Supermen: Tales of the Posthuman Future (16 page)

—Let's run over the systems.

—Check. Care for some coffee?

—That'd be nice.

A small unit descended on his left, stopping within easy reach of his mortal hand. He opened its door. A bulb of dark liquid rested in a rack.

—Timed your arrival. Had it ready.

—Just the way I like it, too. I almost forgot. Thanks
.

Several hours later, when they left orbit, he had already switched off a number of his left-side systems. He was merged even more closely with the vessel, absorbing data at a frantic rate. Their expanded perceptions took in the near-ship vicinity and moved out to encompass the extrasolar panorama with greater-than-human clarity and precision. They reacted almost instantaneously to decisions great and small.

—It is good to be back together again, Jack.

—I'd say.

Morgana
held him tightly. Their velocity built.

Here's a visit to the very far future, a literary territory that has always fascinated Robert Silverberg, and a vivid demonstration that even when thousands or tens of thousands of years of evolution and technological advances separate the human from the posthuman, they may find that they still have a few things in common— depending on what dreams they share.

Robert Silverberg is one of the most famous SF writers of modern times, with dozens of novels, anthologies, and collections to his credit. As both writer and editor, Silverberg was one of the most influential figures of the Post New Wave era of the seventies, and continues to be at the forefront of the field to this very day, having won a total of five Nebula Awards and four Hugo Awards.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1935, Silverberg, like Poul Anderson before him, started a successful career as an SF writer while he was still in college; his first novel was sold in 1954, while he was a junior at Columbia University; by 1955, still prior to graduation, he was earning "quite a good living" by writing, and by 1956, he had won his first Hugo Award. He spent a period of some years in the late fifties and early sixties away from the field, writing a long string of well-received nonfiction books, but by the late sixties he'd returned to the genre, and during the first half of the seventies, the so-called "New Silverberg" would produce a large and remarkable body of work: the brilliant
Dying Inside,
easily one of the best books of the seventies,
Downward to the Earth, The Book of Skulls, Tower of Glass, The World Inside, The Second Trip, A Time of Changes, The Stochastic Man,
and
Shadrack In The Furnace,
as well as high-quality short work such as "Born With the Dead," "Sundance," "In Entropy's Jaws," "Breckenridge and the Continuum," "Push No More" "In the Group," "Capricorn Games," "Trips," "Swartz Between the Galaxies," and many more. Seldom has SF witnessed such a concentrated outpouring of high-level talent, work that would be highly influential on writers such as Barry N. Malzberg and the later Gregory Benford, to name just two, and which I strongly suspect was influential on writers of subsequent generations— such as Alexander Jablokov— as well. When you add in the influence that Silverberg would exert on the field through his editorship of the
New Dimensions
original anthology series, the most important anthology series of its day, you can see that the strength of Silverberg's impact on the SF world of the seventies can hardly be overestimated.

In 1976, depressed by the general malaise that had settled over the field at the time, and perhaps exhausted from his efforts over the previous years, Silverberg publicly announced his "retirement" …and, indeed, would not write another word until 1980, when he suddenly came out of retirement to write his huge science-fantasy novel (also set in the far future),
Lord Valentine's Castle.
His output of new fiction was relatively low in the early years of the decade, but when a new surge of creative energy revitalized the field in the mid-eighties, Silverberg shifted into high
gear once again, and as what might perhaps be referred to— a bit facetiously— as the "New New Silverberg," poured out another torrent of high-quality work such as "The Pope of the Chimps," "Multiples," "The Palace at Midnight," "We Are for the Dark," "In Another Country," "Basileus," "The Secret Sharer," "Enter a Soldier." Later: "Enter Another," "Sailing to Byzantium," "Beauty in the Night," "Death Do Us Part," "The Colonel in Autumn," and dozens of others, as well as a score of bestselling novels— a torrent that shows no signs of running dry even here at the beginning of a new century.

Silverberg's other books include the novels
Son of Man, Thorns, Up the Line, The Man in the Maze, Tom O'Bedlam, Star of Gypsies, At Winter's End, The Face of the Waters, Kingdoms of the Wall, Hot Sky at Morning,
and two novel-length expansions of famous Isaac Asimov stories,
Nightfall
and
The Ugly Little Boy.
His collections include
Unfamiliar Territory, Capricorn Games, Majipoor Chronicles, The Best of Robert Silverberg, At The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party, Beyond the Safe Zone,
and a massive retrospective collection,
The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume One: Secret Sharers.
His reprint anthologies are far too numerous to list here, but they include
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One
and the distinguished Alpha series, among dozens of others. His most recent books are the novels
The Alien Years, Lord Prestimion,
and
Mountains of Majipoor.
He lives with his wife, writer Karen Haber, in Oakland, California.

*

Under a warm golden wind from the west, Bhengarn the Traveler moves steadily onward toward distant Crystal Pond, his appointed place of metamorphosis. The season is late. The swollen scarlet sun clings close to the southern hills. Bhengarn's body— a compact silvery tube supported by a dozen pairs of sturdy three-jointed legs— throbs with the need for transformation. And yet the Traveler is unhurried. He has been bound on this journey for many hundreds of years. He has traced across the face of the world a glistening trail that zigzags from zone to zone, from continent to continent, and even now still glimmers behind him with a cold brilliance like a thread of bright metal stitching the planet's haunches. For the past decade he has patiently circled Crystal Pond at the outer end of a radical arm one-tenth the diameter of the Earth in length; now, at the prompting of some interior signal, he has begun to spiral inward upon it.

The path immediately before him is bleak. To his left is a district covered by furry green fog; to his right is a region of pale crimson grass sharp as spikes and sputtering with a sinister hostile hiss; straight ahead a roadbed of black clinkers and ashen crusts leads down a shallow slope to the Plain of Teeth, where menacing porcelaneous outcroppings make the wayfarer's task a taxing one. But such obstacles mean little to Bhengarn. He is a Traveler, after all. His body is superbly designed to carry him through all difficulties. And in his journeys he has been in places far worse than this.

Elegantly he descends the pathway of slag and cinders. His many feet are tough as annealed metal, sensitive as the most alert antennae. He tests each point in the road for stability and support, and scans the thick layer of ashes for concealed enemies. In this way he moves easily and swiftly toward the
plain, holding his long abdomen safely above the cutting edges of the cold volcanic matter over which he walks.

As he enters the Plain of Teeth he sees a new annoyance: an Eater commands the gateway to the plain. Of all the forms of human life— and the Traveler has encountered virtually all of them in his wanderings, Eaters, Destroyers, Skimmers, Interceders, and the others— Eaters seem to him the most tiresome, mere noisy monsters. Whatever philosophical underpinnings form the rationale of their bizarre way of life are of no interest to him. He is wearied by their bluster and offended by their gross appetites.

All the same, he must get past this one to reach his destination. The huge creature stands straddling the path with one great meaty leg at each edge and the thick fleshy tail propping it from behind. Its steely claws are exposed, its fangs gleam, driblets of blood from recent victims stain its hard reptilian hide. Its chilly inquisitive eyes, glowing with demonic intelligence, track Bhengarn as the traveler draws near.

The Eater emits a boastful roar and brandishes its many teeth.

"You block my way," Bhengarn declares.

"You state the obvious," the Eater replies.

"I have no desire for an encounter with you. But my destiny draws me toward Crystal Pond, which lies beyond you."

"For you," says the Eater, "nothing lies beyond me. Your destiny has brought you to a termination today. We will collaborate, you and I, in the transformation of your component molecules."

From the spiracles along his sides the Traveler releases a thick blue sigh of boredom. "The only transformation that waits for me is the one I will undertake at Crystal Pond. You and I have no transaction. Stand aside."

The Eater roars again. He rocks slightly on his gigantic claws and swishes his vast saurian tail from side to side. These are the preliminaries to an attack, but in a kind of ponderous courtesy, he seems to be offering Bhengarn the opportunity to scuttle back up the ash-strewn slope.

Bhengarn says, "Will you yield place?"

"I am an instrument of destiny."

"You are a disagreeable, boastful ignoramus," says Bhengarn calmly, and consumes half a week's energy driving the scimitars of his spirit to the roots of the world. It is not a wasted expense of soul, for the ground trembles, the sky grows dark, the hill behind him creaks and groans, the wind turns purplish and frosty. There is a dull droning sound that the Traveler knows is the song of the time-flux, an unpredictable force that often is liberated at such moments. Despite that, Bhengarn will not relent. Beneath the Eater's splayed claws the fabric of the road ripples. Sour smells rise from sudden crevasses. The enormous beast utters a yipping cry of rage and lashes his tail vehemently against the ground. He sways; he nearly topples; he calls out to Bhengarn to cease his onslaught, but the Traveler knows better than to settle for a half-measure. Even more fiercely he presses against the Eater's bulky form.

"This is unfair," the Eater wheezes. "My goal is the same as yours: to serve the forces of necessity."

"Serve them by eating someone else today," answers Bhengarn curtly, and with a final expenditure of force shoves the Eater to an awkward untenable position that causes it to crash down onto its side. The downed beast, moaning, rakes the air with his claws but does not arise, and as Bhengarn moves briskly past the Eater, he observes that fine transparent threads, implacable as stone, have shot forth from a patch of swamp beside the road and are rapidly binding the fallen Eater in an unbreakable net. The Eater howls. Glancing back, Bhengarn notices the threads already cutting their way through the Eater's thick scales like tiny streams of acid. "So, then," Bhengarn says, without malice, "the forces of necessity will be gratified today after all, but not by me. The Eater is to be eaten. It seems that this day I prove to be the instrument of destiny." And without another backward look, he passes quickly onward into the plain. The sky regains its ruddy color, the wind becomes mild once more, the Earth is still. But a release of the time-flux is never without consequences, and as the Traveler trundles forward, he perceives some new creature of unfamiliar form staggering through the mists ahead, confused and lost, lurching between the shining lethal formations of the Plain of Teeth in seeming ignorance of the perils they hold. The creature is upright, two-legged, hairy, of archaic appearance. Bhengarn, approaching it, recognizes it finally as a primordial human, swept millions of years past its own true moment.

"Have some care," Bhengarn calls. "Those teeth can bite!"

"Who spoke?" the archaic creature demands, whirling about in alarm.

"I am Bhengarn the Traveler. I suspect I am responsible for your presence here."

"Where are you? I see no one! Are you a devil?"

"I am a Traveler, and I am right in front of your nose."

The ancient human notices Bhengarn, apparently for the first time, and leaps back, gasping. "Serpent!" he cries. "Serpent with legs! Worm! Devil!" Wildly he seizes rocks and hurls them at the Traveler, who deflects them easily enough, turning each into a rhythmic juncture of gold and green that hovers, twanging softly, along an arc between the other and himself. The archaic one lifts an immense boulder, but as he hoists it to drop it on Bhengarn, he overbalances and his arm flies backward, grazing one of the sleek teeth behind him. At once the tooth releases a turquoise flare and the man's arm vanishes to the elbow. He sinks to his knees, whimpering, staring bewilderedly at the stump and at the Traveler before him.

Bhengarn says, "You are in the Plain of Teeth, and any contact with these mineral formations is likely to be unfortunate, as I attempted to warn you."

He slides himself into the other's soul for an instant, pushing his way past thick encrusted stalagmites and stalactites of anger, fear, outraged pride, pain, disorientation, and arrogance, and discovers himself to be in the presence of one Olivier van Noort of Utrecht, former tavernkeeper at Rotterdam, commander of the voyage of circumnavigation that set forth from Holland on the second day of July 1598 and traveled the entire belly of the world, a man of exceedingly strong stomach and bold temperament, who has experienced
much, having gorged on the meat of penguins at Cape Virgines and the isle called Pantagorns, having hunted beasts not unlike stags and buffaloes and ostriches in the cold lands by Magellan's Strait, having encountered whales and parrots and trees whose bark had the bite of pepper, having had strife with the noisome Portugals in Guinea and Brazil, having entered into the South Sea on a day of diverse storms, thunders, and lightnings, having taken ships of the Spaniards in Valparaiso and slain many Indians, having voyaged thence to the Isles of Ladrones or Thieves, where the natives bartered bananas, coconuts, and roots for old pieces of iron, overturning their canoes in their greed for metal, having suffered a bloody flux in Manila of eating palmitos, having captured vessels of China laden with rice and lead, having traded with folk on a ship of the Japans, whose men make themselves bald except a tuft left in the hinder part of the head, and wield swords that would, with one stroke, cut through three men, having traded also with the bare-breasted women of Borneo, bold and impudent and shrewd, who carry iron-pointed javelins and sharp darts, and having after great privation and the loss of three of his four ships and all but forty-five of his 248 men, many of them executed by him or marooned on remote islands for their mutinies but a good number murdered by the treacheries of savage enemies, come again to Rotterdam on the twenty-sixth of August in 1601, bearing little in the way of salable goods to show for his hardships and calamities. None of this has any meaning to Bhengarn the Traveler except in the broadest, which is to say that he recognizes in Olivier van Noort a stubborn and difficult man who has conceived and executed a journey of mingled heroism and foolishness that spanned vast distances, and so they are brothers, of a sort, however millions of years apart. As a fraternal gesture, Bhengarn restores the newcomer's arm. That appears to be as bewildering to the other as was its sudden loss. He squeezes it, moves it cautiously back and forth, scoops up a handful of pebbles with it. "This is Hell, then," he mutters, "and you are a demon of Satan."