Downward to the Earth

“How long have you been this way?” Gundersen demanded.

“Two months. Three, I don’t know. Time melts here, Gundy. But there’s no going back for me now. This is where I stop. Terminal. Terminal.”

Gundersen knelt by the sick man’s pallet. “Are you in pain? Can I give you something?”

“No pain,” Cullen said. “No drugs. Terminal.”

“What do you have?” Gundersen asked, thinking of Dykstra and his woman lying gnawed by alien larvae in a pool of muck, thinking of Kurtz anguished and transformed at Shangri-la Falls, thinking of Seena’s tale of Gio’ Salamone turned to crystal. “A native disease? Something you picked up around here?”

“Nothing exotic,” said Cullen. “I’d guess it’s the old inward rot, the ancient enemy. The crab, Gundy. The crab. In the gut. The crab’s pincers are in my gut.”

“Then you are in pain?”

“No,” Cullen said. “The crab moves slowly. A nip here, a nip there. Each day there’s a little less of me. Some days I feel that there’s nothing left of me at all. This is one of the better days.”

“Listen,” Gundersen said, “I could get you downriver to Seena’s place in a week. She’s bound to have a medical kit, a space tube of anticarcin for you. You aren’t so far gone that we couldn’t manage a remission if we act fast, and then we could ship you to Earth for template renewal, and—”

“No. Forget it.”

“Don’t be absurd! We aren’t living in the Middle Ages, Ced. A case of cancer is no reason for a man to lie down in a filthy hut and wait to die. The sulidoror will set up a litter for you. I can arrange it in five minutes. And then—”

“I wouldn’t ever reach Seena’s, and you know it,” Cullen said softly. “The nildoror would pick me up the moment I came out of the mist country. You know that, Gundy. You have to know that.”

“Well—”

“I don’t have the energy to play these games. You’re aware, aren’t you, that I’m the most wanted man on this planet?”

“I suppose so.”

“Were you sent here to fetch me?”

“The nildoror asked me to bring you back,” Gundersen admitted. “I had to agree to it in order to get permission to come up here.”

“Of course.” Bitterly.

“But I stipulated that I wouldn’t bring you out unless you’d come willingly,” Gundersen said. “Along with certain other stipulations. Look, Ced, I’m not here as Judas. I’m traveling for reasons of my own, and seeing you is strictly a side-venture. But I want to help you. Let me bring you down to Seena’s so you can get the treatment that you have to—”

“I told you,” Cullen said, “the nildoror would grab me as soon as they had a chance.”

“Even if they knew you were mortally ill and being taken down to the falls for medical care?”

“Especially so. They’d love to save my soul as I lay dying. I won’t give them the satisfaction, Gundy. I’m going to stay here, safe, beyond their reach, and wait for the crab to finish with me. It won’t be long now. Two days, three, a week, perhaps even tonight. I appreciate your desire to rescue me. But I won’t go.”

“If I got a promise from the nildoror to let you alone until you were able to undergo treat—”

“I won’t go. You’d have to force me. And that’s outside the scope of your promise to the nildoror, isn’t it?” Cullen smiled for the first time in some minutes. “There’s a flask of wine in the corner there. Be a good fellow.”

Gundersen went to get it. He had to walk around several sulidoror. His colloquy with Cullen had been so intense, so private, that he had quite forgotten that the hut was full of sulidoror: his two guides, Cullen’s guards, and at least half a dozen others. He picked up the wine and carried it to the pallet. Cullen, his hand trembling, nevertheless managed not to spill any. When he had had his fill, he offered the flask to Gundersen, asking him so insistently to drink that Gundersen could not help but accept. The wine was warm and sweet.

“Is it agreed,” Cullen said, “that you won’t make any attempt to take me out of this village? I know you wouldn’t seriously consider handing me over to the nildoror. But you might decide to get me out of here for the sake of saving my life. Don’t do that either, because the effect would be the same: the nildoror would get me. I stay here. Agreed?”

Gundersen was silent a while. “Agreed,” he said finally.

Cullen looked relieved. He lay back, face toward the wall, and said, “I wish you hadn’t wasted so much of my energy on that one point. We have so much more to talk about. And now I don’t have the strength.”

“I’ll come back later. Rest, now.”

“No. Stay here. Talk to me. Tell me where you’ve been all these years, why you came back here, who you’ve seen, what you’ve done. Give me the whole story. I’ll rest while I’m listening. And afterward — and afterward—”

Cullen’s voice faded. It seemed to Gundersen that he had slipped into unconsciousness, or perhaps merely sleep. Cullen’s eyes were closed; his breath was slow and labored. Gundersen remained silent. He paced the hut uneasily, studying the hides tacked to the walls, the crude furniture, the debris of old meals. The sulidoror ignored him. Now there were eight in the hut, keeping their distance from the dying man and yet focusing all their attention on him. Momentarily Gundersen was u

Cullen said, eyes still shut, “I’m waiting. Tell me things.”

Gundersen began to speak. He spoke of his eight years on Earth, collapsing them into six curt sentences. He spoke of the restlessness that had come over him on Earth, of his cloudy and mystifying compulsion to return to Belzagor, of the sense of a need to find a new structure for his life now that he had lost the scaffolding that the Company had been for him. He spoke of his journey through the forest to the lakeside encampment, and of how he had danced among the nildoror, and how they had wrung from him the qualified promise to bring them Cullen. He spoke of Dykstra and his woman in their forest ruin, editing the tale somewhat in respect for Cullen’s own condition, though he suspected that such charity was u

He was certain at least three times that Cullen had fallen asleep, and once he thought that the sick man’s breathing had ceased altogether. Each time Gundersen paused, though, Cullen gave some faint indication — a twitch of the mouth, a flick of the fingertips — that he should go on. At the end, when Gundersen had nothing left to say, he stood in silence a long while waiting for some new sign from Cullen, and at last, faintly, Cullen said, “Then?”

“Then I came here.”

“And where do you go after here?”

“To the mountain of rebirth,” said Gundersen quietly.

Cullen’s eyes opened. With a nod he asked that his pillows be propped up, and he sat forward, locking his fingers into his coverlet. “Why do you want to go there?” he asked.

“To find out what kind of thing rebirth is.”

“You saw Kurtz?”

“Yes.”

“He also wanted to learn more about rebirth,” Cullen said. “He already understood the mechanics of it, but he had to know its inwardness as well. To try it for himself. It wasn’t just curiosity, of course. Kurtz had spiritual troubles. He was courting self-immolation because he’d persuaded himself he needed to atone for his whole life. Quite true, too. Quite true. So he went for rebirth. The sulidoror obliged him. Well, behold the man. I saw him just before I came north.”

“For a while I thought I might try rebirth also,” said Gundersen, caught unawares by the words surfacing in his mind. “For the same reasons. The mixture of curiosity and guilt. But I think I’ve given the idea up now. I’ll go to the mountain to see what they do, but I doubt that I’ll ask them to do it to me.”