To the Land of the Living (45 page)

It was growing even darker. The glow was fading from the sky, and the figures around him were mere shadows, faceless, indistinguishable. No longer did he see the Ice-Hunter hall. Now it seemed to him that he was in Uruk again, the first Uruk, the city of his birth – in the great palace of the king, that formidable place of fortified towered entrances and intricately niched facades and lofty columns, where the walls were a brilliant white and the ceilings of rich black wood from far-off lands.

“Enkidu? Where are you, Enkidu? Vy-otin? Simon, are you there? Or your Hairy Man?”

“Come to me, Gilgamesh,” a great voice called in the darkness, a voice that he did not know.

“I can’t see you. Who are you?”

“Come to me, Gilgamesh.” And then the voice used another name, that secret one, his birth-name that no one must ever speak, conjuring him by it, urging him forward.

The vast rolling tones came to Gilgamesh like the tolling of a colossal bell. He took an uneasy step, another, another. He
was in utter blackness now. “Come to me,” the voice said. “Come. Come. Come.”

There was sudden light, as if a new sun had been born that instant.

Before him in the void there rose a mighty figure, a man who seemed as high as the highest of towers, before whom Gilgamesh stood as though before a god. He wore nothing but a flounced woollen robe of the sort that the men had worn in Sumer the Land, which left him bare above the waist. His shoulders were as broad as a mountain, his chest was as deep as the sky. His skin was smooth and dark from the sun, and his scalp was shaven clean, and his beard was thick and black, falling in curling folds.

Most wondrous of all were his eyes: dark and bright and enormous, so large that they seemed almost to fill his whole forehead. Gilgamesh knew those eyes. He had seen them before, and he could never forget them.

“Father?”

“Yes. I am Lugalbanda.”

Gilgamesh went to his knees. Yet it seemed to him that he was floating forward into the vast pool of those eyes, that he would be lost within his father’s soul forever.

“How splendid you are, my son,” Lugalbanda said. “Come to me. Closer. Closer.”

“Father”

Lugalbanda smiled. His voice rolled down from high above. “Ah, Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh, you were only a boy when I went away. Though I could see even then that you would be kingly one day. I would have wished to be with you, to watch you grow into manhood. The gods took me too soon for that.”

“Yes. I was six.”

“Six, yes. And even before I died I saw you so rarely. There were so many wars to fight. And the pilgrimages afterward, the shrines that had to be visited –”

“You promised that there would be time later,” said Gilgamesh. “When you and I could hunt lions together, and you would teach me all the things of manhood.”

“But that could not be,” said Lugalbanda.

“After you died I still thought you would come back,” said Gilgamesh. “Perhaps I spent my whole life thinking that, that I would find you again some day.”

“I am here now.”

“Am I dead, father?”

“Dead? Yes, yes, of course. We are all dead.”

“I mean, will I sleep now? Will I go into the great darkness and never awaken?”

“Ah,” said Lugalbanda, “but our spirits are eternal. Have you not learned that, in all your seeking?”

Gilgamesh was silent, staring at the immense form that filled the void before him. After a time he said, “Sometimes I think I have learned nothing at all, father.”

Lugalbanda smiled and stretched forth one enormous hand.

“Come closer, Gilgamesh. Put your hand in mine.”

“Yes, father.”

“Here. Yes.” Their hands touched. Through Gilgamesh went a surge of power so intense that he nearly fell to his knees a second time; but he kept himself upright, receiving it, absorbing it. The vastness and majesty of Lugalbanda were overwhelming. The eyes of Lugalbanda were like suns before him. I know my father at last, Gilgamesh thought. And he is a god.

Quietly Lugalbanda said, “I tell you only this, Gilgamesh my son, that which you have already learned, though you think you have forgotten it: there is no death. There is no death. There is only change, and change leads only to rebirth and renewal. Your soul goes ever onward, in joy and wonder, through all that will come; and when everything has come, it will come again, and again and again, everlasting and unwaning. We are indestructible, though we die and are scattered to the winds, for we will be brought together again and renewed. That is the truth of the world, Gilgamesh. That is the only truth: there is no death. Do you see, Gilgamesh? Do you see?”

“I think I see, yes, father.”

“Good. Go, then, and take my blessing.”

It seemed to Gilgamesh that the figure of Lugalbanda wavered, and began to grow dim.

“Father? Father, will I see you again?”

“Of course.”

“Father! Father!”

“Go,” said Lugalbanda. “Everything awaits you.”

He tried to hold tight to his father’s hand, but no, there was no substance to it, there was only shadow, and then just the
shadow of a shadow, and then nothing at all, and he stood alone, blinking as sudden brightness came pouring down upon him. Jagged green lightning danced on the horizon. A wind came ripping like a blade out of the east, skinning the flat land bare and sending up clouds of gray-brown dust. He held a bow in his hand, his bow of several fine woods, the bow that no man but he was strong enough to draw, he and Enkidu. He knew this place. Indeed, he had been here before. This was the Afterworld. This was the Outback where he had hunted so long. He narrowed his eyes and stared into the distance. A figure was coming this way across the plain, a man, robust and vigorous, a man he knew as well as he knew his own self. Enkidu, it was. Enkidu, smiling, waving. “Brother!” he cried. “Hail, brother!” And Gilgamesh, smiling, waving also, called out in joyous response, and began to walk toward him.

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Novels

Majipoor Series

1.
Lord Valentine's Castle
(1980)

2.
Majipoor Chronicles
(1982)

3.
Valentine Pontifex
(1983)

4.
The Mountains of Majipoor
(1995)

5.
Sorcerers of Majipoor
(1997)

6.
Lord Prestimion
(1999)

7.
The King of Dreams
(2001)

New Springtime

1.
At Winter's End
(1988)

2.
The Queen of Springtime
(1989)

Revolt on Alpha C
(1955)

The Thirteenth Immortal
(1956)

Master of Life and Death
(1957)

Collision Course
(1958)

Invaders from Earth
(1958)

Stepsons of Terra
(1958)

Aliens from Space
(1958) (as David Osborne)

Invisible Barriers
(1958) (as David Osborne)

Starman's Quest
(1958)

The Planet Killers
(1959)

Lost Race of Mars
(1960)

The Seed of Earth
(1962)

Recalled To Life
(1962)

The Silent Invaders
(1963)

Time of the Great Freeze
(1963)

Regan's Planet
(1964)

Conquerors from the Darkness
(1965)

The Gate of Worlds
(1967)

Planet of Death
(1967)

Thorns
(1967)

Those Who Watch
(1967)

The Time Hoppers
(1967)

To Open the Sky
(1967)

World's Fair 1992
(1968)

The Man in the Maze
(1968)

Hawksbill Station
(1968)

The Masks of Time
(1968)

Downward to the Earth
(1970)

Across a Billion Years
(1969)

Nightwings
(1969)

Three Survived
(1969)

To Live Again
(1969)

Up the Line
(1969)

Tower of Glass
(1970)

Son of Man
(1971)

The Second Trip
(1971)

The World Inside
(1971)

A Time of Changes
(1971)

The Book of Skulls
(1972

Dying Inside
(1972)

The Stochastic Man
(1975)

Shadrach in the Furnace
(1976)

Gilgamesh the King
(1984)

Tom O'Bedlam
(book) (1985)

Star of Gypsies
(1986)

To
the Land of the Living
(1990)

Thebes of the Hundred Gates
(1991)

The Face of the Waters
(1991)

Kingdoms of the Wall
(1992)

Hot Sky at Midnight
(1994)

Starborne
(1996)

The Alien
Years
(1997)

The Longest Way Home
(2002)

Roma Eterna
(2003)

Lest We Forget Thee Earth
(1958) (as Calvin M. Knox)

The Plot Against Earth
(1959) (as Calvin M. Knox)

One of Our Asteroids in Missings
(1964) (as Calvin M. Knox)

Starhaven
(1959) (as Ivar Jorgensen)

Letters from Atlantis
(1990)

Project Pendulum
(1987)

Collections

The Collected Stories Volume 1: To Be Continued

The Collected Stories Volume 2: To The Dark Star

The Collected Stories Volume 3: Something Wild is Loose

The Collected Stories Volume 4: Trips

The Collected Stories Volume 5: The Palace At Midnight

The Collected Stories Volume 6: Multiple

The Collected Stories Volume 7: We Are For The Dark

The Collected Stories Volume 8: Hot Times in Magma City

The Collected Stories Volume 9: The Millennium Express

Phases of the Moon

In the Beginning

Hunt the Star-Witch

Non-Fiction

Reflections and Refractions

Musings and Meditations

Other Spaces, Other Times

For Ralph

Who keeps track of it all, from Antigua to Zimbabwe –
dear friend, trusted adviser

Robert Silverberg (1935 – )

Robert Silverberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1935, and is one of the most prolific authors of all time, writing not just SF & Fantasy, but extensive non-fiction and a large number of pseudonymously published erotica novels. In his first years as a professional writer, his output regularly exceeded a million words per year.

He has won and been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards dozens of times as both writer and editor, and in 2004 received the SFWA Grand Master Award. Among his many acclaimed and bestselling novels are
A Time of Changes
,
The Book of Skulls
,
Dying Inside
and
Lord Valentine’s Castle
.

Robert Silverberg lives on the West Coast of the United States with his wife, author, editor and art critic, Karen Haber.

A Gollancz eBook

Copyright © Robert Silverberg 1990

All rights reserved.

The right of Robert Silverberg to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by

Gollancz

The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Orion House

5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

London, WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 10637 6

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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