Part 2

Me, a dope addict, temporarily between kicks. Me, a dreg of humanity.

Why?

Jones was following my thoughts, I knew, but he only smiled and said I would have to leave. He would call me again. In the meantime I must consider his invitation. He had not made it frivolously, but had weighed all factors. If I accepted, it would have to be unquestioningly, trusting him as my brother.

And it would be permanent. Once I chose Uru, there would be no returning to Earth.

"Until we meet again," he said.

I walked out into the street, pondering my choice.

* * * * *

My place depressed me.

I poured myself half a tumbler of whiskey and walked around, holding the drink in my hand. I opened the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and looked at my works--the hypo, the eye-dropper and the old spoon, blackened on the bottom, in which I'd cooked so many batches of heroin. Sooner or later I'd go back to it, I knew, even though I kidded myself into thinking I might be off the stuff for good.

Then the old round would begin again. The frantic search for a pusher when my supply ran low. Setting up a meet in some cafeteria or lunch counter to get the stuff. Rushing back to my place, with every stranger looking like a copper ready to tap me. The search in my poor scarred arm for a vein that hadn't withdrawn out of sight. Maybe even the necessity for a messy skin injection. The fleeting relief.

And then the anxiety of no money. A dirty job, possibly washing dishes in some greasy kitchen if the heat was on. Or risking a stint of lush-working in the subway, haunted by copper jitters and five-twenty-nine--five months and twenty-nine days in the workhouse--if they nabbed me "jostling" a drunk.

I couldn't go back to that life. I couldn't--but I would. I always had. You reach a point where you can't change any more. It's too late--you're too old--you don't know anything else--you've got no connections outside the squalid circle of users, pushers, teaheads, queers and petty crooks who are nowhere and never will be anywhere.

It was a limbo, a hell on Earth.

I swallowed my drink in burning gulps.

But Uru was paradise. And through Jones--The Man--the archangel?--I could achieve it. All I had to do was make up my mind.

But why had he chosen me to make the trip with him, past the place where the stars melted together in the speed of our journey through mental space, to the planet that was named for a drug or gave its name to a drug?

Since _uru_ was a drug maybe it was only natural that Jones' first contact would be with users of narcotics. The natives an explorer first meets in a new land are not necessarily people of the highest class. He meets the adventurers, the ones with spirit enough to canoe out to meet his ship.

So with Jones, perhaps. He would meet the others eventually--the normal, respectable people to whom we users were a despised, hunted minority. And when he had met the normal people, and through them Earth's leaders, it was possible he would have no further use for me and my kind. It was more than possible; it stood to reason.

If that was the case I had better grab my chance while I could--while Jones still thought of me as his brother.

He had already bypassed one level of our outcast society--the stratum typified by Rollo, habitual user and cheap crook--to reach me. I didn't have to flatter myself to know I was better than Rollo and his kind. I'd had some education, I avoided crime except when necessary, and I had the will power to quit the stuff at least occasionally.

Was this mere rationalization? I didn't think so. But whatever it was I would do well to accept Jones' offer without further demur and give up Earth for life on Uru. I could start out fresh there, make a clean break with my sordid past, and live the life of serenity and good will he had shown me.

I made my decision.

The telephone rang and I knew before I picked it up that it was Jones calling.

"I know your choice, my brother," he said, "and I am pleased. We will travel immediately."

A great joy surged through me. Here was the Messiah to deliver me from the slavery of my Earthbound existence to the paradise of Uru.

"I'm on my way!" I cried. I shut the door of my squalid room without a backward glance or a moment of regret.

* * * * *

Life was even more beautiful in Urula than I had dared hope. I had my own home and a man-servant. I ate the finest foods, drank choice liquors.

I learned the written language and read the great literature of Uru.

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.