaphor of place, an abstraction from reality. Evidently even beings possessing g’rakh might not have the capacity to grasp such abstractions.

He apologized to Srin’gahar for his own inability to express concepts clearly, and rubbed out the map with his boot. Without it, planning the route was somewhat more difficult, but they found ways to communicate. Gundersen learned that the great river at whose mouth the hotel was situated was called the Seran’nee in nildororu, and that the place where the river plunged out of the mountains into the coastal plain, which Earthmen knew as Shangri-la Falls, was Du’jayukh to nildoror. Then it was simple for them to agree to follow the Seran’nee to its source, with a stop at Du’jayukh and at any other settlement of Earthmen that happened to lie conveniently on the path north.