Robert Silverberg: The Book of Skulls

“Bermuda, maybe. Florida. Nassau.” Actually I hadn’t thought about it much.

“What about Arizona?” he asked.

“What’s there?”

He took a deep breath. “Eli was examining some rare manuscripts in the library,” he said, looking sheepish and uneasy, “and came upon something called the Book of Skulls, which apparently has been here for fifty years and nobody’s translated it, and he’s done some further research now and he thinks—”

That the Keepers of the Skulls actually exist and will let us in on what they’ve got. Hi and Ned and Oliver are willing to go out there and look around, anyway. And I’m invited. Why? For my money? For my charm? Well, matter of fact, it’s because candidates are accepted only in groups of four, and since we’re all roommates anyway, it seemed logical that -

And so on. I said I would, for the hell of it. When Dad was my age, he went searching for uranium mines in the Belgian Congo. Didn’t find them, but he had a ball. I’m entitled to some wild geese too. I’ll go, I said. And put the whole matter out of my mind until after exams. It wasn’t until later on that Eli filled me in on some of the rules of the game. Out of every four candidates, two at best get to live forever, and two have to die. A neat little touch of melodrama. He looked me straight in the eyes. “Now that you know the risks,” he said, “you can back out if you like.” Putting me on the spot, searching for the yellow streaks in the blue blood. I laughed at him. “Those aren’t bad odds,” I said.

Quick impressions, before this trip changes us forever, for it will change us. Wednesday night the 7 of March, approaching New York City.

TIMOTHY. Pink and gold. A two-inch layer of firm fat coating thick slabs of muscle. Big, massive, a fullback if he’d bothered to try. Blue Episcopalian eyes, always laughing at you. He puts you down with a friendly smile. The mannerisms of the American aristocracy. He wears a crew cut in this era: by way of telling the world that he’s his own man. Goes out of his way to seem lazy and coarse. A big cat, a sleepy lion. Watch out. Lions are smarter than they look, and faster on their feet than their Victims tend to think.

ELI. Black and white. Slender, fragile. Beady eyes. An inch taller than I am, but still short. Thin sensual lips, strong chin, curling mop of Assyrian ringlets. The skin so white, so white: he’s never’been in the sun. An hour after he’s shaved he needs a shave. Dense mat of hair on chest and thighs; he’d look virile if he weren’t so flimsy. He has bad luck with girls. I could get somewhere with him but he’s not my type — too much like me. A general impression of vulnerability. Quick, clever mind, not as deep as he thinks it is, but no fool. Basically a medieval scholastic.

ME. Yellow and green. Agile little fairy with a core of clumsiness within his agility. Soft tangled golden brown hair standing up like a halo. Forehead high and getting higher all the time, damn it. You look like a figure out of Fra Angelico, two different girls said to me in a single week; I guess they’re in the same art appreciation class. I have a definitely priestly look. So my mother always said; she envisaged me as a gentle monsignor comforting the heartsore. Sorry, Ma. The pope won’t want my sort. Girls do; they know intuitively I’m gay and offer themselves anyway, I suppose for the challenge of it. A pity, a waste. I am a fair poet and a feeble short-story writer. If I had the balls for it I’d try a novel. I expect to die young. I feel that romanticism demands it of me. For consistency of pose I must constantly contemplate suicide.

OLIVER. Pink and gold, like Timothy, but otherwise how different! Timothy is a solid, brutal pillar; Oliver tapers. Improbable movie-star body and face: six foot three, wide shoulders, slim hips. Perfect proportions. Strong, silent type. Beautiful and knows it and doesn’t give a damn. Kansas farm boy, features open and guileless. Long hair so blond it’s almost white. From the back he looks like a huge girl, except that the waist is wrong. His muscles don’t bulge like Timothy’s, they’re flat and long. Oliver deceives no one with his hayseed stolidity. Behind the bland, cool blue eyes a hungry spirit. He lives in a seething New York City of the mind, hatching ambitious plans. Yet a kind of noble radiance comes from him. If I could only cleanse myself in that brilliant glow. If I could only.

OUR AGES. Timothy, 22 last month. Me, 21½. Oliver, 21 in January. Eli, 20½.

Timothy: Aquarius. Me: Scorpio. Oliver: Capricorn. Eli: Virgo.

I’d rather drive than be driven. I’ve held the wheel ten and twelve hours at a stretch. The way I see it, I’m safer when I’m driving than when somebody else is, because nobody else is quite as interested in preserving my life as I am. Some drivers, I think, actually court death — for the thrill of it, or, as Ned might say, for the esthetics of it. To hell with that. There’s nothing more sacred to me in all the universe than the life of Oliver Marshall, and I want as much control over life-or-death situations as I can get. So I intend to do most of the driving. Thus far this trip I’ve done all of it, though it’s Timothy’s car. Timothy’s the opposite; he’d rather be driven than drive. I suppose it’s a manifestation of class consciousness. Eli doesn’t know how to drive. So it comes down to me and Ned. Ned and me, all the way to Arizona, with Timothy taking a turn once in a while. Frankly, the thought of entrusting my neck to Ned terrifies me. Suppose I just stay where I am, foot on the gas, driving on and on through the night? We could be in Chicago by tomorrow afternoon. St. Louis late tomorrow night. Arizona the day after next. And start hunting for Eli’s skull house. I want to volunteer for immortality. I’m ready; I’m fully psyched up; I believe Eli implicitly. God, I believe! I want to believe. The whole future opens before me. I’ll see the stars. I’ll zoom from world to world. Captain Future from Kansas. And these bonzos want to stop in New York first for a night on the town, a night in the singles bars! Eternity is waiting, and they can’t pass up Maxwell’s Plum. I’d like to tell them what hicks I think they are. But I have to be patient. I don’t want them to laugh at me. I don’t want them to think I’m losing my cool over Arizona and the skulls. First Avenue, here we come.

We went to a place on Sixty-seventh that had opened last Christmas; one of Timothy’s fraternity brothers had been there and had reported the action was groovy, so Timothy insisted on going. We humored him. The name of the place was The Raunch House, which tells you the whole dull story in three syllables. The decor was Early Jockstrap and the clientele ran heavily toward suburban high school football players, with girls outnumbered approximately three to one. High noise level, much moronic laughter. The four of us entered as a phalanx, but our formation shattered the moment we were past the entrance. Timothy, all eager, went plunging toward the bar like a musk-ox in rut, his burly body slowing as he realized by his fifth step that the ambiance wasn’t what he was looking for. Oliver, who in some ways is the most fastidious of us all, never went in; he sensed at once that the place was inadequate and planted himself just inside the doorway to wait for us to leave. I ventured halfway into the room, was hit by a blast of raucousness that jangled every nerve, and, totally turned off, retreated to the relative tranquility of the checkroom alcove. Ned made straight for the washroom. I was naive enough to think he was simply in a hurry to take a piss. A moment later Timothy came up to me, a bumper of beer in his hand, and said, “Let’s get the crap out of here. Where’s Ned?”