Shakespeare's Planet (23 page)

“If you want me and there's room.”

“We want you and there's room. There is a lot of room.”

“We'll want to take along Shakespeare's book,” said Nicodemus. “I guess that's all. On the way back we could stop and pick up a pocket full of emeralds. I know that to us they may be worthless, but I can't get out of the habit of regarding them as valuable.”

“There's one other thing,” said Horton. “I promised Pond I'd take some of him along. I'll get one of the bigger jugs Shakespeare collected from the city.”

Elayne spoke quietly. “Here come the slugs. We'd forgotten all about them.”

“They're easy things to forget,” said Horton. “They slither in and out. They're unreal somehow. They're hard to keep in mind, almost as if they intend not to be kept in mind.”

“I wish we had the time,” said Elayne, “to find out what they are. It couldn't have been just coincidence that they turned up exactly when they did. And they did thank Carnivore, or it looked as if they were thanking him. I have a feeling they played a greater part in all of this than we can ever guess.”

The foremost slug had grown a tentacle and was waving it at them.

“Maybe,” said Elayne, “they've just found out that the tunnel's closed.”

“They want us to go with them,” said Nicodemus.

“They probably want to show us that the tunnel's closed,” said Horton. “As if we didn't know.”

“Even so,” said Elayne, “we probably should go with them and find out what they want.”

“If we can,” said Nicodemus. “The communication is not too good.”

Horton led the way, with Elayne and Nicodemus following close behind. The slugs disappeared around the bend that hid the tunnel from view and Horton hurried after them. He rounded the bend and came to a sudden halt.

The tunnel mouth was no longer dark; it gleamed with milky whiteness.

Behind Horton, Nicodemus said, “Poor Carnivore. If he could only be here.”

“The slugs,” said Elayne. “The slugs …”

“The people of the tunnel, could that be it?” asked Horton.

“Not necessarily,” said Nicodemus. “The keepers of the tunnels, maybe. The guardians of the tunnels. Not the builders, necessarily.”

The three slugs were hopping down the path. They did not stop. They reached the tunnel mouth and hopped into it, disappearing.

“The control panel has been replaced,” said Nicodemus. “The slugs must have been the ones who did it. But how could they have known that something was about to happen that would enable them to open the tunnel? Somehow, someone must have known that the hatching was about to occur and that the planet could be opened.”

“It was Carnivore who made it possible,” said Horton. “He pestered us, he breathed on us, he kept prodding us to get the tunnel open. But, in the end, he was the one who finally got it open, who made it possible. And too late to do him any good. Although we can't feel sorry for him. He got what he wanted. He carried out his purpose and there are few who do. His glory-search is over, and he's a great folk hero.”

“But he's dead,” said Nicodemus.

“Tell me,” said Horton, rmemebering his talk with Shakespeare. “First tell me what is death.”

“It's an end,” said Nicodemus. “It's like turning out a light.”

“I'm not so sure,” said Horton. “Once I would have agreed with you, but now I'm not quite sure.”

Elayne spoke in a small-girl voice. “Carter.” she said. “Carter listen to me, please.”

He turned to face her.

“I can't go with you,” she said. “It all is changed. It is different now.”

“But you said …”

“I know, but that was when the tunnel still was closed, when there seemed no chance of it being opened. I want to go with you. There's nothing I want more. But now …”

“But now the tunnel's open.”

“It's not only that. Not only that I have a job to do and now can continue with that job. It's the slugs. Now I know what I am looking for. I have to find the slugs. Find them, somehow talk with them. They can tell us what we need to know. No more blind probing to learn the secret of the tunnels. Now we know who can tell us what we need to know about them.”

“If you can find them. If you can talk with them. If they will talk with you.”

“I'll have to try,” she said. “I'll leave word along the way, messages at many other tunnels, hoping they will be found by many other searchers, so that if I fail, there'll be others who will know and carry on the hunt.”

“Carter,” said Nicodemus, “you know she has to do it. Much as we might want her with us, we must recognize …”

“Yes, of course,” said Horton.

“I know you won't, you can't, but I have to ask.” she said. “If you'd come with me—”

“You know I can't,” said Horton.

“Yes, I know you can't.”

“So it all comes down to this,” said Horton. “There's no way we can change it. Our commitments—both our commitments—are too deep. We meet, then go our separate ways. It is almost as if this meeting never happened.”

“That's not right,” she said, “and you know it isn't Our lives, each of our lives, have been changed a little. We shall remember one another.”

She lifted her face. “Kiss me once.” she said. “Kiss me very quickly so there is no time to think, so I can walk away …”

29

Horton knelt beside the Pond and lowered the jug into the liquid. The liquid gurgled as it flowed into the jug. Displaced air made bubbles on the surface.

When the jug was filled he rose and tucked it underneath his arm.

“Good-bye, Pond,” he said, feeling silly as he said it, for it was not good-bye. Pond was going with him.

That was one of the advantages to a thing like Pond, he thought. Pond could go many places, yet never leave where it had been to start with. As if, he thought, he could have gone with Elayne and could as well have gone with Ship—and, come to think of it, have stayed on Earth and been dead these many centuries.

“Pond,” he asked, “what do you know of death? Do you die? Will you ever die?”

And that was silly, too, he thought, for everything must die. Someday, perhaps, the universe would die when the last flicker of energy had been expended and, when that happened, time would be left alone to brood over the ashes of a phenomenon that might never come again.

Futile, he wondered. Was it all futility?

He shook his head. He could not bring himself to think so.

Perhaps the god-hour had an answer. Perhaps that great blue planet knew. Someday, perhaps millennia from now, Ship, in the black reaches of some distant sector of the galaxy, would be told or would ferret out the answer. Perhaps somewhere in the context of that answer there might be an explanation of the purpose of life, that feeble lichen which clung, sometimes despairingly, to the tiny flecks of matter floating in an inexplicable immensity that did not know nor care that there was such a thing as life.

30

The grande dame said,
So now the play is done. The drama is run out and we can leave this cluttered, messy planet for the cleanness that is space
.

The scientist asked.
You've fallen in love with space?

The kind of thing I am
, the grande dame told him.
I cannot fall in love with anything at all. Tell me. Sir Monk, what kind of things we are. You are good at coming up with answers to such foolish questions
.

We are consciousnesses
, said the monk.
We are awarenesses. That is all we're supposed to be, but we still are hanging onto assorted garbages that we once had carried with us. Hanging onto them because we think they give us identities. And that is the measure of our selfishnesses and our self-conceits
—
that conformations such as we still must strive for identities. And the measure of our shortsightedness as well. For there is possible for us a far greater identity
—
the three of us together
—
than the little personal identities we continue to insist upon. We can become, if we but allow ourselves, a part of the universe
—
we can become, perhaps, even as the universe
.

I declare
, said the grande dame,
how you do run on. When you get started, there never is any telling to what lengths you'll let yourself be carried. How can you say we'll become part of the universe? We have, to start with, no idea of what the universe may be, so how can we imagine that we'll become much the same as it?

There is much in what you say
, said the scientist,
although I do not mean, Sir Monk, any criticism of your thinking when I say this. I have had, in my private moments, some thoughts that are much the same, and the thoughts, I must confess, leave me considerably confused. Man has historically, I believe, looked upon the universe as something that came about through a purely mechanistic evolution that can be explained, at least in part, by the laws of physics and of chemistry. But a universe so evolved, being no more than a mechanistic construct, never would make anything reasonably resembling complete sense since it would not be designed to have any. A mechanistic concept is supposed to make something work, not to make any kind of sense, and it goes against all the logic I can muster to think this is the kind of universe we live in. Certainly the universe is something more than this, although I suppose it is the only way it can be explained by a technological society. I have asked myself in what ways it might be constructed; I have asked myself for what purpose it has been constructed. Surely, I tell myself, not as a simple receptacle to contain matter, space, and time. Certainly it has more significance than this. Was it designed, I ask myself, as the home of intelligent biological creatures and if this is so, what factors have gone into its development to make it such a place, in fact what kind of construct should it be to serve such a purpose? Or was it built simply as an exercise in philosophy?

Or possibly as a symbolism that may not be perceived nor appreciated until that far-distant day when the final distillation of biological evolution has produced some unimaginable intelligence that may finally know the reason and the purpose of the universe? The question is raised, as well, what sort of an intelligence would be required to reach such an understanding. There must, it seems, always be a certain limitation to each evolutionary phase, and there is no way one can be sure that such a limitation would not rule out the capacity to achieve an intelligence necessary to understand the universe
.

Perhaps
, said the grande dame,
the universe is not meant to be understood. This fetish for understanding may be no more than one mistaken aspect of a technological society
.

Or
, said the monk,
of a philosophical society. Perhaps more true of a philosophical society than one that is technological, for technology doesn't give a damn just so the engines run and the equations click together
.

I think you both are wrong
, objected the scientist.
Any intelligence must care. An intelligence must necessarily drive itself to the limit of its ability. That is the curse of intelligence. It never lets the creature that possesses it alone; it never lets him rest; it drives him on and on. In the last moment of eternity he will be clinging to the ultimate precipice by his fingernails, kicking and screaming to gather in the final shred of whatever it is that he may be chasing. And he'll be chasing something; I'll lay you odds on that
.

You make it sound so grim
, the grande dame said.

At the risk
, said the scientist,
of sounding somewhat like a stuffed shirt or a mindless patriot, I might say grim, but glorious
.

None of which points the way for us
, said the monk.
Are we going to live out another millennium as three separate, selfish, egotistical identities or are we going to give ourselves a chance to become something else? I don't know what that something else will be
—
an equal of the universe, perhaps the very universe, or something less than that. At the worst, I think, a free mind divorced from time and matter, able to go anywhere, perhaps anywhen, we wish without respect to all the rest of it, rising above the limitations imposed upon our flesh
.

You are selling us short
, said the scientist.
We have spent only one millennium in our present state. Give us another millennium, give us ten more millennia …
.

But it will cost us something
, said the grande dame.
It will not come for free. What price. Sir Monk, would you offer for it?

My fear
, said the monk.
I have given up my fear and I am glad of it. It is no price at all. But it is all I have. It is all I have to offer
.

And I my bitchy pride
, said the grande dame,
and our Master Scientist his selfishness. Scientist, can you pay your selfishness?

It would come hard
, said the scientist.
Perhaps there'll come a time when I'll not need my selfishness
.

Ah, well
, said the monk,
we will have the Pond and the god-hour. Perhaps they'll supply moral support and maybe some incentive
—
if no more incentive than to get the hell away from them
.

I think
, said the grande dame,
that we'll finally make it. Not by getting the hell, as you say, away from something else. I think that in the end the thing we'll want to get away from is ourselves. We'll become in time so sick of our petty selves that each of us will be glad to merge with the other two. And maybe we can finally reach that blessed state when we have no selves at all
.

31

Nicodemus was waiting by the now-dead campfire when Horton came back from the Pond. The robot had the packs made up and the Shakespeare volume lay on top of them. Horton set the jug down carefully leaning it against the packs.