“All this we have discussed many times,” I said. “You spoke of a proposal, an experiment.”

“Be patient, your grace. One must explain oneself fully, step by step.”

Schweiz flashed me his most charming smile, and turned on me eyes that were bright with visionary schemes. His hands roamed the air expressively, conjuring up invisible drama, as he said, “Perhaps your grace is aware that there are certain chemical substances—drugs, yes, call them drugs—that allow one to make an opening into the infinite, or at least to have the illusion that one has made such an opening—to attain a brief and tentative glimpse into the mystic realms of the intangible. Eh? Known for thousands of years, these drugs, used in the days before Earthmen ever went to the stars. Employed in ancient religious rites. Employed by others as a substitute for religion, as a secular means of finding faith, the gateway to the infinite for such as this one, who can get there no other way.”

“Such drugs are forbidden in Velada Borthan,” I said.

“Of course, of course! For you they offer a means of sidestepping the processes of formal religion. Why waste time at a drainer’s if you can expand your soul with a pill? Your law is wise on this point. Your Covenant could not survive if you allowed these chemicals to be used here.”

“Your proposal, Schweiz,” I said.

“One first must tell you that he has used these drugs himself, and found them not entirely satisfactory. True, they open the infinite. True, they let one merge with the Godhead. But only for moments: a few hours at best. And at the end of it, one is as alone as before. It is the illusion of the soul’s opening, not the opening itself. Whereas this planet produces a drug that can provide the real thing.”

“What?”

“In Sumara Borthan,” said Schweiz, “dwell those who fled the rule of the Covenant. One is told that they are savages, going naked and living on roots and seeds and fish; the cloak of civilization has dropped away from them and they have slipped back into barbarism. So one learned from a traveler who had visited that continent not long ago. One also learned that in Sumara Borthan they use a drug made from a certain powdered root, which has the capacity of opening mind to mind, so that each can read the inmost thoughts of the other. It is the very opposite of your Covenant, do you see? They know one another from the soul out, by way of this drug they eat.”

“One has heard stories of the savagery of those folk,” I said.

Schweiz put his face close to mine. “One confesses himself tempted by the Sumaran drug. One hopes that if he could ever get inside another mind, he could find that community of soul for which he has searched so long. It might be the bridge to the infinite that he seeks, the spiritual transformation. Eh? In quest of revelations he has tried many substances. Why not this?”

“If it exists.”

“It exists, your grace. This traveler who came from Sumara Borthan brought some of it with him to Manneran, and sold some of it to the curious Earthman.” Schweiz drew forth from a pocket a small glossy envelope, and held it toward me. It contained a small quantity of some white powder; it could have been sugar. “Here it is,” he said.

I stared at it as if he had pulled out a flask of poison.

“Your proposal?” I demanded. “Your experiment, Schweiz?”

“Let us share the Sumaran drug,” he said.

31

I might have slapped the powder from his hand and ordered his arrest. I might have commanded him to get away from me and never come near again. I might at the very least have cried out that it was impossible I would ever touch any such substance. But I did none of those things. I chose instead to be coolly intellectual, to show casual curiosity, to remain calm and play conversational games with him. Thus I encouraged him to lead me a little deeper into the quicksand.

I said, “Do you think that one is so eager to contravene the Covenant?”

“One thinks that you are a man of strong will and inquiring mind, who would not miss an opportunity for enlightenment.”

“Illegal enlightenment?”

“All true enlightenment is illegal at first, within its context. Even the religion of the Covenant: were your forefathers not driven out of other worlds for practicing it?”

“One mistrusts such analogy-making. We are not talking of religions now. We talk of a dangerous drug. You ask one to surrender all the training of his lifetime, and open himself to you as he has never done even to bond-kin, even to a drainer.”

“Yes.”

“And you imagine that one might be willing to do such a thing?”

“One imagines that you might well emerge transformed and cleansed, if you could bring yourself to try,” Schweiz said.

“One might also emerge scarred and twisted.”

“Doubtful. Knowledge never injures the soul. It only purges that which encrusts and saps the soul.”

“How glib you are, Schweiz! Look, though: can you believe it would be possible to give one’s inner secrets to a stranger, to a foreigner, to an otherworlder?”

“Why not? Better to a stranger than to a friend. Better to an Earthman than a fellow citizen. You’d have nothing to fear: the Earthman would never try to judge you by the standards of Borthan. There’d be no criticisms, no disapprovals of what’s under your skull. And the Earthman will leave this planet in a year or two, on a journey of hundreds of light-years, and what then will it matter that your mind once merged with his?”

“Why are you so eager to have this merger happen?”

“For eight moontimes,” he said, “this drug has been in one’s pocket, while one hunts for someone to share it with. It looked as though the search would be in vain. Then one met you, and saw your potential, your strength, your hidden rebelliousness—”

“One is aware of no rebelliousness, Schweiz. One accepts his world completely.”

“May one bring up the delicate matter of your attitude toward your bondsister? That seems a symptom of a fundamental discontent with the restrictions of your society.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

“You would know yourself better after sampling the Sumaran drug. You would have fewer perhapses and more certainties.”

“How can you say this, if you haven’t had the drug yourself?”

“So it seems to one.”

“It is impossible,” I said.

“An experiment. A secret pact. No one would ever know.”

“Impossible.”

“Is it that you fear to share your soul?”

“One is taught that such sharing is unholy.”

“The teachings can be wrong,” he said. “Have you never felt the temptation? Have you never tasted such ecstasy in a draining that you wished you might undergo the same experience with someone you loved, your grace?”

Again he caught me in a vulnerable place. “One has had such feelings occasionally,” I admitted. “Sitting before some ugly drainer, and imagining it was Noim instead, or Halum, and that the draining was a two-way flow—”

“Then you already long for this drug, and don’t realize it!”

“No. No.”

“Perhaps,” Schweiz suggested, “it is the idea of opening to a stranger that dismays you, and not the concept of opening itself. Perhaps you would take this drug with someone other than the Earthman, eh? With your bondbrother? With your bondsister?”

I considered that. Sitting down with Noim, who was to me like a second self, and reaching his mind on levels that had never been available to me before, and he reaching mine. Or with Halum—or with Halum—

Schweiz, you tempter!

He said, after letting me think a while, “Does the idea please you? Here, then. One will surrender his chance with the drug. Take it, use it, share it with one whom you love.” He pressed the envelope into my hand. It frightened me; I let it fall to the table as if it were aflame.

I said, “But that would deprive you of your hoped-for fulfillment.”