Robert Silverberg: A Time of Changes

I had said to Noim that I would remain in the cabin no longer, but would set out for the west in an attempt to save myself. Yet I found myself unwilling to leave. The sweltering shack had become my home. I stayed a day, and another day, and a third, doing nothing, wandering the blazing solitude of the Burnt Lowlands, watching the hornfowl circle. On the fifth day, as you perhaps are able to see, I fell into the habit of autobiography again, and sat down at the place where I had lately spent so many hours sitting, and wrote a few new pages to describe my visit from Noim. Then I let three days more go by, telling myself that on the fourth I would dig my groundcar out of the red sand and head westward. But on the morning of that fourth day Stirron and his men found my hiding place, and now it is the evening of that day, and I have an hour or two more to write, by the grace of the Lord Stirron. And when I have done with this, I will write no more.

They came in six well-armed groundcars, and surrounded my cabin, and called on me through loudspeakers to surrender. I had no hope of resisting them, nor any desire to try. Calmly — for what use was fear? — I showed myself, hands upraised, at the cabin door. They got out of their cars, and I was amazed to find Stirron himself among them, drawn out of his palace into the Lowlands for an out-of-season hunting party with his brother as quarry. He wore all his finery of office. Slowly he walked toward me. I had not seen him in some years, and I was appalled by the signs of age on him: shoulders rounded, head thrust forward, hair thinning, face deeply lined, eyes yellowed and dim. The profits of half a lifetime of supreme power. We regarded one another in silence, like two strangers seeking a point of contact. I tried to find in him that boy, my playmate, my elder brother, whom I had loved and lost so long ago, and I saw only a grim old man with trembling lips. A septarch is trained to mask his inner feelings, yet Stirron was able to hold nothing secret from me, nor could he keep one consistent expression: I saw his face, one look tumbling across the other, tokens of imperial rage, bewilderment, sorrow, contempt, and something that I took to be a sort of suppressed love. At length I spoke first, inviting him into my cabin for a conference. He hesitated, perhaps thinking I had assassination in mind, but after a moment he accepted in right kingly manner, waving to his bodyguard to wait outside. When we were alone within, there was another silent spell, which this time he broke, saying, “One has never felt such pain, Kinnall. One scarcely believes what one has heard about you. That you should stain our father’s memory—”

“Is it such a stain, Lord Septarch?”

“To foul the Covenant? To corrupt the innocent — your bondsister among the victims? What have you been doing, Kinnall? What have you been doing?”

A terrible fatigue came over me, and I closed my eyes, for I scarcely knew where to begin explaining. After a moment I found strength. I reached toward him, smiling, taking his hand, and said, “I love you, Stirron.”

“How sick you are!”

“To talk of love? But we came out of the same womb! Am I not to love you?”

“Is this how you talk now, only in filth?”

“I talk as my heart commands me.”

“You are not only sick but sickening,” said Stirron. He turned away and spat on the sandy floor. He seemed a remote medieval figure to me, trapped behind his dour kingly face, imprisoned in his jewels of office and his robes of state, speaking in gruff, distant tones. How could I reach him?

I said, “Stirron, take the Sumaran drug with me. I have a little left. I’ll mix it for us, and we’ll drink it together, and in an hour or two our souls will be one, and you’ll understand. I swear, you’ll understand. Will you do it? Kill me afterward, if you still want to, but take the drug first.” I began to bustle about, making ready the potion. Stirron caught my wrist and halted me. He shook his head with the slow, heavy gesture of one who feels an infinite sadness. “No,” he said. “Impossible.”

“Why?”

“You will not fuddle the mind of the prime septarch.”

“I’m interested in reaching the mind of my brother Stirron!”

“As your brother, one wishes only that you may be healed. As prime septarch, one must avoid harm, for one belongs to one’s people.”

“The drug is harmless, Stirron.”

“Was it harmless for Halum Helalam?”

“Are you a frightened virgin?” I asked. “I’ve given the drug to scores of people. Halum is the only one who reacted badly — Noim too, I suppose, but he got over it. And—”

“The two people in the world closest to you,” said Stirron, “and the drug harmed them both. Now you offer it to your brother?”

It was hopeless. I asked him again, several times, to risk an experiment with the drug, but of course he would not touch it. And if he had, would it have availed me anything? I would have found only iron in his soul.

I said, “What will happen to me now?”

“A fair trial, followed by an honest sentence.”

“Which will be what? Execution? Imprisonment for life? Exile?”

Stirron shrugged. “It is for the court to decide. Do you take one for a tyrant?”

“Stirron, why does the drug frighten you so? Do you know what it does? Can I make you see that it brings only love and understanding? There’s no need for us to live as strangers to each other, with blankets around our souls. We can speak ourselves out. We can reach forth. We can say “I,” Stirron, and not have to apologize for having selves. I. I. I. We can tell each other what gives us pain, and help each other to escape that pain.” His face darkened; I think he was sure I was mad. I went past him, to the place where I had put down the drug, and quickly mixed it, and offered a flask to him. He shook his head. I drank, impulsively gulping it, and offered the flask again to him. “Go on,” I said. “Drink. Drink! It won’t begin for a while. Take it now, so we’ll be open at the same time. Please, Stirron!”

“I could kill you myself,” he said, “without waiting for the court to act.”

“Yes! Say it, Stirron! I! Myself! Say it again!”

“Miserable selfbarer. My father’s son! If I talk to you in ‘I,’ Kinnall, it’s because you deserve no better than filth from me.”

“It doesn’t need to be filth. Drink, and understand.”

“Never.”

“Why do you oppose it, Stirron? What frightens you?”

“The Covenant is sacred,” he said. “To question the Covenant is to question the whole social order. Turn this drug of yours loose in the land and all reason collapses, all stability is lost. Do you think our forefathers were villains? Do you think they were fools? Kinnall, they understood how to create a lasting society. Where are the cities of Sumara Borthan? Why do they still live in jungle huts, while we have built what we have built? You’d put us on their road, Kinnall. You’d break down the distinctions between right and wrong, so that in a short while law itself would be washed away, and every man’s hand would be lifted against his fellow, and where would be your love and universal understanding then? No, Kinnall. Keep your drug. One still prefers the Covenant.”

“Stirron—”

“Enough. The heat is intolerable. You are arrested; now let us go.”

Because the drug was in me, Stirron agreed to let me have a few hours alone, before we began the journey back to Salla, so that I would not have to travel while my soul was vulnerable to external sensations. A small mercy from the lord septarch: he posted two men as guards outside my cabin, and went off with the others to hunt hornfowl until the coming of dusk.