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.
“Is there anything else that you want to take?” asked Nicodemus.
Horton shook his head. “The book and jug.” he said. “I guess that’s all. The ceramics that Shakespeare picked up are worthless as they stand. No more than souvenirs. Someday someone else will come along, human or otherwise, who will make a study of the city. Human more than likely. It seems that our species at times may hold an almost fatal fascination for the past.”
“I can carry both the packs,” said Nicodemus. “and the book as well. Carrying that jug, you shouldn’t be encumbered.”
Horton grinned. “I have the awful fear that somewhere along the way something will trip me up. I can’t let that happen. I have Pond in my custody and can let nothing happen to him.”
Nicodemus squinted at the jug. “You haven’t got much of him there.”
“Enough,” said Horton. “A phial of him, a cupful of him probably would be quite enough.”
“I don’t quite understand,” said Nicodemus, “what it is all about.”
“Neither do I,” said Horton, “except that I have the feeling I’m carrying a jugful of a friend, and out here in this howling wilderness of space a man can ask nothing more.”
Nicodemus rose from the woodpile, where he had been sitting. “Pick up the jug,” he said, “and I’ll shoulder the rest of it. There’s nothing more to keep us.”
Horton made no move to pick up the jug. He stood where he was, slowly looking around. “I find myself just a bit reluctant.” he said. “As if there were something still to do.”
“You’re missing Elayne,” said Nicodemus. “It would have been nice to have her along.”
“There’s that,” said Horton. “Yes, I do miss her. It was hard to stand and watch her walk into the tunnel. And there’s him as well. “He gestured at the skull that hung abo
ve the door.
“We can’t take him along,” said Nicodemus. “That skull would crumble at the touch. He won’t be up there very long. Someday a wind will come along …”
“That’s not what I mean,” said Horton. “He was here alone so long. And now we’ll leave him alone again.”
“Carnivore’s still here,” said Nicodemus.
Horton said, relieved, “That’s right. I hadn’t thought of that.”
He stooped and picked up the jug, cradling it carefully in his arms. Nicodemus hoisted the packs to his back and tucked the book underneath an arm. Turning, he started down the path, Horton following.
At the turn of the path Horton turned and looked back at the Grecian house. Getting a good grip on the jug with one hand, he lifted the other arm in a gesture of farewell.
Good-bye, he said, wordlessly, in his mind. Goodbye, you old stormy albatross—you madman, brave man, lost man.
It may have been a trick of shifting light. It may have been something else.
But, in any case, whatever, from his position above the door, Shakespeare winked at him.
About the Author
During his fifty-five-year career, Clifford D. Simak produced some of the most iconic science fiction stories ever written. Born in 1904 on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin, Simak got a job at a small-town newspaper in 1929 and eventually became news editor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, writing fiction in his spare time.
Simak was best known for the book City, a reaction to the horrors of World War II, and for his novel Way Station. In 1953 City was awarded the International Fantasy Award, and in following years, Simak won three Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award. In 1977 he became the third Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and before his death in 1988, he was named one of three inaugural winners of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1976 by Clifford D. Simak
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1328-4
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Clifford D. Simak, Shakespeare's Planet
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