A Time of Changes

35

I was at first greatly aware of the functioning of my own body: the thud-thud of my heart, the pounding of the blood against the walls of arteries, the movements of fluids deep within my ears, the drifting of corpuscular bodies across my field of vision. I became enormously receptive to external stimuli, currents of air brushing my cheek, a fold of my robe touching my thigh, the pressure of the floor against the sole of my foot. I heard an unfamiliar sound as of water tumbling through a distant gorge. I lost touch with my surroundings, for as my perceptions intensified the range of them also narrowed, and I found myself incapable of perceiving the shape of the room, for I saw nothing clearly except in a constricted tunnel at the other end of which was Schweiz; beyond the rim of this tunnel there was only haze. Now I was frightened, and fought to clear my mind, as one may make a conscious effort to free the brain of the muddle caused by too much wine; but the harder I struggled to return to normal perception, the more rapidly did the pace of change accelerate. I entered a state of luminous drunkenness, in which brilliant radiant rods of colored light streamed past my face, and I was certain I must have sipped from Digant’s spring. I felt a rushing sensation, like that of air moving swiftly against my ears. I heard a high whining sound that was barely audible at first, but swept up in crescendo until it took on tangibility and appeared to fill the room to overflowing, yet the sound was not painful. The chair beneath me throbbed and pulsated in a steady beat that seemed tuned to some patient pulsation of our planet itself. Then, with no discernible feeling of having crossed a boundary, I realized that my perceptions had for some time been double: now I was aware of a second heartbeat, of a second spurt of blood within vessels, of a second churning of intestines. But it was not mere duplication, for these other rhythms were different, setting up complex symphonic interplays with the rhythms of my own body, creating percussive patterns that were so intricate that the fibers of my mind melted in the attempt to follow them. I began to sway in time with these beats, to clap my hands against my thighs, to snap my fingers; and, looking down my vision-tunnel, I saw Schweiz also swaying and clapping and snapping, and realized whose bodily rhythms it was I had been receiving. We were locked together. I had difficulty now distinguishing his heartbeat from my own, and sometimes, glancing across the table at him, I saw my own reddened, distorted face. I experienced a general liquefying of reality, a breaking down of walls and restraints; I was unable to maintain a sense of Kinnall Darival as an individual; I thought not in terms of he and I, but of we. I had lost not only my identity but the concept of self itself.

At that level I remained a long while, until I started to think that the power of the drug was receding. Colors grew less brilliant, my perception of the room became more conventional, and I could again distinguish Schweiz’s body and mind from my own. Instead of feeling relief that the worst was over, though, I felt only disappointment that I had not achieved the kind of mingling of consciousness that Schweiz had promised.

But I was mistaken.

The first wild rush of the drug was over, yes, yet we were only now coming into the true communion. Schweiz and I were apart but nevertheless together. This was the real selfbaring. I saw his soul spread out before me as though on a table, and I could walk up to the table and examine those things that were on it, picking up this utensil, that vase, these ornaments, and studying them as closely as I wished.

Here was the looming face of Schweiz’s mother. Here was a swollen pale breast streaked with blue veins and tipped by an enormous rigid nipple. Here were childhood furies. Here were memories of Earth. Through the eyes of Schweiz I saw the mother of worlds, maimed and shackled, disfigured and discolored. Beauty gleamed through the ugliness. This was the place of his birth, this disheveled city; these were highways ten thousand years old; these were the stumps of ancient temples. Here was the node of first love. Here were disappointments and departures. Betrayals, here. Shared confidences, here. Growth and change. Corrosion and despair. Journeys. Failures. Seductions. Confessions. I saw the suns of a hundred worlds.

And I passed through the strata of Schweiz’s soul, inspecting the gritty layers of greed and the boulders of trickery, the oily pockets of maliciousness, the decaying loam of opportunism. Here was self incarnate; here was a man who had lived solely for his own sake.

Yet I did not recoil from the darkness of Schweiz.

I saw beyond those things. I saw the yearning, the god-hunger in the man, Schweiz alone on a lunar plain, splayfooted on a black shield of rock under a purple sky, reaching up, grasping, taking hold of nothing. Sly and opportunistic he might be, yes, but also vulnerable, passionate, honest beneath all his capering. I could not judge Schweiz harshly. He was I. I was he. Tides of self engulfed us both. If I were to cast Schweiz down, I must also cast down Kinnall Darival. My soul was flooded with warmth for him.

I felt him, too, probing me. I erected no barriers about my spirit as he came to explore it. And through his own eyes I saw what he was seeing in me. My fear of my father. My awe of my brother. My love for Halum. My flight into Glin. My choosing of Loimel. My petty faults and my petty virtues. Everything, Schweiz. Look. Look. Look. And it all came back refracted through his soul, nor did I find it painful to observe. Love of others begins with love of self, I thought suddenly.

In that instant the Covenant fell and shattered within me.

Gradually Schweiz and I pulled apart, though we remained in contact some time longer, the strength of the bond ebbing steadily. When it broke at last, I felt a shivering resonance, as if a taut string had snapped. We sat in silence. My eyes were closed. I was queasy in the pit of my stomach and conscious, as I had never been conscious before, of the gulf that keeps each of us forever alone. After some long time I looked across the room at Schweiz.

He was watching me, waiting for me. He wore that demonic look of his, the wild grin, the bright-eyed gleam, only now it seemed to me less a look of madness than a reflection of inner joy. He appeared younger now. His face was still flushed.

“I love you,” he said softly.

The unexpected words were bludgeons. I crossed my wrists before my face, palms out, protecting myself.

“What upsets you so much?” he asked. “My grammar or my meaning?”

“Both.”

“Can it be so terrible to say, I love you?”

“One has never — one does not know how to—”

“To react? To respond?” Schweiz laughed. “I don’t mean I love you in any physical way. As if that would be so hideous. But no. I mean what I say, Kinnall. I’ve been in your mind and I liked what I saw there. I love you.”

“You talk in ‘I,’ ” I reminded him.

“Why not? Must I deny self even now? Come on: break free, Kinnall. I know you want to. Do you think what I just said to you is obscene?”

“There is such a strangeness about it.”

“On my world those words have a holy strangeness,” said Schweiz. “And here they’re an abomination. Never to be allowed to say ‘I love you,’ eh? A whole planet denying itself that little pleasure. Oh, no, Kinnall, no, no, no!”

“Please,” I said faintly. “One still has not fully adjusted to the things the drug did. When you shout at one like that—”

But he would not subside.

“You were in my mind too,” he said. “What did you find there? Was I so loathsome? Get it out, Kinnall. You have no secrets from me now. The truth. The truth!”

“You know, then, that one found you more admirable than one had expected.”

Schweiz chuckled. “And I the same! Why are we afraid of each other now, Kinnall? I told you: I love you! We made contact. We saw there were areas of trust. Now we have to change, Kinnall. You more than me, because you have farther to go. Come. Come. Put words to your heart. Say it.”

“One can’t.”

“Say ‘I.’ ”

“How difficult that is.”

“Say it. Not as an obscenity. Say it as if you love yourself.”

“Please.”

“Say it.”

“I,” I said.

“Was that so awful? Come, now. Tell me how you feel about me. The truth. From the deepest levels.”

“A feeling of warmth — of affection, of trust—”

“Of love?”

“Of love, yes,” I admitted.

“Then say it.”

“Love.”

“That isn’t what I want you to say.”

“What, then?”

“Something that hasn’t been said on this planet in two thousand years, Kinnall. Now say it. I-”

“Love you.”

“Love you.”

“I love you.”

“I — love — you.”

“It’s a beginning,” Schweiz said. Sweat streamed down his face and mine. “We start by acknowledging that we can love. We start by acknowledging that we have selves capable of loving. Then we begin to love. Eh? We begin to love.”