Jack Vance - Planet of Adventure

"You are acquainted with Gozed? The captain made quite a mystery of the place."

"No mystery. The folk of the island are highly religious; they worship the sea-scorpions native to the waters around the island. They are as large or larger than a man, or so I am told."

"Why then are the huts so high in the air?"

"At night the scorpions come up from the sea to spawn, which they accomplish by stinging eggs into a host animal, often a woman left down on the beach for that purpose. The eggs hatch, the 'Mother of the Gods' is devoured by the larvae. In the last stages, when pain and religious ecstasy produce a curious psychological state in the 'Mother; she runs down the beach and flings herself into the sea."

"An unsettling religion."

The Dirdirman admitted as much. "Still it appears to suit the folk of Gozed.

They could change anytime they chose. Sub-men are notoriously susceptible to aberrations of this sort."

Reith could not restrain a grin, and Anacho examined him with surprise. "May I inquire the source of your amusement?"

"It occurs to me that the relationship of Dirdirmen to Dirdir is not unlike that of the Gozed toward their scorpions."

"I fail to see the analogy," Anacho declared rather stiffly.

"Simplicity itself: both are victims to non-human beings who use men for their particular needs."

"Bah!" muttered Anacho. "In many ways you are the most wrongheaded man alive."

He walked abruptly aft, to stand staring out over the sea. Pressures were working in Anacho's subconscious, thought Reith, causing him uneasiness.

The Vargaz nosed cautiously in toward the beach, swung behind a jut of barnacle-encrusted rock and dropped anchor. The captain went ashore in a pinnace; the passengers saw him talking to a group of sternfaced men, white-skinned, totally naked save for sandals and fillets holding down their long iron-colored hair.

Agreement was reached; the captain returned to the Vargaz. A half hour later a pair of lighters came out to the boat. A boom was rigged; bales of fiber and coils of rope were brought aboard, other bales and crates were lowered to the lighters. Two hours after arriving at Gozed the Vargaz backed sail, hoisted anchor and set off across the Draschade.

After the evening meal the passengers sat on the deck forward of the sterncastle with a lantern swinging overhead, and the talk veered to the people of Gozed and their religion. Val Dal Barba, wife of Palo Barba, mother of Heizari and Edwe, thought the ritual unjust.

"Why are there only 'Mothers of Gods'? Why shouldn't those flintfaced men go down on the beach and become 'Fathers of Gods'?"

The captain chuckled. "It seems as if the honors are reserved for the ladies."

"It would never be thus in Murgen," declared the merchant warmly. "We pay sizable tithes to the priests; they take all responsibility for appeasing Bisme; we have no further inconvenience."

"A system as sensible as any," agreed Pal Barba. "This year we subscribe to the Pansogmatic Gnosis, and the religion has much virtue to it."

"I like it much better than Tutelanics," said Edwe. "You merely recite the litany and then you are done for the day."

"Tutelanics was a dreadful bore," Heizari concurred. "All that memorizing! And remember that dreadful Convocation of Souls, where the priests were so familiar?

I like Pansogmatic Gnosis much better."

Dordolio gave an indulgent laugh. "You prefer not to become intense. I myself incline in this direction. Yao doctrine, of course, is to some extent a syncresis; or, better to say, in the course of the 'round' all aspects of the Ineffable are given opportunity to manifest themselves, so that, as we move with the cycle, we experience all theopathy."

Anacho, still smarting from Reith's comparisons, looked across the deck. "Well then, what of Adam Reith, the erudite ethnologist? What theosophical insights can he contribute?"

"None," said Reith. "Very few, at any rate. It occurs to me that the man and his religion are one and the same thing. The unknown exists. Each man projects on the blankness the shape of his own particular world-view. He endows his creation with his personal volitions and attitudes. The religious man stating his case is in essence explaining himself. When a fanatic is contradicted he feels a threat to his own existence; he reacts violently."

"Interesting!" declared the fat merchant. "And the atheist?"

"He projects no image upon the blank whatever. The cosmic mysteries he accepts as things in themselves; he feels no need to hang a more or less human mask upon them. Otherwise, the correlation between a man and the shape into which he molds the unknown for greater ease of manipulation is exact."

The captain raised his goblet of wine against the light of the lantern, tossed it down his throat. "Perhaps you're right, but no one will ever change himself on this account. I have known a multitude of peoples. I have walked under Dirdir spires, through Blue Chasch gardens and Wankh castles. I know these folk and their changeling men. I have traveled to six continents of Tschai; I have befriended a thousand men, caressed a thousand women, killed a thousand enemies; I know the Yao, the Binth, the Walalukians, the Shemolei on one hand; on the other the steppe nomads, the marshmen, the islanders, the cannibals of Rakh and Kislovan; I see differences; I see identities. All try to extract a maximum advantage from existence, and finally all die. None seems the better for it. My own god? Good old Vargaz! Of course! As Adam Reith insists, it is myself. When Vargaz groans through the storm waves, I shudder and grind my teeth. When we glide the dark water under the pink and blue moons, I play the lute, I wear a red ribbon around my forehead, I drink wine. I and Vargaz serve each other and the day Vargaz sinks into the deep, I sink with her."

"Bravo!" cried Palo Barba, the swordsman, who had also drunk much wine. "Do you know, this is my creed as well?" He snatched up a sword, held it high so that lantern-light played up and down its spine. "What the Vargaz is to the captain, the sword is to me!"

"Father!" cried his orange-haired daughter Edwe. "And all the time we thought you a sensible Pansogmatist!"

"Please put down the steel," urged Val Dal Barba, "before you become excited and cut someone's ear off."

"What? Me? A veteran swordsman? How can you imagine such a thing? Well then, as you wish. I'll trade the steel for another goblet of wine."

The talk proceeded. Dordolio swaggered across the deck to stand near Reith.

Presently he said, in a voice of facetious condescension, "A surprise to find a nomad so accomplished in disquisition, so apt in subtle distinctions."

Reith grinned at Traz. "Nomads are not necessarily buffoons."

"You perplex me," Dordolio declared. "Exactly which is your native steppe? What was your tribe?"

"My steppe is far away; my tribe is scattered in every direction."

Dordolio pulled thoughtfully at his mustache. "The Dirdirman believes you to be an amnesiac. According to the Blue Jade Princess you have implied yourself to be a man from another world. The nomad boy, who knows you best, says nothing. I admit to what may be an obtrusive curiosity."

"The quality signifies an active mind," said Reith.

"Yes, Yes. Let me put what I freely acknowledge to be an absurd question."

Dordolio examined Reith cautiously sidewise. "Do you consider yourself to be the native of another world?"

Reith laughed and groped for an answer. He said: "Four possible conditions exist. If I were indeed from another world I could answer either yes or no. If I were not from another world I could answer yes or no. The first case leads to inconvenience. The second diminishes my self-respect. The third case is insanity. The fourth represents the only situation you would not consider an abnormality. The question, hence, as you admit it, is absurd."