Robert Silverberg - A Time of Changes

He said he felt he could not regard himself as my true bondbrother unless he sampled it. Those words came from him at great cost. His elegant clothes were rumpled by his restlessness, and a fine line of beaded perspiration stood out on his upper lip. We went to a room where no one could intrude, and I prepared the potion. As he took the flask, he briefly flashed at me his familiar grin, impudent and sly and bold, but his hand was shaking so badly he nearly spilled the drink. The drug took effect quickly for both of us. It was a night of thick humidity with a dense greasy mist covering the city and its suburbs, and it seemed to me that fingers of that mist were sliding into our room through the partly opened window: I saw shimmering, pulsating strands of cloud groping at us, dancing between my bondbrother and myself. The early sensations of druggedness disturbed Noim, until I explained that everything was normal, the twinned heartbeats, the cottony head, the high whining sounds in the air. Now we were open. I looked into Noim and saw not only his self but his image of his self, encrusted with shame and self-contempt; there was in Noim a fierce and burning loathing of his imagined flaws, and the flaws were many. He held himself accused of laziness, lack of discipline and ambition, irreligiousness, a casual concern with high obligations, and physical and moral weakness. Why he saw himself in this way I could not understand, for the true Noim was there beside the image, and the true Noim was a tough-minded man, loyal to those he loved, harsh in judgment of folly, clear-sighted, passionate, energetic. The contrast between Noim’s Noim and the world’s was startling: it was as though he were capable of correctly evaluating everything but his own worth. I had seen such disparities before on these drug voyages; in fact they were universal in all but Schweiz, who had not been trained from childhood in self-denial; yet they were sharper in Noim than in anyone else.

Also I saw, as I had seen before, my own image refracted through Noim’s sensibility: a far nobler Kinnall Darival than I recognized. How he idealized me! I was all he hoped to be, a man of action and valor, a wielder of power, an enemy of everything that was frivolous, a practitioner of the sternest inner discipline and devotion. Yet this image bore traces of a new overlay of tarnish, for was I not also now a Covenant-defiling selfbarer, who had done this and this and that and that with eleven strangers, and who now had lured his own bondbrother into criminal experimentation? And also Noim found in me the true depth of my feelings for Halum, and upon making that discovery, which confirmed old suspicions, he altered his image of me once again, not for the better. Meanwhile I showed Noim how I had always seen him — quick, clever, capable — and showed him too his own Noim and the objective Noim as well, while he gave me a view of the selves of mine he now could see beside that idealized Kinnall: These mutual explorations continued a long time. I thought the exchanges were immensely valuable, since only with Noim could I attain the necessary depth of perspective, the proper parallax of character, and he only with me; we had great advantages over a pair of strangers meeting for the first time by way of the Sumaran drug. When the spell of the potion began to lift, I felt myself exhausted by the intensity of our communion, and yet ennobled, exalted, transformed.

Not so Noim. He looked depleted and chilled. He could barely lift his eyes to mine. His mood was so frigid that I dared not break in on it, but remained still, waiting for him to recover. At length he said, “Is it all over?”

“Yes.”

“Promise one thing, Kinnall. Will you promise?”

“Say it, Noim.”

“That you never do this thing with Halum! Is it a promise? Will you promise it, Kinnall? Never. Never. Never.”

Several days after Noim’s departure some guilty impulse drove me to the Stone Chapel. To fill the time until Jidd could see me, I roamed the halls and byways of the dark building, pausing at altars, bowing humbly to half-blind scholars of the Covenant holding debate in a courtyard, brushing away ambitious minor drainers who, recognizing me, solicited my trade. All about me were the things of the gods, and I failed to detect the divine presence. Perhaps Schweiz had found the godhood through the souls of other men, but I, dabbling in selfbaring, somehow had lost that other faith, and it did not matter to me. I knew that in time I would find my way back to grace under this new dispensation of love and trust that I hoped to offer. So I lurked in the godhouse of godhouses, a mere tourist.

I went to Jidd. I had not had a draining since immediately after Schweiz first had given me the Sumaran drug. The little crooknosed man remarked on that as I took the contract from him. The pressures of the Justiciary, I explained, and he shook his head and made a chiding sound. “You must be full to overflowing,” Jidd said. I did not reply, but settled down before his mirror to peer at the lean, unfamiliar face that dwelled in it. He asked me which god I would have, and I told him the god of the innocent. He gave me a queer look at that. The holy lights came on. With soft words he guided me into the half-trance of confession. What could I say? That I had ignored my pledge, and gone on to use the selfbaring potion with everyone who would take it from me? I sat silent. Jidd prodded me. He did something I had never known a drainer to do before: hearkened back to a previous draining, and asked me to speak again of this drug whose use I had admitted earlier. Had I used it again? I pushed my face close to the mirror, fogging it with my breath. Yes. Yes. One is a miserable sinner and one has been weak once more. Then Jidd asked me how I had obtained this drug, and I said that I had taken it, the first time, in company with one who had purchased it from a man who had been to Sumara Borthan. Yes, Jidd said, and what was the name of this companion? That was a clumsy move: immediately I was on guard. It seemed to me that Jidd’s question went far beyond the needs of a draining, and certainly could have no relevance to my own condition of the moment. I refused therefore to give him Schweiz’s name, which led the drainer to ask me, a little roughly, if I feared he would breach the secrecy of the ritual.

Did I fear that? On rare occasions I had held things back from drainers out of shame, but never out of fear of betrayal. Naive I was, and I had full faith in the ethics of the godhouse. Only now, suddenly suspicious, with that suspicion having been planted by Jidd himself, did I mistrust Jidd and all his tribe. Why did he want to know? What information was he after? What could I gain, or he, by my revealing my source of the drug? I replied tautly, “One seeks forgiveness for oneself alone, and how can telling the name of one’s companion bring that? Let him do his own confessing.” But of course there was no chance that Schweiz would go to a drainer; thus I had come down to playing wordgames with Jidd. All value had leaked from this draining, leaving me with an empty husk. “If you would have peace from the gods,” Jidd said, “you must speak your soul fully.” How could I do that? Confess the seduction of eleven people into selfbaring? I had no need of Jidd’s forgiveness. I had no faith in his good will. Abruptly I stood up, a little dizzy from kneeling in the dark, swaying a bit, almost stumbling. The sound of distant hymn-singing floated past me, and a trace of the scent of the precious incense of a plant of the Wet Lowlands. “One is not ready for draining today,” I told Jidd. “One must examine one’s soul more closely?’ I lurched toward the door. He looked puzzledly at the money I had given him. “The fee?” he called. I told him he could keep it.