Read Online The Totems of Abydos by John Norman - Free Book Online Page B

much, of course,” said Rodriguez. “It is not the key to the universe, or anything. It is only a little something that I have been curious about, for a long time.”
    “The beginning?” asked Brenner, recollecting something from earlier, not clearly grasped.
    “Yes,” said Rodriguez. “How it started, what it all means, what it is all about, so to speak.”
    “You should have gone into cosmology,” said Brenner.
    “Oh, no,” said Rodriguez. “I am not talking about those walls, against which so many heads have been bloodied, about the worlds, the metaworlds, the metatimes, and, at the end, the mystery met with once more, concealed beneath yet another mask. No, no. I am talking about a small problem, about something which may well have an answer, even a discoverable one.”
    “Perhaps in the end there is no answer,” said Brenner. “Perhaps in the end there is nothing.”
    “I will not accept that,” said Rodriguez.
    “You have considered the possibility, I trust,” said Brenner, not pleasantly, “that reality may not be much concerned about what you are or are not willing to accept.”
    “I only want to know a little thing,” said Rodriguez. “I am not an ambitious man.”
    “And what is that?”
    “I would like to understand myself,” said Rodriguez, “who I am, who we are, how we came to be as we are, what my species is, how it came to be as it is, what it is all about.”
    Brenner thought it possible that there might an answer to that question, at least if it were subjected to certain clarifications. It was another question, of course, as to whether such an answer could be found. It was, he speculated, much like trying to discover the origin of a custom, or a practice, what it meant, or what it used to mean, or what it might mean now. Certainly anthropologists could speculate on such matters, and might, indeed, hit upon correct answers, even if they would never be able to demonstrate their correctness. To be sure, it seemed as if Rodriguez might have something in mind which was more primitive, more fundamental, than a given custom or practice, or even a constellation of such.
    “Hitherto,” said Rodriguez, “as it is said, we have only been picking up shells on the beach.”
    “That is worthwhile,” said Brenner.
    “But where have the shells come from?” asked Rodriguez. “Surely you have wondered about that. What lies behind them?”
    “You wish to see the sea?” smiled Brenner.
    “Yes,” said Rodriguez. “I wish to see the sea.”
    “Perhaps the origin is not the sea,” said Brenner, “but an artifact, or a deed.”
    “The first firebrand, snatched from a flaming forest, the stone knife, the social compact?” said Rodriguez.
    “Let us be content to pick up shells, and describe them,” said Brenner.
    Rodriguez was silent.
    “Surely you do not think to find what you seek on Abydos,” said Brenner.
    “What I seek lies everywhere, I think, but it is feared, and lies well hidden,” said Rodriguez.
    “And you hope to find it on Abydos?”
    “Yes,” said Rodriguez. “I hope to find it on Abydos.”
    “It would be less hidden there?” asked Brenner.
    “I think so,” said Rodriguez.
    “That seems a strange place to search for a secret local to our species,” said Brenner.
    “I am interested in this, of course, for its pertinence to our species,” said Rodriguez. “That is my personal motivation, self-regarding as you might expect. But I think it lies at the root not only of our species, but perhaps at the root of a billion others, perhaps, in one form or another, at the root of all.”
    “All?” asked Brenner.
    “Those of interest to our science,” said Rodriguez.
    “Those who have attained some form of culture?” said Brenner.
    “Yes,” said Rodriguez, “those capable of standing at crossroads, those who have sundered the bonds of elementary circuitries, those who are no longer simple, who are no longer like rain and wind, those who have put behind them the