Robert Silverberg: The Book of Skulls

Summer lies heavy on the land. The sky throbs with stupefying heat. All seems predetermined and properly ordered. Timothy sleeps. Oliver sleeps. Ned and I remain.

In these months we have grown quite strong and our skins are dark from the sun. We live in a kind of waking dream, floating placidly through our daily round of chores and rites. We are not quite full-fledged fraters yet, but our time of Trial is nearing its end. Two weeks after that day of gravedigging I mastered the ritual of the three women and since then I have had no difficulties in absorbing any lesson the fraters would teach me.

The days flow together. We stand outside time here. Was it April when we came first to the fraters? Of what year, and what year is this? A waking dream, a waking dream. I feel sometimes that Oliver and Timothy are figures in another dream, one that I had long ago. I have begun to forget the details of their faces. Blond hair, blue eyes, yes, but then what? How were their noses shaped, how prominent were their chins? Their faces fade. Timothy and Oliver are gone, and Ned and I remain. I still remember Timothy’s voice, a warm supple bass, well controlled, beautifully modulated, with faintly nasal aristocratic inflections. And Oliver’s, a strong clear tenor, the tones hard-edged and firm, the accent neutral, the accentless American of the prairies. To them my gratitude. They died for me.

This morning my faith wavered, only for an instant, but it was a frightening instant; an abyss of uncertainty opened beneath me after so many months of wholehearted assurance, and I saw devils with pitchforks and heard the shrill laughter of Satan. I was coming in from the fields, and I happened to look far across the flat scrubby land to the place where Timothy and Oliver lie, and unexpectedly a thin scratchy voice in my head asked me, Do you think you’ve gained anything here? How can you be sure? How certain are you that it’s possible to have the thing that you seek ? I knew a moment of awful fear, in which I imagined I stared with red-rimmed eyes into an icy future, seeing myself wither and shrivel and turn to dust in an empty, blasted world. The moment of doubt then left me, as suddenly as it had come. Perhaps it was just a vagrant gust of unfocused discontent, blowing idly across the continent toward the Pacific, that had paused briefly to unsettle me. I was shaken by what I had undergone, and I ran to the house, meaning to find Ned and tell him about it, but by the time I neared his room the episode seemed too ridiculous to share with him. Do you think you’ve gained anything here ? How could I have doubted at all? A strange backsliding, Eli.

His door was open. I looked in and saw him sitting slumped, his head in his hands. Somehow he sensed my presence; he looked up quickly, rearranging his face, replacing a transient look of despair or dejection with a carefully bland expression. But his eyes were bright with strain and I thought I saw the glitter of incipient tears.

“You felt it too, then?” I asked.

“Felt what?” Almost defiantly.

“Nothing. Nothing.” An airy shrug. How can you be sure ? We were playing games with one another, pretending. But doubt was general that morning. An infection running through both of us. How certain are you that it’s possible to have the thing that you seek ? I felt a wall rising between him and me, preventing me from telling him of the fears I had felt, or from asking him why he had seemed so distraught. I left him and went to my room to bathe, and afterward to breakfast. Ned and I sat together but said little. Our morning session with Frater Antony was due to follow, but I felt somehow that I should not go, and when I had eaten I returned instead to my room. Do you think you’ve gained anything here ? In confusion I knelt before the great mosaic-work skull-mask on my wall, staring at it with unblinking eyes, letting myself absorb it, compelling the myriad tiny bits of obsidian and turquoise, of jade and shell, to melt and flow and change, until that skull put on flesh for me and I saw a face over the gaunt bones, another face, another, a whole series of faces, a flickering, evershifting array of faces. Now I saw Timothy, and now the mask put on the finer features of Oliver, and now I saw my father, who swiftly was transformed into my mother. How can you be sure ? Frater Antony looked down from the wall, speaking to me in an unknown tongue, and became Frater Miklos, murmuring of lost continents and forgotten caves. How certain are you that it’s possible to have the thing that you seek ? Now I saw the slender, timid, big-nosed girl I had loved momentarily in New York, and I had to grope for her name — Mickey? Mickey Bernstein? — and I said, “Hello, I went to Arizona, just as I told you,” but she made no reply, I think she had forgotten who I was. She vanished and in her place came the sullen girl in the Oklahoma motel, and then the heavy-breasted succubus who had floated past me that night in Chicago. I heard the shrill laughter again, rising from the abyss, and wondered if I would have another of those moments of devastating doubt. Do you think you’ve gained anything here ? Suddenly Dr. Nicolescu peered down at me, gray-faced, sad-eyed, shaking his head, accusing me in his mild self-deprecatory way of having treated him unkindly. I made no denials, but neither did I wince nor look away, for my guilt had been taken from me. I kept my weary eyelids open, staring at him until he was gone. How certain are you that it’s possible to have the thing that you seek ? Ned’s face came. Timothy’s, again. Oliver’s. And then my own, the face of Eli himself, the prime instigator of the journey, the feckless leader of the Receptacle. Do you think you’ve gained anything here ? I studied my face, deplored its flaws, seized control of it, retrogressed it to plump pasty-faced boyhood — then brought it forward in time again to the present, to the new and unfamiliar Eli of the House of Skulls, and went beyond that Eli to another I had never seen before, an Eli to come, timeless, stolid, phlegmatic, an Eli-turned-frater, a face of fine leather, a face of stone. As I examined that Eli I heard the Adversary insistently asking His question: How can you be sure? How can you be sure? How can you be sure ? He asked it over and over, hammering me with it, until all echoes blurred into a single formless rumbling boom, and I was without answer for Him and found myself alone on a dark polar plateau, clawing at a universe whose gods had fled, thinking, I have shed the blood of my friends, and for what? And for what? For this ? But then strength returned to me, and I shouted my answer into His booming derisions, crying out that I fell back upon my faith, I was sure because I was sure. “I believe! I believe! I deny You Your victory!” And showed myself my own image striding through the shining streets of distant tomorrows, treading the sands of alien worlds, an eternal Eli embracing the torrent of years. And I laughed, and He laughed also, and His laughter drowned mine, but my faith would not waver and at last He fell still, allowing me to laugh last.

Then I found myself sitting, hoarse-throated and trembling, before the familiar mosaic mask. There were no more metamorphoses. The time of visions was over. I gave the mask a wary glance but it remained as it was. Very well. I searched my soul and found no residue of doubt in it; that final conflagration had burned all those late-lingering impurities away. Very well. Rising, I left my room and walked quickly down the hall, into that part of the building where bare beams alone stand forth against the open sky. Looking up, I saw a huge hawk circling far above me, dark against the fierce blank blueness. Hawk, you will die, and I will live. Of this I have no doubt. I turned the corner and came to the room where our meetings with Frater Antony are held. The frater and Ned were already there, but evidently they had waited for me; for the frater’s pendant still hung around his neck. Ned smiled at me and Frater Antony nodded. I understand , they appeared to be saying. I understand. These storms will come . I knelt beside Ned. Frater Antony removed his pendant and placed the tiny jade skull on the floor before us. Life eternal we offer thee . “Let us turn the interior vision upon the symbol we see here,” said Frater Antony gently. Yes. Yes. Joyously, expectantly, undoubtingly, I gave myself anew to the Skull and its Keepers.