A Time of Changes

31

I might have slapped the powder from his hand and ordered his arrest. I might have commanded him to get away from me and never come near again. I might at the very least have cried out that it was impossible I would ever touch any such substance. But I did none of those things. I chose instead to be coolly intellectual, to show casual curiosity, to remain calm and play conversational games with him. Thus I encouraged him to lead me a little deeper into the quicksand.

I said, “Do you think that one is so eager to contravene the Covenant?”

“One thinks that you are a man of strong will and inquiring mind, who would not miss an opportunity for enlightenment.”

“Illegal enlightenment?”

“All true enlightenment is illegal at first, within its context. Even the religion of the Covenant: were your forefathers not driven out of other worlds for practicing it?”

“One mistrusts such analogy-making. We are not talking of religions now. We talk of a dangerous drug. You ask one to surrender all the training of his lifetime, and open himself to you as he has never done even to bond-kin, even to a drainer.”

“Yes.”

“And you imagine that one might be willing to do such a thing?”

“One imagines that you might well emerge transformed and cleansed, if you could bring yourself to try,” Schweiz said.

“One might also emerge scarred and twisted.”

“Doubtful. Knowledge never injures the soul. It only purges that which encrusts and saps the soul.”

“How glib you are, Schweiz! Look, though: can you believe it would be possible to give one’s inner secrets to a stranger, to a foreigner, to an otherworlder?”

“Why not? Better to a stranger than to a friend. Better to an Earthman than a fellow citizen. You’d have nothing to fear: the Earthman would never try to judge you by the standards of Borthan. There’d be no criticisms, no disapprovals of what’s under your skull. And the Earthman will leave this planet in a year or two, on a journey of hundreds of light-years, and what then will it matter that your mind once merged with his?”

“Why are you so eager to have this merger happen?”

“For eight moontimes,” he said, “this drug has been in one’s pocket, while one hunts for someone to share it with. It looked as though the search would be in vain. Then one met you, and saw your potential, your strength, your hidden rebelliousness—”

“One is aware of no rebelliousness, Schweiz. One accepts his world completely.”

“May one bring up the delicate matter of your attitude toward your bondsister? That seems a symptom of a fundamental discontent with the restrictions of your society.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

“You would know yourself better after sampling the Sumaran drug. You would have fewer perhapses and more certainties.”

“How can you say this, if you haven’t had the drug yourself?”

“So it seems to one.”

“It is impossible,” I said.

“An experiment. A secret pact. No one would ever know.”

“Impossible.”

“Is it that you fear to share your soul?”

“One is taught that such sharing is unholy.”

“The teachings can be wrong,” he said. “Have you never felt the temptation? Have you never tasted such ecstasy in a draining that you wished you might undergo the same experience with someone you loved, your grace?”

Again he caught me in a vulnerable place. “One has had such feelings occasionally,” I admitted. “Sitting before some ugly drainer, and imagining it was Noim instead, or Halum, and that the draining was a two-way flow—”

“Then you already long for this drug, and don’t realize it!”

“No. No.”

“Perhaps,” Schweiz suggested, “it is the idea of opening to a stranger that dismays you, and not the concept of opening itself. Perhaps you would take this drug with someone other than the Earthman, eh? With your bondbrother? With your bondsister?”

I considered that. Sitting down with Noim, who was to me like a second self, and reaching his mind on levels that had never been available to me before, and he reaching mine. Or with Halum — or with Halum -

Schweiz, you tempter!

He said, after letting me think a while, “Does the idea please you? Here, then. One will surrender his chance with the drug. Take it, use it, share it with one whom you love.” He pressed the envelope into my hand. It frightened me; I let it fall to the table as if it were aflame.

I said, “But that would deprive you of your hoped-for fulfillment.”

“No matter. One can get more of the drug. One may perhaps find another partner for the experiment. Meanwhile you would have known the ecstasy, your grace. Even an Earthman can be unselfish. Take it, your grace. Take it.”

I gave him a dark look. “Would it be, Schweiz, that this talk of taking the drug yourself was only pretense? That what you really look for is someone to offer himself as an experimental subject, so you can be sure the drug is safe before you risk it?”

“You misunderstand, your grace.”

“Maybe not. Maybe this is what you’ve been driving toward.” I saw myself administering the drug to Noim, saw him falling into convulsions before my eyes as I made ready to bring my own dose to my lips. I pushed the envelope back toward Schweiz. “No, The offer is refused. One appreciates the generosity, but one will not experiment on his loved ones, Schweiz.”

His face was very red. “This implication is unwarranted, your grace. The offer to relinquish one’s own share of the drug was made in good faith, and at no little cost to one’s own plans. But since you reject it, let us return to the original proposition. The two of us will sample the drug, in secrecy, as an experiment in possibilities. Let us find out together what its powers may be and what doors it can open for us. We would have much to gain from this adventure, one is sure.”

“One sees what you would have to gain,” I said. “But what purpose is there in it for—”

“Yourself?” Schweiz chuckled. Then he rammed me with the barbed hook. “Your grace, by making the experiment you would learn that the drug is safe, you would discover the proper dosage, you would lose your fear of the mind-opening itself. And then, after obtaining a further supply of the drug, you would be properly prepared to use it for a purpose from which your fears now hold you back. You could take the drug together with the only person whom you truly love. You could use it to open your mind to your bondsister Halum, and to open hers to you.”