We Know Who We Are

by Robert Silverberg

“We know who we are and what we want to be,” say the people of Shining City whenever they feel particularly uncertain about things. Shining City is at least a thousand years old. It may be even older, but who can be sure? It stands in the middle of a plain of purple sand that stretches from the Lake of No Return to the River Without Fish. It has room for perhaps six hundred thousand people. The recent population of Shining City has been perhaps six hundred people. They know who they are. They know what they want to be.

Things got trickier for them after the girl who was wearing clothes came walking in out of the desert.

Skagg was the first one to see her. He knew immediately that there was something unusual about her, and not just that she was wearing clothes. Anybody who ever goes out walking in the desert puts clothes on, because the heat is fierce—there being no Cool Machine out there—and the sun would roast you fast if you didn’t have some kind of covering, and the sand would blow against you and pick the meat from your bones. But the unusual thing about the girl was her face. It wasn’t a familiar one. Everybody in Shining City knew everybody else, and Skagg didn’t know this girl at all, so she had to be a stranger, and strangers just didn’t exist.

She was more than a child but less than a woman, and her body was slender and her hair was dark, and she walked the way a man would walk, with her arms swinging and her knees coming high and her legs kicking outward. When Skagg saw her he felt afraid, and he had never been afraid of a woman before.

“Hello,” she said. “I speak Language. Do you?”

Her voice was deep and husky, like the wind on a winter day pushing itself between two of the city’s towers. Her accent was odd, and the words came out as if she were holding her tongue in the wrong part of her mouth. But he understood her.

He said, “I speak Language, and I understand what you say. But who are you?”

“Fa Sol La,” she sang.

“Is that your name?”

“That is my name. And yours?”

“Skagg..”

“Do all the people in this city have names like Skagg?”

“I am the only Skagg,” said Skagg. “Where do you come from?”

She pointed eastward. “From a place beside the River Without Fish. Is this Shining City?”

“Yes,” Skagg said.

“Then I am where I want to be.” She unslung the pack that she was carrying over one shoulder and set it down, and then she removed her robe, so that she was as naked as he was. Her skin was very pale, and there was practically no flesh on her. Her breasts were tiny and her buttocks were flat. From where he stood, Skagg could easily have mistaken her for a boy. She picked up the pack again. “Will you take me into your city?” she asked.

They were on the outskirts, in the region of the Empty Buildings. Skagg sometimes went there when he felt that his mind was too full. Tall tapering towers sprouted here. Some were sagging and others had lost their outer trim. Repair Machines no longer functioned in this part of the city.

“Where do you want to go?” he asked.

“To the place where the Knowing Machine is,” said Fa Sol La.

Frowning, he said, “How do you know about the Machine?”

“Everyone in the world knows about the Knowing Machine. I want to see it. I walked all the way from the River Without Fish to see the Knowing Machine. You’ll take me there, won’t you, Skagg?”

He shrugged. “If you want. But you won’t be able to get close to it. You’ll see. You’ve wasted your time.”

They began to walk toward the center of the city.

She moved with such a swinging stride that he had to work hard to keep up with her. Several times she came close to him, so that her hip or thigh brushed his skin, and Skagg felt himself trembling at the strangeness of her. They were silent a long while. The morning sun began to go down and the afternoon sun started to rise, and the double light, blending, cast deceptive shadows and made her body look fuller than it was. Near the Mirror Walls a Drink Machine came up to them and refreshed them. She put her head inside it and gulped as if she had been dry for months, and then she let the fluid run out over her slim body. Not far on a Riding Machine found them and offered to transport them to the center. Skagg gestured to her to get in, but she waved a no at him.

“It’s still a great distance,” he said.

“I’d rather walk. I’ve walked this far, and I’ll walk to the end. I can see things better.”

Skagg sent the machine away. They went on walking. The morning sun disappeared and now only the green light of afternoon illuminated Shining City.

She said, “Do you have a woman, Skagg?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Do you have a woman, I said.”

“I heard the words. But how does one have a woman? What does it mean?”

“To live with. To sleep with. To share pleasure with. To have children with.”

“We live by ourselves,” he said. “There’s so much room here, why crowd together? We sleep sometimes with others, yes. We share pleasure with everyone. Children rarely come.”

“You have no regular mates here, then?”

“I have trouble understanding. Tell me how it is in your city.”

“In my city,” she said, “a man and a woman live together and do all things together. They need no one else. Sometimes, they realize they do not belong together and then they split up and seek others, but often they have each other for a lifetime.”

“This sounds quite strange,” said Skagg.

“We call it love,” said Fa Sol La.

“We have love here. All of us love all of us. We do things differently, I suppose. Does any man in your city have you, then?”

“No. Not any more. I had a man, but he was too simple for me. And I left and walked to Shining City.”

She frightened him even more, now.

They had started to enter the inhabited part of the city. Behind them were the long stately avenues and massive residential structures of the dead part; ahead lay the core, with its throbbing machines and eating centers and bright lights.

“Are you happy here?” Fa Sol La asked as they stepped between a Cleansing Machine’s pillars and were bathed in blue mist.

“We know who we are,” Skagg said, “and what we want to be. Yes, I think we’re happy.”

“I think you may be wrong,” she said, and laughed, and pressed her body tight up against him a moment, and sprinted ahead of him like something wild.

A Police Machine rose from the pavement and blocked her way. It shot out silvery filaments that hovered around her, ready to clamp close if she made a hostile move. She stood still. Skagg ran up and said, “It’s all right. She’s new to the city. Scan her and accept her.”

The machine bathed both of them in an amber glow and went away.

“What are you afraid of here?” Fa Sol La asked.

“Animals sometimes come in from the desert. We have to be careful. Did it scare you?”

“It puzzled me,” she said.

Others were nearing them now. Skagg saw Glorr, Derk, Prewger, and Simit; and more were coming. They crowded around the girl, none daring to touch her but everyone staring hard.

“This is Fa Sol La,” said Skagg. “I discovered her. She comes from a city at the River Without Fish and walked across the desert to visit us.”

“What is your city called?” Derk demanded.

“River City,” she said.

“How many people live there?” asked Prewger.

“I don’t know. Many but not very many.”

“How old are you?” Simit blurted.

“Five no-suns,” she said.

“Did you come alone?” Glorr said.

“Alone.”

“Why did you come here?” Prewger asked.

She said, “To see the Knowing Machine,” and they moved as if she had proclaimed herself to be the goddess of death.

“The Knowing Machine is dangerous,” said Prewger.

“No one may get close to it,” said Simit.

“We fear it,” said Glorr.

“It will kill you,” said Derk.

Fa Sol La said, “Where is the Knowing Machine?”

They backed away from her. Derk summoned a Soothing Machine and had a drink from it. Prewger stepped into a Shelter Machine. Simit went among the others who had gathered, whispering her answers to them. Glorr turned his face away and bowed his head.

“Why are you so afraid?” she asked.

Skagg said, “When the city was built, the builders used the Knowing Machine to make themselves like gods. And the gods killed them. They came out of the machine full of hate, and took weapons against one another, until only a few were left. And those who remained said that no one ever again would enter the Machine.”

“How long ago was that?”

“How should I know?” said Skagg.

“Show me the machine.”

He hesitated. He spoke a few faltering syllables of refusal.

She pressed herself close against him and rubbed her body against his. She put her teeth lightly on the lobe of his ear. She ran her fingers along the strong muscles of his back.

“Show me the machine,” she said. “I love you, Skagg. Can you refuse me the machine?”

He quivered. Her strangeness attracted him powerfully. He was eight no-suns old, and he knew every woman in Shining City all too well, and though he feared this girl he also was irresistibly drawn to her.

“Come,” he whispered.

They walked down sleek boulevards and glowing skyways, crossed brooks and ponds and pools, passed spiky statues and dancing beacons. It was a handsome city, the finest in the world, and Fa Sol La trilled and sighed at every beautiful thing in it.

“They say that those who live here never go anywhere else,” she said. “Now I begin to understand why. Have you ever been to another city, Skagg?”

“Never.”

“But you go outside sometimes?”

“To walk in the desert, yes. Most of the others never even do that.”

“But outside—there are so many cities, Skagg, so many different kinds of people! A dozen cities, a whole world! Don’t you ever want to see them?”

“We like it here. We know what we want.”

“It’s lovely here. But it isn’t right for you to stay in one place forever. It isn’t human. How would people ever have come to this world in the first place, if our ancestors had done as you folk do?”

“I don’t concern myself with that. Shining City cares for us, and we prefer not to go out. Obviously most others stay close to their cities too, since you are the first visitor I can remember.”

“Shining City is too remote from other cities,” Fa Sol La said. “Many dream of coming here, but few dare, and fewer succeed. But we travel everywhere else. I have been in seven cities besides my own, Skagg.”

The idea of that disturbed him intensely.

She went on, “Traveling opens the mind. It teaches you things about yourself that you never realized.”

“We know who we are,” he said.

“You only think you do.”

He glared at her, turned, pointed. “This is the Knowing Machine,” he said, glad to shift subjects.

They stood in the center of the great cobbled plaza before the machine. Two hundred strides to the east rose the glossy black column, flanked by the protective columns of shimmering white metal. The door-opening was faintly visible. Around the brow of the column the colors flickered and leaped, making the range of the spectrum as they had done for at least a thousand years.

“Where do I go in?” she asked.

“No one goes in.”

“I’m going in. I want you to come in with me, Skagg.”

He laughed. “Those who enter die.”

“No. No. The machine teaches love. It opens you to the universe. It awakens your mind. We have books about it. We know.”

“The machine kills.”

“It’s a lie, Skagg, made up by people whose souls were full of hate. They didn’t want anyone to experience the goodness that the machine brings. It isn’t the first time that men have prohibited goodness out of the fear of love.”

Skagg smiled. “I have a fear of death, girl, not of love. Go into the machine, if you like. I’ll wait here.”

Fury and contempt sparkled in her eyes. Without another word she strode across the plaza. He watched, admiring the trimness of her body, the ripple of her muscles. He did not believe she would enter the machine. She passed the Zone of Respect and the Zone of Obeisance and the Zone of Contemplation, and went into the Zone of Approach, and did not halt there, but entered the Zone of Peril, and as she walked on into the Zone of Impiety he cursed and started to run after her, shouting for her to halt.

Now she was on the gleaming steps. Now she was ascending. Now she had her hand on the sliding door.

“Wait!” he screamed. “No! I love you!”

“Come in with me, then.”

“It will kill us!”

“Then farewell,” she said, and went into the Knowing Machine.

Skagg collapsed on the rough red cobblestones of the Zone of Approach and lay there sobbing, face down, clutching at the stones with his fingers, remembering how vulnerable and fragile she had looked, and yet how strong and sturdy she was, remembering her small breasts and lean thighs, and remembering too the strangeness about her that he loved. Why had she chosen to kill herself this way?

After a long while he stood up and started to leave. Night had come and the first moons were out. The taste of loss was bitter in mouth.

“Skagg?” she called.

She was on the steps of the Knowing Machine. She ran toward him, seemingly floating, and her face was flushed and her eyes were radiant.

“You lived?” he muttered. “You came out?”

“They’ve been lying, Skagg. The machine doesn’t kill. It’s there to help. It was marvelous, Skagg.”

“What happened?”

“Voices speak to you, and tell you what to do. And you put a metal thing on your head, and fire shoots through your brain, and you see, Skagg, you see everything for the first time.”

“Everything? What everything?”

“Life. Love. Stars. The connections that hold people together. It’s all there. Ecstasy. It feels like having a whole planet making love to you. You see the patterns of life, and when you come out you want everybody else to see them too, so they don’t have to walk around crippled and cut off all the time. I just tried a little bit. You can take it mild, strong, any level you like. And when you take it, you begin to understand. You’re in tune at last. You receive signals from the universe. It opens you, Skagg. Oh, come inside with me, won’t you? I want to go in and take it stronger. And I want you to share it with me.”

He eluded her grasping hand. “I’m afraid.”

‘Don’t be. I went in. I came out.”

“It’s forbidden.”

“Because it’s good, Skagg. People have always been forbidding other people to have anything this good. And once you’ve had it, you’ll know why. You’ll see the kind of power that hate and bitterness have—and you’ll know how to soar to the sky and escape that power.”

She tugged at him. He moved back.

“I can’t go in,” he said.

“Are you that afraid of dying?”

“They tell us that the machine makes people monstrous.”

“Am I a monster?”

“They tell us that there are certain things we must never know.”

“Anybody who says that is the true monster, Skagg.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps. But I can’t. Look—they’re all watching us. You see them, here in the shadows? Everybody in Shining City is here! How could I go in? How could I do something so filthy when all of them—”

“I feel so sorry for you,” she said softly. “To be afraid of love—to pull back from knowledge—”

“I can’t help myself.”

Gently she said, “Skagg, I’m going back in, and this time I’m going to ask for the most they can give. If there’s any love in your soul, come in after me. I’ll wait in there for you. And afterward we’ll go off together—we’ll visit every city in the world together—”

He shook his head.

She came close to him. He jumped away, as if afraid she would seize him and haul him into the machine, but she went to him and kissed him, a light brushing of lips on lips, and then she turned and went back into the machine.

He did not follow, but he did not leave.

The moons crossed in the sky, and the rain-sphere passed over the city, and the birds of night followed it, and a Riding Machine came to him and offered to take him to his home, and the red light of the morning sun began to streak the sky, and still the door of the Knowing Machine did not open, and still Fa Sol La stayed within. Skagg was alone in the plaza now.

“I’ll wait in there for you,” she had said.

The others, his friends, his neighbors, had gone home to sleep. He was alone. At sunrise he went forward into the Zone of Peril and stayed there awhile, and after an hour he entered the Zone of Impiety, and as the full morning heat descended he found himself going up the steps quite calmly and opening the door of the Knowing Machine.

“Welcome to Therapeutic Center Seven,” a deep voice said from above, speaking in Language but using an accent even less familiar than the girl’s. “Please move to your left for elementary sensory expansion treatment. You will find helmets on the wall. Place a helmet snugly on your head and—”

“Where’s the girl?” he asked.

The voice continued to instruct him. Skagg ignored it, and went to his right, along a corridor that curved to circle the column. He found her just around the bend. She wore a helmet and her eyes were open, but she leaned frozen against the wall, strangely pale, strangely still. He put his ear between her breasts and heard nothing. He touched her skin and it seemed already to be growing cold. She did not close her eyes when his fingertip neared them.

There was on her face an expression of such joy that he could hardly bear to look at it.

The voice said, “In the early stages of therapy, a low level of stimulation is recommended. Therefore we request that you do not attempt to draw a greater degree of intensification than you are able at this stage to—”

Skagg took the helmet from her head. He lifted her in his arms and found that she weighed almost nothing. Carefully he set her down. Then, taking another helmet from the rack, he held it with both hands for a long time, listening to the instructions and hearing once more the girl’s talk of ecstasy and soaring, and comparing all that he saw here to the things that everyone always had said about the Knowing Machine. After a while he put the helmet back in the rack without using it, and picked up the girl again, and carried her body out of the machine.

As he went down the steps, he saw that the others had gathered again and were gaping at him.

“You were in the machine?” Simit asked.

“I was in the machine,” said Skagg.

“It killed her but not you?” Derk wanted to know.

“She used it. I didn’t. First she used it a little, and then she used it too much, and the second time it killed her.” Skagg kept walking as he spoke. They followed him.

“It is death simply to go inside the machine,” Prewger said.

“This is wrong,” said Skagg. “You can enter safely. Death comes only from using the machine. From using it wrongly.”

“She was a fool,” said Glorr. “She was punished.”

“Maybe so,” Skagg said. “But the machine gives us love. The machine gives us goodness.”

He put the girl on the ground and summoned a Service Machine. Skagg gave it the girl’s pack, asking that it be outfitted with a Water Machine and a Food Machine and a Shelter Machine. The Service Machine went away and came back a short while later. After inspecting the pack, Skagg strapped it over his shoulder. Then he picked up the girl again and began to walk.

“Where are you going with her?” Glorr asked.

“Out of the city. I will find a place for her body to rest in the desert.”

“When you return, will you go into the Knowing Machine again?” Simit asked.

“I won’t return for a long time,” said Skagg. “I have some traveling to do. First to River City, and then to other places, maybe. And then, when I’ve found my courage, when I know who I really am and what I really want to be, I’ll come back here and go into the machine and use it as it was meant to be used. And nothing will ever be the same in Shining City again.”

He walked more quickly away from them, out toward the Empty Buildings, toward the plain of purple sand. He wondered how long it would take him to reach that other city beside the River Without Fish, and whether he would meet anyone like Fa Sol La when he got there.

His friends stood watching him until he was out of sight.

“He has become a madman,” said Prewger.

“A dangerous madman,” Glorr said.

“Would you do such a thing?” Simit asked.

“Do you mean, go into the machine, or go to another city?” said Derk.

“Either one.”

“Of course not,” said Derk.

“Of course not,” said Glorr as well. “I know who I am. I know what I want to be.”

“Yes,” Simit said, shuddering. “Why should we do such things? We know who we are.”

“We know what we want to be,” said Prewger.

Content

We Know Who We Are
by Robert Silverberg