The Totems of Abydos (7 page)

“We are not supposed to make judgments,” said Brenner. “We are not supposed to prescribe, but to
describe
. It is not the business of science to change things, or to reform the galaxy, but to explain things, to give accounts of them.”

“Did you have any difficulty telling the facts from the values?” asked Rodriguez.

“Of course not,” said Brenner, irritatedly.

“It is possible to understand something,” said Rodriguez, “and still not like it.”

“Perhaps,” said Brenner.

“Indeed,” said Rodriguez, “it is sometimes difficult to understand things without finding oneself feeling one way or another about them, without coming to like them or dislike them, so to speak.”

“Perhaps,” said Brenner.

“And what better grounds on which to form a liking or a disliking than on an understanding?”

“But anyone could do that sort of thing,” said Brenner.

“Of course,” said Rodriguez.

“Where is your frame of reference?” asked Brenner.

“I carry it with me,” said Rodriguez.

“And so, too, does every Narnian and crocodile in the galaxy.”

“Not mine,” said Rodriguez.

“It is your own gauge,” said Brenner.

“Why then should I throw it away?” asked Rodriguez.

“At best it is relativized to a species,” said Brenner.

“To my species,” said Rodriguez. “That is important.”

“Galactically, that is unimportant,” said Brenner.

“But then I am not a galaxy,” he said.

“I am a modernist, and a lifest,” said Brenner.

“You are a traitor to your species,” said Rodriguez, “or are trying to be, but I suspect you will not manage it.”

Brenner smoldered in fury.

“Others, too, may have suspected it,” said Rodriguez.

“What?” said Brenner.

“That may be why you have been sent to Abydos,” said Rodriguez.

“Nonsense,” said Brenner.

“We are more alike than you know,” said Rodriguez. “But others know it.”

“I am not like you,” said Brenner.

“No species chauvinist?” smiled Rodriguez.

“No,” said Brenner.

“Yet you have come to Abydos,” mused Rodriguez.

“The assignment seemed interesting,” said Brenner. “I did not challenge it.”

“I see,” said Rodriguez.

“What do you think to find on Abydos?” asked Brenner.

“I do not know what I will find,” said Rodriguez. “But I know for what I am searching.”

“What is that?” asked Brenner.

“The beginning,” said Rodriguez.

For those of you to whom this might not be clear Rodriguez and Brenner are anthropologists. To be sure, this designation had become something of an anachronistic misnomer, suggesting, as it does, in its root, that it had to do with a particular species. At present, of course, its meaning was no longer limited in such a provincial and circumscribed fashion. Earlier its scope, in virtue of certain interdisciplinary connections, had been extended to certain organisms on a given home world which were not always of the same species as that of Rodriguez and Brenner. After this, of course, there was not the least difficulty in extending it to numerous life forms in various systems, life forms which had little in common but the possession of some form of what we might think of as a cultural complexus. To be certain, the boundaries of the discipline were quite unclear, and the relationships with numerous kindred sciences, collateral or contained, as might be argued, such as sociology, political science, ethology, ecology, and genetics, were still a matter of disputed demarcations. Some individuals preferred to think not so much of separate countries of inquiry, each jealousy guarding its own borders, so to speak, as of inquiries themselves into which light might be shed from various directions. To be sure, the matter was complex. There was a sense, of course, in which some still thought of “anthropology” as being the “science of Man,” and that was the sense in which many now used the expression ‘man’ to refer to many sorts of creatures which would not have originally been regarded as “men” or, say, “human,” in the archaic sense of the word. For example, the captain of the star freighter, who had paid his respects earlier to Rodriguez and Brenner, might, in that extended sense, have been regarded as a “man.” You have probably been assuming, incidentally, that Rodriguez and Brenner are men. I shall not challenge this assumption, but, given the broad sense of the term, as it is now used, I think it only fair to point out that it is, on your part, an assumption. For example, you have not really seen Rodriguez and Brenner. If you were to see them, of course, you might more easily then decide whether or not you felt comfortable in calling them men, and, if so, in what sense.

At this point Rodriguez finished his Heimat with a noise for which even Brenner would have been hard put to find an epithet more accurate than ‘disgusting’. Rodriguez then thrust the emptied stein, which was his own, into which earlier in the commissary, open between certain ship hours, had been drawn a specified quantity of Heimat, into a pack at his belt, unbuckled his webbing, and, leaning forward, and with a small push away from the webbing stocks, moved toward the wall. There, arresting his progress with his finger tips, he reached for, and grasped, a wall bar and, with his other hand, his feet a few inches off the floor, pressed in sequence two buttons, both recessed in the plating, in response to the signal of the first of which the illumination in the lounge was extinguished, and in response to the signal of the second of which the shielding of the observation port slid to one side.

Brenner eagerly unbuckled his own webbing and, in a moment, had joined Rodriguez at the port.

Some said it was the only way to see the stars, from such a perspective, within deep space, outside the distorting effects of an atmosphere, preferably at a sublight velocity. They were now at such a velocity, of course, having been decelerating for more than three Commonworld rotations, or Commonworld days. They were on their approach to Abydos.

“There it is,” said Rodriguez, pointing.

“Abydos?” asked Brenner.

“Her sun,” said Rodriguez, patiently.

Of course,” said Brenner.

It was natural for Rodriguez to have spoken of the star whose satellite was Abydos as “her sun.” Both Rodriguez and Brenner, and many of their kind, particularly those who had undertaken long voyages on dark, empty seas, tended to think of worlds in the feminine gender. Even some of their species whose archaic languages might have prescribed differently in this respect, as they had entered space, had adopted this custom. The world, far off, gleaming, beckoning, was the hearth against cold, the shelter against storms and loneliness, the haven, the home, the harbor, the precious thing, the womb of life, the platform of her strivings or ineffectualities, of her choices, of histories, and of refusals of history. It was in this sense then, as the light in the window, as the harbor, as the home, arrival at which betokened the end of long journeys, as the vast mysterious matrix from which consciousness and curiosity, and meaningfulness, had emerged, that one might think of the world in the feminine gender, or, more simply, as the mother. To those who might think of worlds as mineralogical curiosities, consequent upon remote condensations, living upon their familiar surfaces, but not really seeing them, they might continue to be “it.” To those who viewed them from space, however, they would remain “she.”

“It is on Abydos,” said Rodriguez, “that I hope to find out something.”

Brenner looked into the night.

“It is not much, of course,” said Rodriguez. “It is not the key to the universe, or anything. It is only a little something that I have been curious about, for a long time.”

“The beginning?” asked Brenner, recollecting something from earlier, not clearly grasped.

“Yes,” said Rodriguez. “How it started, what it all means, what it is all about, so to speak.”

“You should have gone into cosmology,” said Brenner.

“Oh, no,” said Rodriguez. “I am not talking about those walls, against which so many heads have been bloodied, about the worlds, the metaworlds, the metatimes, and, at the end, the mystery met with once more, concealed beneath yet another mask. No, no. I am talking about a small problem, about something which may well have an answer, even a discoverable one.”

“Perhaps in the end there is no answer,” said Brenner. “Perhaps in the end there is nothing.”

“I will not accept that,” said Rodriguez.

“You have considered the possibility, I trust,” said Brenner, not pleasantly, “that reality may not be much concerned about what you are or are not willing to accept.”

“I only want to know a little thing,” said Rodriguez. “I am not an ambitious man.”

“And what is that?”

“I would like to understand myself,” said Rodriguez, “who I am, who we are, how we came to be as we are, what my species is, how it came to be as it is, what it is all about.”

Brenner thought it possible that there might an answer to that question, at least if it were subjected to certain clarifications. It was another question, of course, as to whether such an answer could be found. It was, he speculated, much like trying to discover the origin of a custom, or a practice, what it meant, or what it used to mean, or what it might mean now. Certainly anthropologists could speculate on such matters, and might, indeed, hit upon correct answers, even if they would never be able to demonstrate their correctness. To be sure, it seemed as if Rodriguez might have something in mind which was more primitive, more fundamental, than a given custom or practice, or even a constellation of such.

“Hitherto,” said Rodriguez, “as it is said, we have only been picking up shells on the beach.”

“That is worthwhile,” said Brenner.

“But where have the shells come from?” asked Rodriguez. “Surely you have wondered about that. What lies behind them?”

“You wish to see the sea?” smiled Brenner.

“Yes,” said Rodriguez. “I wish to see the sea.”

“Perhaps the origin is not the sea,” said Brenner, “but an artifact, or a deed.”

“The first firebrand, snatched from a flaming forest, the stone knife, the social compact?” said Rodriguez.

“Let us be content to pick up shells, and describe them,” said Brenner.

Rodriguez was silent.

“Surely you do not think to find what you seek on Abydos,” said Brenner.

“What I seek lies everywhere, I think, but it is feared, and lies well hidden,” said Rodriguez.

“And you hope to find it on Abydos?”

“Yes,” said Rodriguez. “I hope to find it on Abydos.”

“It would be less hidden there?” asked Brenner.

“I think so,” said Rodriguez.

“That seems a strange place to search for a secret local to our species,” said Brenner.

“I am interested in this, of course, for its pertinence to our species,” said Rodriguez. “That is my personal motivation, self-regarding as you might expect. But I think it lies at the root not only of our species, but perhaps at the root of a billion others, perhaps, in one form or another, at the root of all.”

“All?” asked Brenner.

“Those of interest to our science,” said Rodriguez.

“Those who have attained some form of culture?” said Brenner.

“Yes,” said Rodriguez, “those capable of standing at crossroads, those who have sundered the bonds of elementary circuitries, those who are no longer simple, who are no longer like rain and wind, those who have put behind them the innocence of the barracuda, those who have discovered choice, and questions.”

“There is nothing important on Abydos,” said Brenner.

“Why did you come?” asked Rodriguez. “Why did you not protest your assignment? Surely you had not expended your set of refusal rights.”

“It gave me an opportunity to step off the porch,” said Brenner, “to see the stars.”

“You should not have come,” said Rodriguez. “There is nothing for you on Abydos.”

“I might find a shell or two,” said Brenner.

“I am intrigued by Abydos,” said Rodriguez. “On Abydos is to be found one of the few remaining, and perhaps the most pure, of the totemic cultures.”

“It is known only by a footnote in old texts,” said Brenner. He had, of course, as far as he could, in the university retrieval system, researched the matter.

“Also in company records, of course,” said Rodriguez.

Brenner’s visage clouded. Such records, of course, would not be in the university’s library. Indeed, most of the corporations were rather secretive about records, or at least their personal records, as opposed to their official records, readily available for public review.

“The totemic cultures,” said Rodriguez, “are the oldest known to our species. They lie not only before civilizations as we know them today, but even before earlier civilizations. They are older even than the gods and the heroes. They may be at the beginning itself.”

The theme here, of course, was a common one to anthropology, the thesis that the earlier stages of more complex civilizations may be discovered in more primitive cultures. In the examination of such cultures, for example, in a consideration of their customs and beliefs, their monuments and tools, their works, ways, and traditions, their stories, their songs, their drawings, their legends and myths, their religions and sciences, their feelings, there might be found, in such rubble, so to speak, the origins and meanings, perhaps elaborated or distorted, of more complex modern forms. And, to be sure, there seemed little doubt that many such remnants, or relics, of one sort or another, sometimes primitive, if not actually embarrassing, lingered into more enlightened eras. To be frank, of course, much of this was controversial, for a number of reasons, and it must be pointed out, as well, that it was not always clear as to whether a culture was truly primitive or not. For example, a culture which had achieved no technology other than what might be attained with a hammer and a blade might be as old in its way, and have a history, however quiescent, behind it as ancient as that of the most advanced star world, routinely exploiting triumphs in hyperspace navigation. Too, of course, even totemic institutions might develop, undergoing various refinements and elaborations. Accordingly, one might even distinguish between, say, primitive totemisms and, so to speak, developed, or advanced, totemisms.