The Totems of Abydos (6 page)

“They might confuse you,” said Rodriguez. “They might make you think.”

“Thank you,” said Brenner.

“That is a kindness on my part toward you,” said Rodriguez, “indicating I have some concern for your future. Why should I risk you, as I saw fit to risk myself? Too, it is a compliment, as it suggests that I regard you as being capable of thought.”

Brenner was silent.

“Yes,” growled Rodriguez. “You are still young. You are still naive. You are still prizing the rhetoric of inquiry and truth. And you have not yet learned that it is just that, the rhetoric which is to be prized, not the realities, which can be embarrassing, and dangerous.”

Brenner did not understand this.

“I suspect you have not yet learned to dismiss canyons and mountains where none appear on the maps you have been given,” said Rodriguez, looking off toward the end of the room. “I suspect you would be actually troubled to give the map priority over the canyon, to award it precedence over the mountain. You do not yet realize that it is not the canyon and the mountain which are important, but the map. And the map is important not as a representation of reality, which it is not, but as a putative representation of reality, which it is; it is important not because it is true, which it is not, but because it is useful, because of its social utility, its political value. You have not yet learned to dismiss these unmapped canyons, these unrecorded mountains, to keep them to yourself, to publicly deny them. They are there, of course, in all their formidable height, in all their quantitative massiveness, however ignored, and in all their terrifying widths and depths, dark and unsounded, however denied, however neglected, Perhaps it is as though, in a sense, they are really on the maps, but in invisible ink, and have been for centuries, at least in the works of some cartographers, some explorers, and that they await only the proper social reagent to suddenly emerge, then appearing openly on the map, as they have in the reality. To be sure, some of these mountains lie in remote regions, in the mind; some of these canyons are in dark places, in the heart. But perhaps this will never occur. Surely reality is more hazardous than the map. How many have been injured falling off a map, or tumbling into one? We can control the map; it can be done with a formula, a compass, a straight edge, a little care; the reality is more recalcitrant.”

“I have understood nothing of what you have been saying,” said Brenner.

“Good,” said Rodriguez, blowing out a dark cloud of smoke.

Brenner watched the smoke disappear through the filtering system. He was pleased that the lounge was equipped with this device.

“Do you have any of your other works with you?” asked Brenner.

“No,” said Rodriguez. “I am not stupid.”

Brenner nodded. It might have been difficult to bring certain materials through customs.

“They have been published here and there?” asked Brenner.

“Yes,” said Rodriguez, “here and there.”

“Anonymously?” asked Brenner.

“Sometimes,” said Rodriguez.

“And under various pseudonyms?” asked Brenner.

“Sometimes,” said Rodriguez.

“And under your own name?”

“But not number,” said Rodriguez.

“I see,” said Brenner.

“It depends on the world,” said Rodriguez.

“Of course
_r
” said Brenner. Here and there, of course, there were open worlds, quite different from most worlds, which had almost uniformly discovered the perils of openness. To be sure, almost every world claimed to be an open world. But there were in the galaxy few Hollands, so to speak.

“The sheep,” said Rodriguez, “are told they are gods and with tears in their eyes they yield themselves up to be sheared by their own kind.”

“What?” asked Brenner.

“Nothing,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner was silent.

“Better they were sheared without apology,” said Rodriguez, “as what they are, as what they were born to be, as what they should be, as what more than which they can never be, should never be, and will never be. Better not to lie to them. That truly demeans them. Let them joyously yield up their wool without lies. The hypocrisy is what I most object to. Rather let them joyously yield up their wool as what they are, the givers of wool.”

“You are quite drunk,” said Brenner.

“On so many worlds there are the shearers and the shorn,” said Rodriguez.

“And which are you?” asked Brenner.

“Neither,” said Rodriguez, gloomily. “I am one who stands outside the fence, one who observes, one who laughs, and cries.”

“I see,” said Brenner.

“And there are masters and slaves,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner was silent. Too often had he himself been troubled by such thoughts.

“Should those who should be servants not be servants?” asked Rodriguez. “Should those who should be slaves not be slaves?”

“All are the same,” said Brenner.

“It is not so on the strong worlds,” said Rodriguez, moodily.

“The strong worlds?” said Brenner. Rodriguez had used that expression before, he recalled.

“Yes,” said Rodriguez.

“Openly stratified worlds?” asked Brenner.

“For the most part,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner shuddered. He had little doubt that Rodriguez had in mind, at least for the most part, the numerous worlds, tending muchly to keep to themselves, in which social structures were explicitly stratified, as opposed to being implicitly, or covertly, stratified. Rodriguez would like that. He would like the honesty of that. He was the sort of fellow who found intellectual dishonesty distasteful, however expedient. He might even regard it as undignified. Such worlds tended to be characterized by rank, distance, and hierarchy, expressed in a variety of forms, or structures. There were, for example, familial structures, clan and subclan structures, class structures, merit structures, hereditary structures, feudal structures, caste structures, and such. In such worlds, in one fashion or another, the aristocracy of nature tended to be revealed in civilization, rather than distorted and concealed, or, as the case might be, subverted by those whose talents and self-interest lay largely in the corridors of subterfuge, prevarication, and manipulation.

“I refer, of course,” said Rodriguez, “to stratification within the same species.”

“Of course,” said Brenner. He knew, of course, that even on the artificial worlds, or worlds of convention, or most of them, even on those worlds which pretended to the homogenized sameness of the dominant life form, for political reasons, despite all evidence to the contrary, other species, such as his and Rodriguez’, might not be accorded similar dignities. On some such worlds certain species, such as their own, were not permitted except in specified zones, and only at certain times or seasons, could not openly and freely obtain food or rest space in all hostels, required papers or licenses for debarkation, business, and travel, could not obtain citizenship, were not permitted to maintain a permanent residence, and such. Indeed, sometimes ambassadors of one species or another, in early contacts with newly discovered civilizations, a situation in which those of Brenner and Rodriguez’s species were seldom involved, found themselves incarcerated in zoological gardens, or being presented, as exotic fauna, or pets, by one potentate to another. And indeed more than one member of Brenner’s and Rodriguez’ own species, given by one alien life form to another, had served in similar capacities. Moreover, it was not unknown for them, on dark streets, in lonely areas, unwary in a bar, to be seized for diverse purposes, usually as simple as serving in some menial capacity in a passing vessel.

“Are these various writings of yours known?” asked Brenner.

“Some,” said Rodriguez.

“And others must be suspected,” suggested Brenner.

“Doubtless,” said Rodriguez.

“Is this why you have been sent to Abydos?” asked Brenner.

“To get me out of the way?” smiled Rodriguez. “Maybe. But I could have wrangled other assignments. They would have served, as well.”

“The work of yours which I have read, the
Phratries of Chios
, and such,” said Brenner, “was edited, was it not?” There had been certain roughnesses and gaps in it, not so much in the prose, where transitions had been supplied by a editor apparently concerned to conceal his work, but in the thought. It is hard for an editor to clip thoughts smoothly. The hole in the thought remains, suggested by a subtle cognitive incoherence, alerting the reader, perhaps intriguing him.

“Yes,” said Rodriguez. “That is why it is still on the cubes and such. But unedited versions are available elsewhere, not on the home world, unless they have found their way back there, but elsewhere, in separate books.”

“I have one objection to your work, what I have read of it,” said Brenner.

“What?” asked Rodriguez.

“It does not seem scientific,” said Brenner.

“You mean in not agreeing with the official science?” asked Rodriguez.

“No,” said Brenner. “Rather it does not seem value-free.”

“Like the official science?” asked Rodriguez, interested.

“No, obviously the “official science,” as you call it, has its own values, its own ends to subserve.”

“You recognize that?” asked Rodriguez.

“Yes,” said Brenner.

“Good,” said Rodriguez. His Bertinian leaf was now no more than a stub. He put it out, scraping it in a black sooty smear, on the webbing.

We are slovenly creatures, indeed, thought Brenner. This conjecture was further confirmed when Rodriguez crumbled the stub into a confetti of flakes and, with one hand, tossed them into the air, to be attended to by the filtering system.

“You think science should be value-free?” asked Rodriguez, intrigued. “That is interesting. How could anything we care about be value-free?”

“Oh, I accept the metavalues,” said Brenner, “the value of the enterprise itself, the values of honest inquiry, of testing, of subjection of one’s results to public scrutiny, such things. It is rather that value seems to enter directly into your work, into your reporting, so to speak.”

“It does!” said Rodriguez.

“Your approval and disapproval shows,” said Brenner.

“Should I have attempted to conceal them?” asked Rodriguez.

“At least,” said Brenner.

“A form of unspoken lie?” said Rodriguez.

“Better, of course, not to have values, feelings, and such,” said Brenner.

“But what of the love, joy and brotherhood of all life, and such,” asked Rodriguez, “the embracing of the cockroach, the admiration of the worm, the camaraderie of the viper, and such?”

“I am not speaking of the prescribed values recognized by all right-thinking moral agents,” said Brenner, “but those of science.”

“I think that my researches have been conducted carefully, and my results arrived at in an objective, verifiable manner,” said Rodriguez.

“I cannot fault you there,” admitted Brenner. Indeed, the work of Rodriguez, or at least his observations and compilations of data, were occasionally cited, by politically naive, or careless, colleagues, as a model of scrupulous exactitude.

“Indeed,” said Rodriguez, “most of it is quite low level, almost at the level of reportage. We are still theoretically primitive in our science. Indeed, I often envy the fellows who only have to worry about what molecules do, and not what they meant by it, what they had in mind, whether or not it makes sense, what was the point of it, how it came to be done in the first place, whether it should have been done in the first place, how it should best be interpreted, and such.”

“Be serious,” said Brenner.

“Do you have something particular in mind?” asked Rodriguez.

“It was clear in your work, in the
Aquatic Clans
book, that you disapproved of the sacrifice lotteries of the Zenic crustaceans.”

“They were rigged,” said Rodriguez.

“And that was the foundation of your objection?” asked Brenner.

“I did not think highly of them, independently,” admitted Rodriguez.

“More deplorable was your reference, in the
Phratries
book, to the feces-tasting ceremony of the feather-gilled Humblers of Lesser Carthage as disgusting.”

“I would not have wanted to do it,” said Rodriguez.

“A great many people on the home world regard that particular ceremony as being very meaningful and beautiful, finding in it a veritable celebration in its way of oneness and love, an emblem of joy and humility, a way in which one life form, with gracious delicacy, acknowledges its own small place in the palace of life.”

“That sounds to me like a value judgment,” said Rodriguez.

“It is not claiming to be science,” pointed out Brenner.

At the time I wrote that,” said Rodriguez, “I had not realized that Humbler missionaries had made so many converts on the home world, but, even so, I would have written it.” A great Humbler prophet, incidentally, over a century ago, had taught the proud, vainglorious Humblers that one did not have to have feather gills to be a Humbler. From his time on, this lesson having been absorbed with due repentance and guilt, Humbleism had been preached even to the diverse assortments of gentiles, so to speak, available in the galaxy. There were many Humbler martyrs.