I met the charming, intelligent, nubile women of the society that had
adopted me.
I also practiced the Sport of Uru, in which Jones was my teacher. I
called him Joro now; that was his real name, and my name had become
Boru.
As Boru I was something of a celebrity in my adopted world. When I went
to the great gamesward, for the Sport, they cheered and often crowded
around to press gifts on me.
Oh, I was well regarded. I had been assimilated. I, Boru. Boru the
Fighting Man.
* * * * *
Twice I had engaged in hand-to-hand combat, as Joro's Fighting Man, in
the Annual Sport--the wars between the cities. Twice I had fought, and
now one contest remained.
I had a long ugly scar on the inside of my right arm. My left foot was
prosthetic from the calf down. My right eye was gone; I wore a false
one next to the cheekbone that had been restored by a series of grafts.
Flesh healed quickly and bone knitted fast in Uru. The Uru doctors
could heal anyone who lived.
But they could not heal the dead and there was no quarter in the Sport.
I expected none for myself as I had given none to the two men I had
killed. Two down and one to go. If I won the third I'd be a noble like
Joro, my patron, my fighting days over. If I didn't I'd be dead.
Joro had started me out in the back rank, where the danger was least.
But I moved up fast, and fought.
Again I was in the back rank, because of my old wounds--but I knew I'd
move up this time, too, though there were two good men ahead of me.
Like me they were Joro's men, each of us equipped for the Sport.
The equipment:
Steel-claw appendages on our hands.
Feet shod in hooves, sharpened to razor-edge.
Teeth fitted with fangs.
A diagram explained the pattern of battle better--U for Urula, T for
Tara. Us against Them, even as in Madison Square Garden or the San
Francisco Cow Palace:
T T T T T
T T T T T
T T T T T
U U U U U
U U U U U
U U U U U
Joro's men were in the file at the extreme right. I, Boru, was in the
southeast corner, standing in the crowded arena naked except for armor
at my loins and the fearful appendages of hand, foot and mouth.
At last the ceremonial speeches and blessings were over. Joro took his
place to our rear, on a high seat, our coach and our mentor. There was
a clang of great cymbals and the battle was joined.
I watched tensely as the first man in my file advanced to meet his
opponent in the Circle of Death. To their left, in the other four
circles, similar battles were taking place, but I had eyes only for the
struggle in my own file.
Rans, our lead-off man, was down! Before he could recover, his opponent
had slashed his neck with a razored hoof and Rans was dead.
Rans was dragged off and our file moved up, as the other battles
continued. Now the man ahead of me, Karn, was in the Circle of Death
with Rans' killer. Karn of Karna, whose planet was as far from Uru as
my own and who, fleeing Karna's law when Joro found him, had been as
glad to come as I had been. And poor dead Rans, from still a third
world among the galaxies that Joro had explored to recruit his Fighting
Men.
Karn, toe to toe with his tiring opponent, feinted and enticed his man
to lunge. Karn sidestepped and his steel claws raked the other from
neck to waist. A pivot then, a well-placed kick and Karn alone still
lived in the Circle of Death.
The blood had sickened me a little. I turned to Joro, sitting high
behind me, his glance darting from one circle to another. Joro's face
reflected his swiftly-changing emotions. He was fighting five battles
at once, vicariously, directing his men by concentration of will. His
thoughts flicked to mine for an instant.
_Courage, Boru! The game goes well!_
And so it did. There was a roar from the crowd as Karn won again. Now
only one of the enemy remained in our file. When he was disposed of our
job would be done for another year--and mine forever.
But Karn was weary and his opponent fresh. Clumsily Karn tried a slash
at the other's eyes. The other dodged and struck, his fanged teeth
closing on Karn's wrist. A wrench, and Karn stood dazed, his arm
hanging loose while blood gushed over his steel claws. Then a quick
horrible thrust and Karn was down, dying slowly.
Another great roar came from the crowd and I saw that the battles in
the other files had ended. Joro's men had won two and lost two. It was
in my file that the Sport would be decided. It was no longer us against
them. It was the most primitive of all contests--him or me.
I had a moment to look out across the gamesward as they removed poor
lifeless Karn. Festive pennants flew. The blue-white sun was high,
serene in a cloudless sky. The field was green and soothing, except in
the blood-stained Circles of Death.
In two of the circles stood Joro's men, proud in victory. In two others
stood victorious men of Tara. In the fifth stood the man who had killed
Karn--the man I must kill if I was to live.
* * * * *
The crowd was in a frenzy, the blood lust on them now. I understood for
the first time the purpose of the Sport. It was a purge of emotion.
Once a year the thousands gathered in the cities and satisfied their
primitive instincts. They were more than spectators: they were
vicarious participants in each battle. Their telepathy identified them
completely with the Fighting Men of their city.
Their empathy was such that they felt every blow, exulted in animal
passion when their fighter retaliated and drew blood. In the course
of an afternoon all their base instincts were satisfied. They knew
violence, pain, triumph, death.
It was an orgy of absolution that ended with a maximum of fifteen
deaths a year, instead of the thousands or hundreds of thousands that
would occur on the battlefields if they themselves fought.
It was a solution to war, this Annual Sport. Only then did I realize it
fully. Besides purging the emotions, it was a way of settling disputes
that were matters of honor transcending the courts. Once a year the
disputes were settled on the gamesward, the miniature battleground,
a concentration of blood and death that permitted them to avoid the
greater vulgarity of war.
And I was part of their mass catharsis, one of the hired instruments of
their annual exorcism. For an instant I saw the tiers of humanity as a
great analyst's couch, and the gamesward as the unlocked unconscious
where ugly passion was set free.
This fancy passed and I found myself staring at a woman in a box at
the edge of the field near me. Her face was contorted and almost
unrecognizable as that of a charming hostess whose guest I twice had
been--and whose guest I would be tonight at a fashionable, dignified
reception if I lived. Fiendish delight now twisted her usually serene
features and I had a quick flash of her thoughts projected into mine,
urging me to kill the enemy, _kill_, _kill_, and in doing so to rend
his body most abominably.
But then the great cymbals clashed and her face receded to a blur in
the crowd. It was time for me to kill or be killed.
I strode forward confidently, giving no sign that one of my legs was
false. I held my head high and tilted slightly to the right so that my
good left eye could do part of the work of its missing fellow.
At the edge of the Circle of Death I stopped and bowed stiffly to my
opponent from Tara. I studied him as he returned my bow. I had never
seen him fight and didn't know if any of his limbs were false, like
mine.
But then I knew. The left forearm of the man of Tara was prosthetic
and it would be useless to try to draw blood from it. I knew because
Joro was in my mind now, directing my thoughts, just as the noble from
Tara was in the mind of my opponent, directing his. Now Joro would live
every blow, feel the pain of wounds, smell the blood and sweat and
experience the exhilaration of battle, even as I. But if I lost I would
die, not Joro. He would withdraw and live to fight another time, in
another hired body.
Yet while he guided and directed me he would have the same urgency to
live, the same fear of death.
I stepped into the circle now and there was an animal roar from the
crowd. Tara's man did a vicious little dance step and kicked. As I
leaped aside his left hand slashed at my face. I dodged the blow and
blocked the right that followed it. There was a tinkle of steel on
steel as our fingers met.
We circled then, each of us seeking a weakness in the other. I had a
glimpse of Joro, tense in concentration at the edge of his high seat.
It was odd to see him at a distance and at the same time to know he was
inside me, fighting my fight.
I felt the power of his mind and doubled over to avoid a slash that had
been aimed at my eye. Then, with my opponent off balance, Joro directed
a blow at his shoulder. I felt my claws dig into the man's flesh and
he went down on one knee. Quickly I kicked and saw my steel hoof slice
his ear so that it dangled by a thread of flesh. Before I could follow
through for the kill Tara's man was up with a thrust that sought to
disembowel me. I stepped back in time.
But I was shaken. His sharp claws had brushed my belly. An inch more
and I would have been bleeding my life out, red on the green of the
gamesward. I felt nauseated. The noise of the crowd was like the surf,
rolling in over me, but dirty, filled with garbage.
_Barbarians!_ I thought.
Suddenly I didn't want to win. I didn't want to die, either, but the
price for that was to kill this other man with whom I had no quarrel.
* * * * *
He was facing me again, his ear hanging down grotesquely, and throwing
a series of orthodox feints with his left to set me up for a right
cross. He had a strange expression on his contorted face.
"... television," I heard him grunt.
It was clearly that word--that Earth-word. I had to give him a word
he'd recognize in turn as non-Uru.
"What channel?" I said. "What channel was that on?"
He looked at me in surprise.
"Any channel that had one," he said. "I was telling myself how I used
to scream for blood when I watched fights on television. Crazy. Who the
hell are you?"
I swung a slow-motion left that missed by eight inches. He sent out an
uppercut that missed by as much.
"New York," I said. "I wish I was back."
"Me too, pal," he said. "Chicago was never like this."
"Rome was, though," I said, doing fancy footwork and throwing punches
at the air. "And one of us is going to be carried out."
"I was looking for _yage_ on South State Street." He weaved and
shadow-boxed, not touching me.
"And they gave you _uru_. The big fix. We're fixed, all right."
"It's the least, Dad," he said. "Believe me."
There was a voice inside my skull. "Boru!" it said. It was Joro's, or
Jones's.
"The Man is complaining," I said to Chicago. "The Man named Jones,
an _uru_ pusher. Thinks we're not giving the customers their money's
worth." I crouched and tapped him lightly on the chest.
"Bleed on the bleeding customers," he said, nudging me gently on the
shoulder. "English expression."
"Boru!" the voice in my skull said again. "_Barry!_ What has happened?
Fight, man, for the honor of Urula!"
"He wants me to kill you," I told Chicago. "But maybe he can't make
me." I had thought Jones was in complete control.
"Mine, too," Chicago said. "Pusher name of Robinson. He's popping his
cork but I think I can stand him off." I got a light punch in the ribs
and retaliated with a caress to the jaw.
"Sorry about the ear," I said.
"Forget it. Where do we go from here? We can't waltz forever."
The crowd was catching on. I'd heard boos like that in the Garden and
Ebbets Field. They must have known by now that the big fight was a fake
and that the boys in the ring were a couple of bums anxious to get to
the showers.
The crowd might not have known exactly what was up but Chicago's
manager and mine did. I could feel Jones probing around in my
mind, trying to re-establish control and rekindle the blood lust.
But apparently he had no power to direct my actions except when I
cooperated. He could still read my mind and communicate with it. He
could cajole, threaten and curse, but he couldn't make me kill Chicago.
Jones came down from his high seat and started toward me. I stepped
back to the edge of the circle and Chicago did the same. His man was
also on the way over. The crowd was having a fit.
Chicago winked at me. "I guess it's a draw. The customers are going to
start tearing up the seats."
Joro-Jones and his opposite number met near the circle and bowed
stiffly to each other. They said nothing, but from the expressions on
their faces I gathered that they were having a rip-roaring telepathic
conversation. Finally they bowed again and Jones took my elbow to lead
me back to the sidelines.
"So long, Chicago," I called. "Good luck."
"Thanks," he said. "Same to you. See you around, maybe."
* * * * *
One of the officials was trying to make an announcement to the outraged
crowd as Jones and I went under the stands to the dressing room.
Sorrow and shame seemed to be Jones's chief emotions as he helped me
off with my steel claws and the other lethal paraphernalia.
"I suppose this is worse than if I got killed," I said.
"Infinitely," he said. "Never before has cowardice besmirched the
Sport."
"You know it wasn't cowardice," I told him. "Your honor would have been
intact if you hadn't run in one of my own people to the slaughter. I'd
always done your dirty work before."
"You knew the rules," he said sadly. "The traditions, the hazards, the
rewards. You accepted them. But now, by having rejected them, you've
put yourself in limbo. You are no longer Boru the Fighting Man. You can
never achieve the nobility that your prowess could have brought you.
Now you are Barry the Alien, and there is no place in our world for
you."
"Then I'm fired?" I asked.
"A man in disgrace should be less facetious. There should be a penalty
for what you have done, but it was unprecedented. There is only one
thing to do. You must be deported."
"To Earth?" All at once this was what I wanted.
"Yes," he said. "To the ugly planet from which you came. It is no more
than you deserve. I sorrow that you were not worthy of us."
I felt like making a speech then, about my land and my people. About
the Earth being a thousand Earths--a million--two billion--meaning a
different thing to every individual whose home it was. How Jones, with
his _uru_ drug, roaming the underworld of one city, had naturally seen
only the dregs of its society--the users and pushers, the grifters and
dreamers, the seekers after the big deal, the short cut, the unearned
reward, the big fix. He hadn't seen the Earth I'd known once, the
clean and straight world where you earned your way with dignity and
integrity....
I didn't make the speech. I didn't have to, of course, because he read
it all in my mind. I doubt if it meant anything to him.
"Here," he said.
He handed me a bowl of pungent green liquid. I didn't ask what it was.
It was bitter and sickeningly warm but I drank every last drop. Jones
watched me sadly. For just a moment I felt ashamed for having let him
down.
Then the whirling rushing took me up and flung me into space and the
stars ran together as before.
* * * * *
I suppose Earth is the same as it ever was. Yet it seems to me now to
be an infinitely better place than I remembered.
Of course my viewpoint is different. Though I see out of only one eye
now, I see much more. It is possible to look beyond the petty circle
of addicts that had been my world. I am ashamed that I once was one of
those poor deluded creatures, the cravers of the quick kick and the
brief relief. They are noplace, going nowhere.
They still talk of _yage_, the unreachable pie in their murky sky.
They want to be up there, out and away, anywhere but here. They are
fools. Uru taught me that. There is no real escape from here and now.
Therefore that is the thing to embrace. The inner propinquity of the
here, the time-extended everlastingness of the now.
Crazy, Jack?
No. I've gone scientific. I've gone back along the dreamy trail and
found the place where I took the wrong fork. I'd followed that fork a
little way but then turned back without giving it a fair shake.
_Peyote's_ what I'm talking about, friend. The thing Jones ran down.
Mescalin. That's right, back to the Indians.
Only it's gone respectable since I've been away. They don't call it a
fix, big or otherwise. Not the serious group of investigators I work
with. It's called the Huxley effect.
It's the study of _is_ness, if you know what I mean; the hereness and
nowness that is the all of everywhere within. It's the slowing of
time's rush to a standstill so you can spend a century studying the
intricate truth-in-beauty of a detail in the wallpaper or the eloquent
message of a rose petal.
And if that's good enough for Aldous, Jack, it's good enough for me.
I look and describe, and my one eye becomes a thousand. I talk and they
tape-record. They publish and compare the perceptions with those of
other subjects in other groups.
Once I saw the blue-white sun of Uru in a delft vase. This excited them
because there had been a similar perception by a subject in Chicago. It
excited me too. I'm glad he got back all right.