The Totems of Abydos (38 page)

“No,” said Brenner.

The woman had not cared for him, of course. She had only wanted her pastry. Women are practical in such ways. She had said she loved him. Such things are easily said. Brenner, of course, did not believe in love, for such, like sexual needs, did not exist. To be sure, one might love a party, or the state, or everything, rather as a rosy, remote, safe, antiseptic, abstract conglomerate. Too, he supposed it was all right to love everyone, and, ideally, everything, including primitive particles. It was only that it was suspect or immoral to love a particular individual, particularly if that entity were of an opposite sex. That was dangerous. For sexuality, as was well known, does not unite men; it divides them.

At a gesture from Rodriguez, the Pons put their small, but cumulatively not inconsiderable, weight to the ropes. The sled moved, over wet leaves and twigs. The trees here, at the edge of the forest were not closely grown. There would be little difficulty in making headway during this part of the journey and, later, hopefully, there would be trails. The mud sled was not wide, only a Commonworld yard in width.

“Those are lantern fruit,” said Rodriguez, pointing to some heavy, gourdlike pods, some half split.

“Are they edible?” asked Brenner.

“No,” said Rodriguez.

“They are not indigenous to this world, are they?” asked Brenner.

“It is thought not,” said Rodriguez.

Most of the Pons were following behind.

Brenner could not, at this point, of course, look back to the tower, to the fence. There was the rise, and there were the trees.

Brenner looked to the Pons drawing the sled. And ahead of them there were some others, strung out, leading the way.

He remembered how rudely Rodriguez had seized up one of the Pons, and removed its hood. Whereas the small creature had squirmed, and struggled, it had not attempted to fight, or defend itself. Too, when Rodriguez had forced open its mouth, it had not resisted. Pons do not bite, thought Brenner. On the other hand, thought Brenner, they do not have very strong teeth either. Perhaps organisms with small, fine teeth are well advised not to bite. At most, they might deliver a small, nasty, unclean wound, one which larger, stronger organisms might find annoying, and punish. Perhaps that was why Pons were good, thought Brenner, because they could not be dangerous. Perhaps morality comes most easily to the weak.

Brenner wondered what was the nature of his own species, and if it had a nature. One theory had it that those of his species were originally filled with a nothingness, and another that they were filled with sunshine. Those who held the “nothingness” theory looked upon this nothingness as an opportunity. If the mind, for example, were a blank tablet, or a blank recording plate, or such, one might then inscribe upon it messages of benignity and beauty. But if the mind were indeed a blank tablet, with no nature of its own, no secrets, no resistances, no internal geodesies, no realities, why might not one, with equal propriety, inscribe upon it messages of terror, of fear and woe, of sickness and hatred? Surely the canvas has no rights with respect to the pictures one chooses to paint upon it. Who decides the plans from which man is to be manufactured? If men had no nature of their own, then they are only putty in the hands of others, whether in the white fingers of angels or the paws of beasts. And where must one stand, outside the domain of man, to see value? Where will he find his patterns and possibilities if not within himself? Where will those who so complacently, so innocently, arrogate to themselves the right to write these messages find their models? Are there plates of graven brass hung between the stars? The stars are silent, burning in space. They are alone, like men. And if such plates were there, who will decipher them, who will read them, and who will ask from whence they came, and if they are true? No, thought Brenner, the theory of emptiness is not a happy one. If true, it is not that man is lost, or that he has not yet been found. Rather it is that he does not exist, has never existed, and can never exist. Rather he would be nothing in himself, not even a material, but rather only a temporary, arbitrary form, only an artifact, meaningless, and perishable. But what of the theory that man is filled with sunshine, thought Brenner. That is a theory, so to speak, of original virtue. Perhaps it is naive, and less plausible than an older, more pessimistic myth, but it might be a benign myth. Believe that man is basically good. Now that might be a useful myth. It could be developed in a number of ways, not all obviously compatible. If one stresses the corrupting influences of institutions and societal arrangements, construed somehow to have arisen surprisingly amongstst these benign creatures, perhaps by magic, then one can absolve individuals, generally on a selective basis, of responsibility for their actions. The victim, for example, is to blame for the crime. On the other hand, in a sterner society, one may blame the criminal, so to speak, for having chosen, somehow, to repudiate his own nature, his natural goodness. On this approach one may hold him responsible for his actions and simultaneously hasten to his correction, the effort to recall him, by various techniques, perhaps punishment, imprisonment, torture, conditionings, pharmacological therapy, lobal surgery, and such, to his forsaken innate goodness. There is an additional difficulty here, of course, which is that of independently identifying the “goodness” which is innate. Who makes this identification, how do we know it is correct, and who decides disagreements which might arise in these matters? Presumably we might not wish to characterize all nativistic dispositions, if there are any, in man as essentially good. If we did that, saying man was essentially good would presumably mean no more than saying that man was essentially man, which might be true, but would not be likely to be of much political utility. Presumably then, if the notion of man being essentially good is to make sense, we have to have an independent criterion for goodness. It does not seem likely that we will be successful in this search, except that we might impose one which pleases us, by force. In this sense, in its ultimate vacuity and bankruptcy, the “sunshine” theory closely approximates the “nothingness theory.” It is possible, Brenner thought, that man, innately, is both good and evil, assuming that some external sense could be given to such claims. But it is more likely, he thought, that man is neither good nor evil. Rather, he is something more profound than either. He is real. He is as he is, not in some trivial sense, but in the sense that he has his own nature, which is in its way apart from good and evil, or beyond them, if you like. This is not to deny, of course, that he might not have his own “good,” in senses such as those of satisfaction and pleasure, or his own “evil” or “bad,” in the senses of frustration or pain. Those things are real enough, and we grant them even to camels and horses, but they do not answer the social needs of a moral “good” and a moral “evil.” There may be no common interest; there may be no general will. But without the rules there is only chaos. Perhaps the myths are important.

Brenner was angry, seemingly unaccountably.

Brenner put down his head, and brushed a branch out of the way.

How complacent were those of the home world. How much they claimed to know! How assured they were!

But there must be something beyond the myths, thought Brenner. Beyond the evanescent myths, coming into fashion, going out of fashion. And not just more myths, nor even an ultimate myth, that to which all other myths might point, that to which they might over time, more and more closely, approximate, the myth ultimately fated to be agreed upon by all those in need of a myth, if only investigation could be carried on diligently enough, long enough, the ultimate myth, the fated myth, the ideal myth, lying like a spider at the end of time. No, thought Brenner. Rather a truth. But must we make it ourselves? And how then will that differ from another myth, or even from the ultimate myth? It will be ours, thought Brenner. But the myths, too, are they not ours? There must be criteria, thought Brenner, for truths, even for myths. And who shall decide the criteria? By what criteria shall we judge our criteria, and those criteria, in turn? How long is “until then,” how far is the end of time, how shall we come to the last foot of infinity?

Brenner suddenly stopped.

“Are you all right?” asked Rodriguez.

“Yes!” said Brenner.

They began again. That is it, thought Brenner. One must stop somewhere. One must begin somewhere.

What he had been taught, he was sure, was wrong, at least in some basic, fundamental, profound, even if only personal sense. It was productive of frustration; it generated misery; it caused pain.

He thought of the woman, whom he fiercely dismissed as a mere contract slut, in whom he had taken his pleasure, whom he had had well serve him, even to the collar and bracelets. Even she, low, vulnerable, passionate thing that she was, little better than a slave, had reminded him of such things, as though he had needed reminding! If torture could not convince him of the wrongness of what he had been taught, she had asked, what could? Suddenly he was angry with her. What an insult she was to the women of his species! Why could she not have been, like them, a “same”! She cast doubt, even, on her sisters of the home world. Perhaps, too, they were not really “sames.” Perhaps, too, like her, they were different from men, something quite different. How horrifying that would be! What if his species was not sexually unimorphic? What if the sexes, really, were quite different? The females of his species, he knew, both by those of his own species, and by those of other species, were kept as slaves, on many worlds. They were easily trained. They adapted quickly to bondage. It was said that within the institution they blossomed, that within it they found fulfillment. What could such things mean?

Brenner looked at the Pons about, so tiny, so weak, so pathetic, so meaningless. And yet they represented, in their way, as Rodriguez had pointed out, the achievement of what was at least a verbal ideal of the home world. That is what the home world wants, thought Brenner, at least of men. It wants to break and destroy men, to make them small and weak. It wants to turn men into such innocent, simple, stupid, harmless things, such tiny, blinking, pleasant, manageable, cooperative, timid, meaningless nonentities. In the Pon, it seemed, was to be found the new idea of the male, gentle, tender, and such, but his very weakness and manageability, and gullibility celebrated as true masculinity and strength. Surely that is an easy route to manhood, thought Brenner, doing what you are told, fulfilling a stereotype, externally imposed, indexed to the utility of those who despised one. Yes, thought Brenner, that is surely an easy route to manhood, doing what you are told, an easy route to strength, being weak.

“Through here,” called Rodriguez, pointing out the path through which the sled had been drawn.

A Pon, almost at his elbow, looked up at Brenner.

“Stay with the sled,” said Rodriguez.

“Of course,” said Brenner.

There must be a truth thought Brenner, a truth for my species, some sort of truth, even it be a truth relative to my species, a truth local or private, in its way, to my species. Then he felt grief for the youth of the home world. To them, such as the Pons, those sweet, insignificant, futile, trusting little aliens, would be held up, as Rodriguez had said, as examples. The youth of the home world, Brenner feared, would be destroyed, in its homes, in its schools, almost in its cradles. How could it resist the uniformity, the pervasiveness, of the conditioning programs to which it would be subjected? Indeed, is not youth, in its beautiful simplicity, and its lack of experience, even more likely than its elders to be devoted to, and defend, the very lies which keep them from their own honesties?

But I was such a youth once, thought Brenner.

To be sure, even when quite young, Brenner had never taken pain as a sign of truth, frustration as a clue to right, misery as a guide to an ideal morality. But perhaps that was because he had been a “vat brat”; indeed, he suspected he might well constitute some sort of anachronism in his species, some sort of atavism, or throwback; his genetic materials, for example, had been generated long ago, in a different, more primitive, more backward time.

Perhaps there is hope, thought Brenner.

Perhaps there is a human nature, with its own truths, its own realities, thought Brenner, even its own goodness and badness.

Perhaps there is hope.

“Help here,” said Rodriguez.

He and Brenner, assisting the Pons, lifted the sled up, over some rocks. The Pons then again addressed themselves to the ropes. Brenner noted that the Pons, in this journey, did not make much noise. He did not find that surprising. It seemed fitting for them. On the other hand, perhaps small creatures, generally, in the forest did not make a great deal of noise. There might be a reason for that.

Too, as they had continued in their journey, pausing now and then, he had noted that one or more of the Pons, to the side, rather modestly, back in the brush, squatting down, under the cover of their robes, had apparently relieved themselves. They had then covered this spoor with dirt, gouged up with their tiny, shiny scarps. Predators often covered their spoor, to keep their presence in an area concealed. But the Pons did not seem likely predators. As far as Brenner knew they did not even hunt, their reverence for life deterring them from the chase. This reluctance, of course, need not be symmetrical. In not hunting one does not thereby remove oneself from the category of the hunted. Such unilateral sacrifices are seldom reciprocated in nature. The Pons, in the forest, might not stand at the top of the food chain. There could thus be an advantage not only to the predator in concealing his presence, but one accruing similarly to the prey. But the forest seemed calm. The wind rustled gently through the leaves of the trees. The covering of the spoor, or feces, Brenner supposed, in the case of the Pons, probably had to do with their modesty, or their embarrassment concerning their own bodies, which they kept muchly covered, as shameful objects, and the processes of such bodies, or even with taboos, perhaps their ritual fear or loathing of touching unclean things, and such. Or they might just be neat, tidy creatures, intent upon keeping a pleasant environment.